8th October 2004
Friday, July 30th, 2010
Prime Minister's plane on route to Vietnam catches fire
Prime Minister Marek Belka escaped a potential disaster when he was forced to evacuate his official plane as it caught fire just seconds before it was to take off.
Belka was flying in one of the Polish government's decrepit aircraft to Vietnam for the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM). The Tu-154 Soviet-built plane landed in China to refuel. Just before it was to take off again, one of the plane's three engines caught fire. Despite rapid help from Chinese authorities in securing a charter plane, Belka arrived late at the summit. Back in November, Prime Minister Leszek Miller's helicopter crashed, but thanks to the pilot's remarkable skill, nobody was killed or suffered life-threatening injuries. In an incredible twist of irony, Małgorzata Kozłowska from the Government Information Center (CIR), who suffered the worst injuries in that crash, was on the plane with Belka, her first flight since the fatal journey with Miller. "I will never set foot in a government plane again," she said with tears in her eyes. Belka was also visibly shaken by the incident, although later he joked that journalists should think twice before getting on a government plane. Perhaps his mood was helped by the impromptu reception thrown by authorities of the city of Kunming, where he was temporarily stranded. (Rzeczpospolita, p. A1) T.J.
From Warsaw Business Journal
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