Collision over Lake Constance: how an Ossetian took revenge on a Swiss air traffic controller. Vitaly Kaloyev about the film “Consequences”: Schwarzenegger didn’t ask how I felt Killed the airport dispatcher Kaloyev
“I knocked. Nielsen came out. I first motioned for him to invite me into the house. But he slammed the door. I called again and told him: “Ikh bin Russland” (“I am Russia”). I remember these words from school He said nothing. I took out the photographs that showed the bodies of my children. I wanted him to look at them. But he pushed my hand away and made a sharp gesture for me to get out... Like a dog: Well, I said nothing. You see, I was overcome with resentment. Even my eyes filled with tears. I extended my hand with the photographs to him for the second time and said in Spanish: “Look!” ... Probably,” said Vitaly Kaloev, adding that he does not remember how he left the air traffic controller’s house.
He claims that he came to the air traffic controller’s house in order to force him to apologize for his tragic mistake: “I decided to make him repent. I wanted to show him photographs of my murdered family, and then go with him to Skyguide and call the television to they - Nielsen and Rossier (the head of the company) - apologized to me on camera. This desire of mine was not a secret to anyone."
The Russian says that he repeatedly asked the director of the Swiss company to arrange a meeting with Nielsen, but he refused: “Yes, in 2003 I asked Skyguide to show me Nielsen, and they hid him. And then I received a fax letter. Skyguide asked, so that I would renounce my dead family: receive compensation and sign the papers according to which I agreed so that the company would no longer be persecuted. I called them and said that I would like to meet with Nielsen and discuss these issues. then he refused."
Kaloev admits that he does not regret the death of the dispatcher: “How should I feel sorry for him? You see, it didn’t make me feel any better that he died. My children didn’t return...” While in prison, he is unable to speak Russian, but truly suffers only because he cannot visit the graves of his loved ones.
The murder suspect comes from North Ossetia says that he understands better than anyone else what it is like now for the relatives of the victims of the Beslan tragedy: “No one understands the Beslan residents better than me. I don’t know how they should live.” “I watched it on TV and sent a telegram of condolences to the president of North Ossetia... And I wrote about what bastards the Swiss are, they told me: “Serves you right!” And the doctor here said: “You should feel better. Because there are already a lot of people like you..." says Kaloev.
The Russian said that, like many residents of Beslan, he still sees no point in further life: “For now, my plans are to live to see the trial. But I’m not afraid of it. And I don’t recognize it. That’s what I told them: the Swiss court is for means nothing to me. For me, the judgment of my children is higher. If they could, they would say that I really loved them, that I did not leave them, did not allow them to disappear without a trace."
In Germany, it happened on July 2, 2002 - due to an error by the dispatcher and the crew of a Russian plane, a cargo Boeing 757 and a Tu-154 of Bashkir Airlines collided. There were 69 people on board the latter. All of them, including Kaloev’s wife, son and daughter, died.
Numerous violations of safety rules committed by Skyguide, after two years, nevertheless forced the Swiss. Last summer, after Nielsen’s death, they offered to pay $150 thousand for each victim, but this move only angered the relatives.
Peter Nielsen is the notorious “hero” of one of the most resonant air accidents of the early 2000s, called the “Collision over Lake Constance”. Any disaster is terrible, but in this one the vast majority of those killed were children.
The guilt of the Skyguide dispatcher was proven by the court and the employer’s own internal investigation, but the person involved in the case did not live to see the moment when the management of the Swiss company and the injured party heard each other.
It just so happens that in the story of the July 2002 plane collision in the skies over Germany, more facts biographies of another person involved, whose wife and children were on board the TU-154. All that is known about Peter is that he is Danish.
Career
There is no information about how long Nielsen worked at Swiss Air Navigation Services Ltd, or simply SkyGuide, and whether this was his first or next place of work. The website of the “air navigation services provider” states that an applicant for the position of dispatcher must speak at least two foreign languages, be able to think logically and work in multitasking conditions, cope with psychological stress and maintain team spirit.
Air traffic controller Peter Nielsen apparently possessed these qualities. And during a meeting between Skyguide management and the Russian delegation, which took place on the anniversary of the tragic events, the Swiss side reported that their employee had undergone recertification in a timely manner and received confirmation of his license.
