# Polish President Dead **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 10, 2010, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/polish-president-dead/535621 "2010-04-10T09:08:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/polish-president-dead/535621/21 "2010-04-11T21:53:33Z")
> [@ShibbOleth](#): > > Sad news for Poland. > > Don’t know if that’s a bad record or not - I suppose you’d need to know the number of hours flown or something - but it seems one hears about these things crashing fairly often. The Tuploevs have been in the news a lot due to a rather bad year, with a fatal crash of a Tu-154 in Iran in July, and another one catching fire after a runway excursion, also in Iran and a Tu-204 landing short of a runway in Russia, both in March. These are old planes, and I fear we are going to be hearing about more accidents and incidents as the fleet ages and several of the airlines/countries flying them are unable to replace them with newer aircraft. In general, though the Tu-154’s [safety record](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-154#Incidents_and_accidents) is decent, with many accidents being attributed to causes other than mechanical failure. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/polish-president-dead/535621/22 "2010-04-11T23:30:03Z")
My sympathies and condolences to the Polish people, in Poland and worldwide. I can’t imagine how this must feel. > [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > I hope the Russians do not try to take advantage of the situation. You have GOT to be kidding me? What would they do? Try invading again? I don’t think so. NATO would crush 'em like bugs. The U.N., too. And Americans might not be too keen on the whole think in Iraq and Afghanistan, but if Russia tried to invade Poland right now…well, the resulting war would be so “popular” that it would make WWII look like Vietnam. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/polish-president-dead/535621/23 "2010-04-12T00:53:55Z")
The fact he was travelling to attend the 70th anniversery of the Katyn Massacres just adds to the tragedy ( and no doubt will fuel the inevitable conspiracy theories - they’re still floating around about the 1943 Sikorski crash). ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/polish-president-dead/535621/24 "2010-04-12T12:46:25Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > There is only one Polish head of state, how do suppose they go about separating him? Concerning the rest of the people on the plane, I don’t think any of them were in the line of succession should the Polish president die, and arguably the most important figure in Polish politics, the PM, was not on the plane, and neither was the speaker of parliament, who is now replacing the president. So while there might have been important people on board, their deaths don’t cause any constitutional upset. So no, this is not ‘asking for catastrophe’, as you so nicely put it. Okay, I used the wrong terminology; I didn’t really mean “heads of state”, I meant VIP’s with a lot of political, economic and security influence. I’m not sure about whether or not there were any non-important people on that flight, ie. ordinary civilians, but if there were, I also disagree with the idea that their lives would have have been put in danger by making the flight a target for terrorist attack or sabotage. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/polish-president-dead/535621/25 "2010-04-12T15:45:26Z")
Among the dead was also [Anna Walentynowicz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Walentynowicz) whose firing from the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk was the spark that lead to the founding of the [Solidarity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity) trade union and eventually to the downfall of the Polish communist regime. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/polish-president-dead/535621/26 "2010-04-12T17:29:51Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > Okay, I used the wrong terminology; I didn’t really mean “heads of state”, I meant VIP’s with a lot of political, economic and security influence. I’m not sure about whether or not there were any non-important people on that flight, ie. ordinary civilians, but if there were, I also disagree with the idea that their lives would have have been put in danger by making the flight a target for terrorist attack or sabotage. right, so you understand that the really central figures in the Polish government were not on board (e.g. not the PM, no ministers, only deputy ministers and secretary’s of state) and yet you want to say that these people should not be on the same plane because they are ‘important’? Questions that come to mind are ‘How do you tell who’s important and who isn’t’, ‘is Was Anna Walentynowicz important?’, and ‘Do you really suggest that when a delegation of senators/MPs/what have you go on a trip abroad they all fly in separate planes’? I’ll note that in this case there is no evidence of a terrorist attack or of sabotage - it’s just an accident, that could happen to anyone at any time. Maybe we should just prohibit ‘important people’ from getting on a plane in the first place, how does that sound? ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/polish-president-dead/535621/27 "2010-04-12T20:06:57Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > right, so you understand that the really central figures in the Polish government were not on board (e.g. not the PM, no ministers, only deputy ministers and secretary’s of state) and yet you want to say that these people should not be on the same plane because they are ‘important’? Questions that come to mind are ‘How do you tell who’s important and who isn’t’, ‘is Was Anna Walentynowicz important?’, and ‘Do you really suggest that when a delegation of senators/MPs/what have you go on a trip abroad they all fly in separate planes’? I’ll note that in this case there is no evidence of a terrorist attack or of sabotage - it’s just an accident, that could happen to anyone at any time. Maybe we should just prohibit ‘important people’ from getting on a plane in the first place, how does that sound? There’s so much waffle there, I wouldn’t know where to start, but I’m not going to break it down bit by bit anyway - life’s too short for that. Suffice to say, had I been the organiser of this trip they were taking, I’d have recommended that they didn’t travel together…you know, just in case. And I’d have been able to say now, “Told ya so!” (Although I wouldn’t, because that would be insensitive, but you get my point.) And, I never suggested there had been a terrorist attack - I merely said that such a gathering of luminaries would make it more likely, than less, and if they were using public transportation, they were endangering the lives of ordinary passengers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/polish-president-dead/535621.md?page=1)