A COMMISSION has been set up by the Polish Government to investigate a spate of accidents involving Polish air force fighter aircraft.
The country's president, Lech Walesa, and prime minister Jozef Oleksy ordered the commission to be set up in the wake of the latest crash on 26 July, in which a Sukhoi Su-22 Fitter tactical strike aircraft was lost.
The Polish air force has suffered a total of five accidents so far this year, four of them fatal, all but one of which involved the Su-22.
According to Polish defence minister Zbigniew Okonski, the crash could have been caused by the accidental in-flight detonation of experimental ordnance being carried by the aircraft. Okonski believes, however, that the previous four losses were the result of pilot error.
"The commission investigating the previous accidents stated that their causes were mistakes made by pilots, so instead of thinking about suspending flights we should figure out how to improve training," he says.
Source: Flight International