Personal life
Peter had a family; he lived with his wife and three children in the wealthy suburb of Zurich - Kloten. As Danish publications wrote, there were few foreigners in the town, and everyone knew the Nielsens. When Kaloev, in search of their home, turned to local residents for help, they easily pointed to the lawn near the one-story mansion.
Release of the program “Let Them Talk” about the tragedy over Lake ConstanceSubsequently, neither after the death of the dispatcher, nor during the investigation that lasted for more than one year, information about Peter’s family members did not surface. SkyGuide management classified the employee's name immediately after the disaster, but paparazzi photos ended up on television and in Swiss and Danish newspapers.
Plane crash and murder
As the head of the Skyguide company, Alan Rossier, said in an interview with Arguments and Facts, a chain of 10-12 circumstances led to the collision of airliners. On that July day in 2002, Nielsen was the shift supervisor and, in violation of the rules, allowed his partner to rest in another room. In an emergency, it was possible to contact via pager, but it was puzzling how, if the main and backup telephone networks were turned off during repairs.
Plane crash over Lake Constance In addition, due to the notorious repairs, the main radar did not work. And Peter did not know about any of these facts. Then the dispatcher was distracted by a conversation with a delayed airbus coming in to land, and landing the plane was a priority task according to Skyguide instructions.
This was compounded by a sharp increase in flight intensity - as records later showed, there were 15 aircraft in the sky. It is not surprising that when the investigator asked why Nilsen did not call his partner, the answer was: “There was no time for that.” The nearby control center in Karlsruhe saw that disaster was approaching, but could not get through.
When the controller noticed the dangerous approach of the planes, he instructed the Russian TU-154 to begin descending, but at that time he moved to another screen and did not hear the message from the Boeing crew that they were performing a similar maneuver. The pilot also hesitated, as the on-board collision warning system gave a signal to climb.
Peter also relied on TCAS on airplanes, but the ground analogue was again disabled. He repeated the command and warned that another plane was on course, but was wrong in the direction. After 50 seconds, the Bashkir Airlines airliner and the DHL Boeing 757 cargo plane disappeared from the radar screens.
The employer did not leave the employee alone. Peter was sent for psychological rehabilitation, and then transferred to another place. But it didn't help. In February 2004, Nielsen died on the threshold of his own home. The cause of death was 12 stab wounds inflicted by Vitaly Kaloev.
When a message about the murder of a Swiss air traffic controller appeared in the news feeds of Western media, but it was not yet known whose hands it was, almost immediately there were suggestions that this was revenge from the relatives of the victims. This scenario seemed to be a priority only because, as the Russian portal Izvestia wrote:
“...the leaders of the Skyguide company behaved defiantly from the very beginning. They not only did not admit their dispatcher’s guilt, but also put forward an offensive version of supposedly poor knowledge English language Russian pilots."
The man whose guilt was confirmed by the black box recordings continued to work. The publication suggested that if his trial had begun earlier, perhaps Nilsen would have avoided death,
“But the company is more concerned about the issue of reducing compensation to relatives of disaster victims. In exchange for the money, SkyGuide demanded a waiver of any future claims."
In 2007, a court decision was made in which four SkyGuide managers were found guilty of causing death by negligence. But the sentences turned out to be lenient: three received a suspended one-year prison sentence, one got off with a fine of 13,500 Swiss francs. Four more officials were acquitted. Nielsen's error is called the main, but not the only reason for the collision of the airliners.
15 years after the disaster, answering the questions “ Komsomolskaya Pravda"In connection with the release, in which he played the role of Kaloyev, Vitaly said that he had not forgiven Peter and did not regret his action. But even at the court hearing in Zurich, which sentenced him to 8 years in prison, the former architect apologized to the dispatcher’s family:
"Because of my children, I apologize to Nielsen's children. It is very difficult for me to speak, but I speak sincerely."
The SkyGuide website makes only a brief mention of the collision between the two aircraft and says that the tragic nature of the accident and subsequent events has fundamentally changed the perception of aviation safety in Swiss and international aviation. Culture and safety management made big step forward., Samvel Muzhikyan. The premiere in Russia is scheduled for September 27, 2018.
