The death of the Polish delegation on its way to Katyn is unthinkable and unbelievable. As the shock slowly settles in, people across the world are asking one question: why was the entire Polish elite on board one jet? Regardless of the findings of the undergoing investigation, one already can conclude that so many leaders of Poland's society should not have flown together.

Small private companies and large corporations have rules for their executives to fly, drive, and even take elevators separately. One Russian senior retired military official--when talking to us--recalled the time when leading Soviet generals from Russia's Far East took one plane on their way to meetings in Moscow. The plane crashed, generals died, and the Soviet defense minister was furious that so much of the military leadership of one region took the same plane. How did the entire Poland's military leadership, the governor of the Central Bank, top parliamentarians, ministers, and the president end up on the same jet?

The Polish government owns only four planes. While all the jets are Soviet-made, they are finely tuned, tastefully designed, undergo extraordinary maintenance, and are flown by the best Polish pilots. Poland does not have resources comparable to those of the United States or Russia. One can understand that it may be hard for a small European country to come up with multiple jets for a brief private ceremony. However, officials in charge of the trip should have overstepped their pride and dialed Vladimir Putin, or whoever else in the Russian leadership. Surely the Russian government, defense ministry, or oligarchs would have been more than happy to provide two, three, 10, 20, you name it! number of planes to accommodate the Polish delegation for this historically important ceremony to honor the Polish martyrs of Katyn. We hope everyone around the world, from small companies to big governments learned a lesson from this tragic event.

We mourn with the people of Poland their tremendous loss.