3RDLD CRASH 2LST

Bronislaw Komorowski, head of the Polish lower house or
Sejm, will take over presidential duties in line with the
constitution after President Kaczynski died.
State-run Rossiya 24 news channel showed the footage from
the crash site with pieces of the plane scattered widely amid
leafless trees and small fires burning in woods shrouded in
fog. A tail fin with the read and white national colours of
Poland was all that was standing in the debris.
The channel said the air traffic control at the Minsk
airport of neighbouring Belarus had warned the commander of
the Polish presidential planes about the bad weather at the
Smolensk airport.
However, the Polish pilot ignored the warning and left
the Minsk airport's zone 32 minutes before the crash, it said.
"The investigation is considering different versions,
including adverse weather conditions, human error, technical
problems and others," the investigators said.
They said the wing of the ill-fated plane hit tree tops
and the aircraft disintegrated over the forest about one
kilometre from the Severny airport.
The live pictures from the crash site carried by Rossiya
24 channel show the main landing gear of the ill-fated plane
hanging from the tree tops.
Smolensk's Severny airport is of the 'Class one' category
capable of receiving all types of aircraft in adverse weather,
a senior air force officer was quoted as saying by Ekho Moskvy
radio.
The Russian rescuers have recovered one of the two flight
recorders of Tupolev Tu-154 from the crash site, even as
Emergency Ministry dispatched two helicopters with forensic
experts and equipment from Moscow.
The presidential aircraft was built in the ex-USSR in
1990 and last year it had undergone complete overhaul at
Russia's Aviakor plant in the Volga city of Samara.
The aircraft had been upgraded in May last year in
Russia, General Director of Aviakor Alexei Gusyev said.
The TU-154 Presidential plane came in to land around
11:00 hours local time (1230 HRS IST), and reportedly broke
into several pieces about 300 metres from the runway.
According to Russian Air Space Monitoring Service, the
pilot was advised to land either in Belarus capital Minsk, or
Moscow because of bad weather at the airport where it crashed.
But the commander of the Presidential plane refused to
land elsewhere and the aircraft crashed on its fourth attempt
to land in dense fog, it said.
Kaczynski, who became President in December 2005, was the
twin brother of Poland's opposition leader and former Prime
Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski. He had said he would seek a
second term in presidential elections this fall.
The President and his wife are survived by a daughter and
two granddaughters. PTI