Trailer for the film "Unforgiven"Memory
- 2009 – “Flying in the Night – Disaster at Überlingen” (a joint German-Swiss film)
- 2017 – “Aftermath” (director Elliott Lester, producer Darren Aronofsky)
- 2018 – “Unforgiven” (director)
- Monument to the victims of the disaster at the Zurich Air Navigation Center, Wangen area, Dübendorf
In 2002, Vitaly Kaloev lost his family in a plane crash over Lake Constance. Due to an error by an employee of the air traffic control company Skyguide, 71 people died, including Kaloyev’s wife and two children. 478 days later he killed air traffic controller Peter Nielsen and spent the next four years in a Swiss prison. 13 years later, a film was made about those events in the United States with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the title role. This is a drama about a man whose life was destroyed overnight. The prototype of Schwarzenegger’s hero rarely communicates with journalists, but Vitaly Kaloev found time to meet with a Lenta.ru correspondent and talk about his fate.
Now he will have more free time. He recently celebrated his sixtieth birthday and retired. For eight years he worked as Deputy Minister of Construction of North Ossetia. He was appointed to this post shortly after his early release from a Swiss prison.
“Vitaly Konstantinovich Kaloev, whose fate is known on all continents of the globe, was awarded the medal “For the Glory of Ossetia,”- reports the website of the Ministry of Construction and Architecture of the Republic. - On the day of his 60th birthday, he received this highest award from the hands of the Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Boris Borisovich Dzhanaev.”
News from Hollywood and Vladikavkaz came in the second half of January with a difference of less than two weeks. “The film is based on real events: the plane crash in July 2002 and what happened 478 days later,”- indicates the profile site imdb.com. Vitaly’s wife Svetlana and their children, eleven-year-old Konstantin and four-year-old Diana, died in the plane crash. They all flew to the head of the family in Spain, where Kaloev designed houses. And on February 22, 2004, his attempt to talk to Peter Nielsen, an employee of the air traffic control company Skyguide, ended in the murder of the dispatcher on the threshold of his own home in the Swiss town of Kloten: twelve blows with a pocket knife.
Computer reconstruction of the collision. Image: Wikipedia “I knocked. Nielsen came out— Kaloev told Komsomolskaya Pravda reporters in March 2005. — I first motioned for him to invite me into the house. But he slammed the door. I called again and told him: Ich bin Russland. I remember these words from school. He said nothing. I took out photographs that showed the bodies of my children. I wanted him to look at them. But he pushed my hand away and sharply gestured for me to get out... Like a dog: get out. Well, I said nothing, I was offended. Even my eyes filled with tears. I extended my hand with the photographs to him a second time and said in Spanish: “Look!” He slapped my hand and the photographs flew off. And it started from there.”
Later, Skyguide’s guilt in the plane crash was recognized by the court, and several of Nielsen’s colleagues received suspended sentences. Kaloyev was sentenced to eight years, but was released early in November 2008.
In Vladikavkaz, Deputy Minister Kaloev led federal and international projects: the TV tower on Lysaya Gora is beautiful, with a rotating cable car observation deck and a restaurant - and the Caucasian Musical and Cultural Center named after Valery Gergiev, designed in the workshop of Norman Foster. Both objects have passed all the formalities - all that remains is to wait for financing. The tower is apparently more needed: the current television tower in North Ossetia is about half a century old, and is in good condition. But the center is more unusual: several halls, an amphitheater, a school for gifted children. “A very technically complex project - linear calculations, nonlinear calculations, each element separately and the entire structure as a whole,”— the retired deputy minister evaluates the creativity of Foster’s colleagues.
Vitaly Kaloev speaks more modestly and harshly about personal achievements: “I think that I lived my life in vain: I couldn’t save my family. What depended on me is the second question.” Vitaly avoids detailed judgments about what does not depend on him. The film "478" is no exception. Kaloev, in principle, appreciates Arnold Schwarzenegger for his roles as “big, good men.” At the same time, the prototype is confident: Schwarzenegger (Victor in the film) will play what is written in the script, from which Vitaly does not expect anything good. “If it were at the everyday level, that would be one question. But here is Hollywood, politics, ideology, relations with Russia.”, he says.
The main thing Vitaly asks is that there is no need to show that he fled somewhere, like in a European film based on the same plot. “He came openly, he left openly, he didn’t hide from anyone. Everything is in the case materials, everything is reflected.”
The authors of the Hollywood film assure that in the role of Vitaly, Schwarzenegger will reveal himself in a new way - not as “the last action hero,” but as a purely dramatic artist. Actually, if you follow real events, it won’t work out any other way. “At ten in the morning I was at the scene of the tragedy,- Kaloev testifies. — I saw all these bodies - I froze in tetanus and could not move. A village near Uberlingen, the school had its headquarters there. And nearby, at an intersection, as it turned out later, my son fell. I still can’t forgive myself for driving nearby and not feeling anything, not recognizing him.”
