WARSAW. July 29 (Interfax) - Poland's commission investigating the crash of Polish President Lech Kaczynski's airplane in Russia in April 2010 has concluded that the airfield near Smolensk failed to ensure the plane's safe landing.
"Smolensk-Severny did not ensure the airplane's safe landing, especially in limited visibility conditions," the Polish commission's representative said at a news conference in Warsaw on Friday.
"The state of the airfield's runway lightning system failed to meet technical requirements applied to visual navigation equipment," it said.
"Some of the air approach ways adjacent to Runway No. 26 have a lot of trees above the maximum acceptable height for ground obstacles in this area," the commission said.
These trees covered some elements of the airfield's runway lightning system amid poor visibility, which caused the plane's crew to lose visual orientation and resulted in multiple reflections from obstacles on the ground, possibly hampering the use of the landing radar, especially at the final phase of the plane's approach to the airfield, it said.
However, the Polish commission agreed that "landing arrangements at the Smolensk-Severny airfield allowed airplanes to approach Runway No. 26 and to land on it safely despite numerous flaws."