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In memory of President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and all the victims.

I think it's a nice gesture. Most people in Poland are still in shock after what happened.

Related to this very, very sad accident it's odd how they put so many officials to the same airplane:

http://blogs.wsj.com/new-europe/2010/04/10/poland-nicknamed-government-airplanes-flying-coffins/

Juha Perhaps it's due to how expansive a flight is.
There are hard debates in France about that: when president Sarkozy is traveling arround the world it requires 4 planes: one for him and its advisors, one empty in case of the first one has a problem, one for all businessmen going with the president, and one for journalists....

The cost of maintaining a parlamentary/ state/ ceremonial(?) air fleet may have been a factor, but the sequence of bad logistical decisions taken at the highest levels of Polish government that made such a calamity at all possible defy classification. I recall that 2 years ago practically half the Polish Air Force's top command was wiped out in a crash of a military transport plane piloted by a rookie pilot[*].

Yet this recent forceful reminder of the essential frailty and impermanence of human life has gone unheeded among, supposedly, the Polish elites. Nobody seems to have drawn the conclusion NEVER AGAIN TO PUT ALL OF ONE'S TOP TALENT AND/OR EGGHEADS INTO A SINGLE, THUS VULNERABLE BASKET (so to speak). Instead, the flocking instinct has taken over; I saw a report that the day before all journalists originally slotted for the presidental plane were bumped off it in favour of more of the Presidential party. Thus the reporters, who arrived at the same airport an hour before the crash, and promptly left for the commemorative ceremonies in Katyn woods some 20-odd km away, all survived, while the official Polish state delegation perished. What's most remarkable about the assembly is the apparent inability by those entrusted with the defense of the realm to see beyond the immediate gain of basking in dubious "presidential glow". The entire General Staff AND the head of the civilian overseeing board of national security were aboard, and that in theory should make invasion of Poland this very week a piece of cake.

It is far too early for in-depth analysis of the accident, but, on the strength of what I've read thus far, I can not shake away a suspicion of pride and arrogance of the decision makers playing the crucial rôle. Simply put, if, by attaining a high position in a society, one considers oneself already immortal, then one simply MUST BE immune to pedestrian risks such as these.

[^*] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirosławiec_air_accident – an accident that's fully comparable with that in which the UK lost 4 Air Force crew and 25 top counter-terrorism experts ferried together back from a conference "for security reasons" in a single helicopter – which happened to "hook up" with a coastal mountain ridge hidden in fog back in 1994.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/1800727.stm

Dear Polish Brothers!

We are so sorry your president Lech Kaczynski of his dead!

Doesn't to remember...

Gabriel Horvath and your family from Hungary