To the question “maybe you need to forgive yourself more?” there is no direct answer. There is a reflection on what brought Vitaly Kaloev fame “on all continents of the globe”: “If a person has done something for the sake of his loved ones and relatives, he cannot regret it later. And you can’t feel sorry for yourself. If you feel sorry for yourself for half a second, you will go down, you will sink. Especially when you are sitting: there is nowhere to rush, there is no communication, all sorts of thoughts creep into your head - this, and this, and this. God forbid you feel sorry for yourself.” About Peter Nielsen’s family, where there are three children left, Vitaly said eight years ago: “His children are growing up healthy and cheerful, his wife is happy with her children, his parents are happy with their grandchildren. Who should I be happy about?”
It seems that most of all Kaloev pities the German volunteers and police from the summer of 2002: “My instincts became sharper to the point that I began to understand what the Germans were talking about among themselves, without knowing the language. I wanted to participate in the search work - they tried to send me away, but it didn’t work. They gave us an area further away where there were no bodies. I found some things, plane wreckage. I understood then, and I understand now, that they were right. They really couldn’t gather the required number of policemen in time - who was there, they took away half of them: some fainted, some did something else.”
The Germans, according to Vitaly, “In general, they are very sincere people, simple.” “I hinted that I would like to erect a monument in the place where my girl fell, - instantly one German woman began to help and began collecting funds,”- says Kaloev. And then he returns to the days of searching: “I put my hands on the ground - I tried to understand where the soul remained: in this place, in the ground - or flew away to where. I moved my hands and saw some roughness. He began to take out the glass beads that were on her neck. I started collecting it and then showed it to people. Later, one architect made a common monument there - with a torn string of beads.”
Vitaly Kaloev is trying to remember everyone who helped him. It turns out not quite: “A lot of guys from everywhere gave money, for example, to my older brother Yuri, so that he could come to Switzerland one more time and visit me.”. For two years, every month they sent “a hundred local money in an envelope to buy cigarettes” to Kaloyev’s cell; on the envelope is the letter W, the secret of which the grateful recipient still wants to know. Special thanks - naturally, to Taimuraz Mamsurov, the head of North Ossetia at that time: “I appointed him to the ministry here, helped there. To not be afraid to come, as it was believed, to a criminal, a murderer, for trial in Zurich, to support him, was worth a lot for a leader of such rank.” Special thanks to Aman Tuleyev, governor of the Kemerovo region: “Three or four times he simply gave money, part of his salary. And in Moscow he also gave me so that I could dress up a little.”
And the letters, Kaloev recalls, came from everywhere - from Russia, Europe, Canada and Australia. “Even from Switzerland itself I received two letters: the authors apologized very much to me for what happened. When they told me that I could take 15 kilograms with me. I went through the letters, removed the envelopes - there was still more than twenty kilos of mail alone. They looked and said: “Okay, take both the mail and your things.”
The crash site of the Tu-154M plane. Photo: Reuters “The Swiss deported Kaloev quietly and unnoticed. The Russian side should have acted in the same way. Instead, it’s an ugly anti-legal show,”— retired police major general appreciated the ceremonial meeting of the Swiss prisoner in Domodedovo Vladimir Ovchinsky, currently advisor to the Russian Minister of Internal Affairs. Opponents of the glorification of Kaloyev especially protested the statement of the Nashi movement: “Kaloev turned out to be... A man with a capital letter. And he found himself punished and humiliated for the whole country... If there were at least a little more people like Kaloev, the attitude towards Russia would be completely different. All over the world."
“I arrived, I didn’t expect that I would be greeted so warmly in Moscow. Maybe it was unnecessary, but in any case it’s nice,”- says Vitaly Kaloev eight years later.
“You can’t teach how to live after this.”, he assures when it comes to the relatives of those killed in the plane crash over Sinai. — The pain may have dulled a little, but it does not go away. You can force yourself into work, you have to work - at work a person is distracted: you work, you solve people’s problems... But there is no recipe. I still haven't recovered. But there is no need to give up. If you need to cry, cry, but it’s better alone: no one saw me with tears, I didn’t show them anywhere. Maybe, perhaps, on the very first day. We must live with the destiny that is destined for us. Live and help people."
