EUR 40 880 – this amount a year ago, the Polish Air Navigation Agency paid for a service consisting of “execution of air inspection in Lithuania”. The money went to a company owned by Russian citizens. The scandal was hidden from the public. The case came out on the occasion of the investigation into the Vilnius plane crash six months later. It appeared at the time that during the flight data could have been taken over to safe access to information on the airport infrastructure in Vilnius. most likely the point was to then jam the strategy to aid landing there and falsely guide the planes. Is the frail "aircraft inspection" and subsequent disaster the consequence of a professional operation of Russian secret services?
Sudden order
5 June 2024 The Polish Air Navigation Agency announced a tender procedure (signature 111/PAŻP/2024/2AZP), which was the subject of the air control of 5 radio navigation devices under the ILS strategy over airports in Vilnius, Kaunas and Palanda. The checks were to be carried out in accordance with the lists of procedures in "free-hand" mode, i.e. quickly, without tendering procedures. This was justified by the in view of the exceptional situation (...), the time limits set for another award procedures cannot be retained. From the remainder of the same document, we learn what an exceptional situation this was about: The occurrence of force majeure in the form of a collision in the air of the PPA measuring aircraft with the bird, resulting in harm to the aircraft preventing its operation until repair.
Eastern company
The specification of essential contract conditions includes requirements that only 1 company met: Flight Precisions Ltd. registered in Christchurch, Dorset County. It's a very mysterious company. According to the British registry Act (No. 08977861), its founders are Alexey Jashin and Alexander Jashin, a Russian citizen surviving in the UK. All we know about the main owner is that he lives in a luxurious part of London and that he will shortly turn 40. On the another hand, Alexander Jaszin on a popular social networking site can be found out that he lives in Helsinki and graduated from the Moscow method Institute. This university has been a forge of russian personnel for decades and later Russian peculiar services. More is hard to find out, since the telephone provided on the authoritative website of the company is silent and the questions sent to the email address stay unanswered. – These Russian names visible in the authoritative company registry should have included a informing lamp to Polish peculiar services – Marcin Miklaszewski, a private investigator, evaluates. – Especially since we are talking about signing an agreement in an area that is crucial for national security. How is it possible that Polish peculiar services allowed them to sign a contract with a company that can be assumed to have ties to Russian intelligence? This question is all the more reasonable due to the fact that PPA is included in the list of strategically crucial institutions in terms of state safety and is subject to the operational supervision of the services, and an officer of the interior safety Agency is seconded to guarantee its safety. So why wasn't specified a contract blocked? The PAŻP spokesperson Marcin Hadaj asked us about this: Flight Precision Ltd. has a British Air Surveillance Certificate essential to execute calibration flights. It has been operating on the European marketplace for respective years based on all essential formal permits. It besides holds a NATO certificate entitling, among others, to execute the abovementioned activities under certain conditions (...). The designated contractor allowed to reduce the cost of the control and measurement service, due to the fact that at the same time he carried out his contracted services in Lithuania, which translated straight into a deficiency of additional fees for, among others, handling, landing, parking, ramp charges, terminal navigation fees and crew transport.
(No)Safe control
Air control of Vilnius airport took place on Thursday 6 June 2024 and lasted a full of 1 hr and 12 minutes. The flight was conducted by Captain Adam Tarnowski, 1 of the most experienced Polish air instructors. On a regular basis, Captain Tarnowski is employed in PAŻP as a flight crew manager, aircraft captain and instructor. This control was carried out by flying behind the steering wheel of the Beechcraft King Air 350 Pro Line 21, owned by the above mentioned company Flight Precisions Ltd. – Such a lap was to scan the operation of the ILS system, i.e. to download its full data taking into account the specificity of the site and calibrate it as to where it was planted – says Janusz Janiszewski, erstwhile PAŻP chief, air traffic controller with many years of experience. ILS (Integrated Landing System) is an integrated landing support system. Its operation is to supply the pilot of a passenger aeroplane with accurate data on the runway position and distance to it vertically and horizontally. ILS is utilized erstwhile landing under hard conditions, mainly in fog. The pilot, erstwhile approaching landing, does not see the runway, and controls the device solely based on the data provided by the ILS, which he sees on the deck devices in the cockpit. – Having accurate data obtained during installation and calibration of the ILS strategy makes it easy to interfere with the operation of specified a strategy – judged Janiszewski. – Just put the car with a 6 KW transmitter and change the performance so that the belt threshold in the ILS strategy is shifted by respective kilometres and the pilot gets false data, and then guides the aircraft not to the runway, but to another goal. Both experts point out that that minute specifically required emergency safety procedures. Captain Tarnowski performed a flight of Vilnius Airport 3 weeks after the fire of the hall on Marywilska Street occurred in Warsaw, and... the day after the service of European states informed that Russian divers were behind the fire. – I believe that the aircraft at the disposal of the Russian company during this flight could have been equipped with devices that not only scanned the ILS system, but besides another airport safety systems. – says Military Counterintelligence Service Officer.
Tragic Flight
Almost half a year later, on Monday 25 November, just after 3 a.m., from Leipzig Airport in Germany, it ascended to Boeing 737, owned by Spanish airline Swiftair. The device made a transport flight on behalf of a well-known global courier corp DHL. The captain was scheduled to make a regular flight to Vilnius to deliver to the airport shipments addressed to the recipients in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. A fewer minutes after the launch, the pilot reported a hydraulic strategy problem. The crash was not serious, Boeing's crew did not usage the Mayday (life-threatening) or Pan mode (serious fault, but not dangerous to safety), and the captain's voice did not uncover concern. That morning, Vilnius made a thick fog, and then it started raining. The pilot, without seeing the belt, had to trust the data supplied to him by the ILS. As a result, at 5.28, it hit the buildings 1472 metres from the start of the runway. The jet broke apart, and a fire broke out at the scene of the collision. The captain – an experienced Spanish pilot (had more than 5,000 hours of flight) was killed (the remaining 3 crew members managed to save). The recordings from the "black box" show that by the last second he was convinced that he was coming to land on the ILS approach path. The Lithuanian government immediately launched an investigation involving experts from Spain, the USA (where Boeing was produced) and Germany (where the flight began). It has been announced that 1 of the hypotheses about the origin of the disaster is simply a terrorist attack. Ironically, respective weeks earlier, German services had warned against "unconventional incendiary devices" to be sent by Russian diversions through transport service providers. This was to be part of Russia's hybrid war with the West. The German counterintelligence sent authoritative warnings to companies in the aviation and transport sectors. An interior investigation was conducted by the DHL courier company, which checked the shipment data and stated that they were all decently x-rayed and surely there were no unconventional incendiaries aboard Boeing. However, the plane crash occurred 5 days after Lithuania (with Estonia, Latvia and Poland) submitted an authoritative proposal to the European Commission to restrict the import of fertilizers from Russia (Russian producers gain billions of euro) and 2 weeks after Lithuania announced its return to compulsory military service and to build a fresh line of fortifications on the border with the Kaliningrad region. Officially, the investigation continues, and diversion as the origin of the disaster has not been ruled out.