Naturally, meetings with Deputy Minister Kaloyev on personal matters practically did not stop for eight years: national tradition plus the status of a famous fellow countryman. “Ask for money for medicine, building materials for repairs, for someone to arrange a high-tech operation,— Vitaly lists. — I know both my colleague ministers and their deputies—you turn to them. It didn't always work out, but something did work out. Forty to fifty percent.” The schools that received the least refusals were those from which they came for new windows or major repairs. Or even a lecture from the Deputy Minister - “for high school students, about what principles should be in a person’s life.”
A separate line includes calls to Kaloyev from the colonies. “I don’t know how they found out my phone number. “Can you send me some cigarettes?” - of course I will. There was a man named Kuznetsov, he knocked down an Uzbek with one blow in St. Petersburg when he began to pester his son. They organized a teleconference, I came out in support of him.”
Now most of all Vitaly wants to be left alone: “I want to live as a private person - that’s it, I don’t even go to work.”. First, the heart: bypass surgery. Secondly, Vitaly got married last year, thirteen years after the tragedy. The only thing he would like “from the public” is to come to Moscow on Victory Day, to join the “Immortal Regiment” with a portrait of his father: Konstantin Kaloev, artilleryman.
“I was provoked a lot on the topic of how, for example, Bashkiria, where most of those killed on that plane are from, differs from Ossetia, Ossetia from central Russia,” says Vitaly. - They meant, of course, to lead to conversations about blood feud and similar things. I always answered this way: it is absolutely no different, because we are all Russians. A person who loves his family, his children, will do anything for them. There are many people like me in Russia. If I had not gone and walked this path to the end - I just wanted to talk to him, accept an apology - then after death I would not have had a place next to my family. I wouldn't want to be buried next to them. I wouldn't be worthy of it. And for them, we are all Russian anyway. Incomprehensible, scary Russians.”
A recent survey from UBS Bank shows that people continue to be distrustful of automated management systems. In particular, we are talking about airplanes: 54% of respondents said that they would not like to be on an airliner that is capable of completely completing a flight without the participation of a pilot. At the same time, statistics clearly indicate that it is not electronics that need to be feared, but people: Boeing conducted a study and found that the cause of 80% of plane crashes is the human factor. Particularly noteworthy are collisions in the air: as a rule, responsibility for these disasters falls on people, and not on equipment. Onliner.by recalled the most famous and major aircraft collisions.
In 2001, a disaster almost occurred that could easily have broken the grim record of a crash in Tenerife: a Boeing 747 and a DC-10 miraculously missed each other in the skies over Japan. They carried a total of 677 people. Commands from air traffic controllers and the TCAS collision avoidance system were inconsistent. People were very lucky: one of the pilots noticed a plane flying towards him and literally at the last second managed to dive under the DC-10. Due to the sudden maneuver of the Boeing 747, passengers were injured, but everyone survived. After a year and a half, it will become clear that no one has drawn any conclusions from the incident: the system, which is designed to provide additional safety, will become an indirect culprit of the disaster.
Error in priority
On July 1, 2002, the Tu-154 took off from Moscow to sunny Barcelona with 69 people on board, 52 of whom were children who received vacation vouchers as a reward for academic success. Around the same time, a Boeing 757 cargo plane with two pilots refueled in Bergamo and departed for Brussels, leaving German controller Peter Nielsen alone (his colleague had gone on a break). Nielsen had to keep track of a large number of airliners, running between terminals. In addition, not all equipment worked.
The trajectories of the Boeing 757 and Tu-154 intersected almost at right angles. Both liners were at an altitude of about ten and a half kilometers. The controller noticed the dangerous approach of the planes late, but at that moment the situation could still be easily corrected. Nielsen gave the command to the Tu-154 to descend, and the crew immediately began to carry it out. Almost immediately after this, the TCAS system signal was issued. She considered that the Tu-154 needed to gain altitude, and the Boeing 757 needed to descend. The problem is that Nielsen gave Russian plane the opposite team, and the pilots became confused. For some reason, the pilots did not inform the dispatcher about this discrepancy.
The crew's opinions were divided: the co-pilot was sure that the TCAS instructions needed to be followed, but the commander accepted the controller's command and continued the descent. At the same time, the Boeing crew listened to TCAS, which recommended that the cargo plane descend. The crew of the Boeing 757 reported to the dispatcher about the descent, but this did not help: Nielsen was distracted by negotiations with another aircraft. A minute after the first TCAS signal, the Boeing 757's tail crashes into the side of the Tu-154, cutting the airliner in half. No one survived the disaster; 71 people died.
Among the reasons for the crash of the Boeing 757 and Tu-154 were the actions of the crew of the Russian airliner contrary to TCAS recommendations and errors in the work of the dispatcher. Two years after the incident, another victim of these events appeared - Peter Nielsen. He was killed by a man who lost his wife and two children in the disaster. In 2008, he was released from prison early for exemplary behavior. The TCAS system has been improved - now, if one aircraft ignores the recommendations, the advice for the second aircraft can be changed to avoid a collision.
Trainee air traffic controller crashes two planes
Perhaps the collision of two Tu-134s would have been hushed up, as often happened in the USSR, but one circumstance caused the crash to be given special publicity: 17 members of the Pakhtakor football club died in it. The Uzbek team flew to Minsk, where they were supposed to play with our Dynamo. One Tu-134 belonged to Aeroflot and belonged to the Belarusian Directorate civil aviation(BUGA). The second similar airliner flew to Chisinau.
Air traffic controllers from Kharkov monitored the airspace near Dneprodzerzhinsk. A young trainee was put in charge of the busy sector, and instead of the shift supervisor, as required by the rules, he was assisted by another dispatcher. The Belarusian plane had just taken off from Donetsk and was gaining altitude. The Moldavian Tu-134 was moving at an altitude of 8400 meters, the crew several times requested permission to climb to 9600 meters, but the trainee always refused due to a possible approach to another aircraft.
The dispatcher, addressing the Belarusian plane, said: The following phrase came in response: “Got it, 8400.” For some reason this did not arouse suspicion at the mission control center.
The Tu-134 flying to Minsk reached an altitude of 7200 meters and received the command to climb to 8400. The crew reported that the Dnepropetrovsk radio beacon had just passed, but in fact it was already 13 kilometers away. The dispatcher set incorrect marks on the plane's passage of checkpoints. Now two Tu-134s were flying at the same altitude, and their paths were supposed to intersect. But the Belarusian airliner was not allowed to fly higher: the Il-62 was flying at flight level 9000.
The dispatcher assigned to the trainee noticed the problem and immediately ordered the Il-62 to rise to 9,600 meters, and the Belarusian Tu-134 to occupy an altitude of 9,000 meters. The crew of the Il-62 was positioned at the required altitude, but a problem arose with the Tu-134: another plane burst into the air. The dispatcher, addressing the Belarusian plane, said: “735th, and you will take 9th. Over Dneprodzerzhinsk 8400 intersecting.” The following phrase came in response: “Got it, 8400.” For some reason this did not arouse suspicion at the mission control center.
Due to the fact that the author of the last phrase did not provide his call sign, the commission investigating the causes of the crash doubted which side the remark actually came from: from the Il-62 or Tu-134. According to the official conclusion, the phrase was uttered from the Il-62, and the Belarusian plane allegedly did not react in any way to the dispatcher’s command. However, this conclusion seems strange for a number of reasons. Firstly, a couple of seconds before “Got it, 8400” the IL-62 crew confirmed the ascent to flight level 9600 and actually took it. Secondly, you can hear that the lines “9600, 676th” (with IL-62) and “Got it, 8400” are said in different voices. Thus, there is a high probability that the phrase was uttered from the Tu-134. The crew could only hear the beginning and end of the controller's message, thinking they were being told to stay at flight level.
Be that as it may, the Tu-134 continued its flight at an altitude of 8400 meters and cut the cockpit of the Moldovan twin with its right wing. The plane flying to Minsk suffered less from the impact, but the damage was still too serious. No one survived the disaster; 178 people were killed. The trainee and the dispatcher, who was assigned to help the newcomer, were found guilty. They received prison sentences. According to some reports, the trainee subsequently committed suicide, but there is no reliable confirmation of this.
Lost in translation
The largest air collision in terms of casualties occurred in India. There were 39 people on board the Kazakh Airlines Il-76, while the Boeing 747 carried 289 passengers and 23 crew members. Boeing took off from International airport named after Indira Gandhi and gained altitude, while the Il-76 descended. Takeoff and landing at the airport were carried out along one air corridor. Both sides were monitored by one dispatcher, who separated the planes into different echelons. There should have been 300 meters between them. However, the Il-76 did not remain at its altitude, but continued to descend directly towards the Boeing 747. At the time of the collision, it was even lower than the Saudi Arabian Airlines airliner. All 349 people on both planes were killed.
Usually, when planes collide, the first suspicion falls on the controller. But the commission quickly established that he was not to blame: the dispatcher did not create dangerous situations and sent the planes along routes that were safe for them. Most of the questions arose regarding the actions of the Il-76 crew members, who were found guilty of the disaster. According to official conclusions, the causes of the incident were poor knowledge of English by the Il-76 crew and, as a result, incorrect interpretation of the dispatcher’s commands, as well as low professional skills. It is assumed that the altitude at which the Boeing 747 was flying, named by the dispatcher, was accepted by the Kazakh plane as the flight level they needed.
Often mid-air collisions are fatal for both parties involved in the incident. But in 2006, a rare case was recorded. A small Embraer Legacy 600 crashed into a Boeing 737 carrying 154 people. The planes collided at the tips of their wings in the sky over Brazil. The damage to the Boeing was more serious - it began to rotate and crashed to the ground, no one survived. It is noted that the Embraer's transmitter was turned off, and the TCAS system did not report a dangerous approach to Boeing. The Embraer managed to make an emergency landing, with all seven people uninjured. This example of the Legacy 600 has been restored and is still in use today.
Collision of two planes
Pilot and air traffic controller error
Near the city of Uberlingen,
47.778333 , 9.173889
Computer modulation of disaster
Collision over Lake Constance- an aviation accident that occurred on July 1, 2002, when a Tu-154M aircraft was performing Bashkir Airlines flight 2937, collided in mid-air with a Boeing 757, flight DHL 611. The collision took place near the city of Überlingen, near Lake Constance (). The disaster claimed the lives of everyone on board both planes (71 people, including 52 children).
Previous Events
Tu-154M of Bashkir Airlines, tail number RA-85816, followed the route Moscow - Barcelona. On board there were 12 crew members and 57 passengers, including 52 children, who were flying to Spain on vacation. This trip was organized by the UNESCO Committee of Bashkiria as an incentive for good studies.
The day before, this group missed their flight. Bashkir Airlines, at the request of travel companies involved in the trip, urgently organized an additional flight. Other late passengers were also offered to board; a total of 8 tickets were sold for the flight.
Skyguide management for several years tolerated the fact that at night only one controller controlled air traffic while his partner was resting, and did not provide enough staff to change this practice. In addition, on the night of the collision, the equipment that alerts the controller to the danger of approaching aircraft was turned off for maintenance. Telephones were also switched off. Because of this, Nielsen, at a critical moment, was unable to negotiate with Friedrichshafen Airport to attend to a delayed arriving plane, which he was monitoring at another terminal. For the same reason, dispatchers in Karlsruhe, who saw the planes dangerously approaching each other, were unable to warn Nielsen about this.
The Commission also noted that ICAO documents regulating the use of TCAS and, as a result, the documents that guided the Tu-154 crew, were incomplete and partially contradictory. Although, on the one hand, they contained a direct prohibition of performing maneuvers that contradict TCAS prompts, on the other hand, this system was called auxiliary, which could create the impression that the controller's instructions take precedence.
Prior to this crash, there had been several near misses due to the crew of one aircraft following TCAS guidance while the crew of another was maneuvering against it. However, the necessary clarifications were published only after the disaster.
Murder of the dispatcher
Monument to the victims of the plane crash and Peter Nielsen at the Skyguide office
The air traffic controller who controlled the colliding planes was killed on the threshold of his home on February 24, 2004. Vitaly Kaloev, who lost his wife and two children in the disaster, was arrested on suspicion of murder. Kaloev stated that he showed Nilsen photographs of the children and wanted Nilsen to apologize to him for what happened. Nielsen hit Kaloev’s hand, knocking out the photographs. According to Vitaly Kaloev, he does not remember what happened after that. On October 26, 2005, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to eight years in prison.
Skyguide trial
In May 2006, a trial began on charges against eight company employees. The final decision was made in September 2007. Four Skyguide managers were found guilty of manslaughter. Three of them were sentenced to suspended imprisonment, one to a fine. Four other accused were acquitted.
Memory of the dead
Monument "Die zerrissene Perlenkette"
At the site of the plane crash near the city of Überlingen, a monument “Die zerrissene Perlenkette” (“The Broken String of Pearls”) was erected.
