Tragedy over Bodensky. Collision over Lake Constance: chronicle of the tragedy
Ten years ago, a plane crash occurred in the skies over Germany, as a result of which 52 children and 19 adults died - passengers and crew of a Tu-154 and a Boeing 757 cargo plane that collided as a result of an error by Swiss air traffic controllers.
On the night of July 1–2, 2002, in Germany, in the area of Lake Constance, a Russian passenger airliner Tu‑154 of the Bashkir Airlines company, performing a charter flight from Moscow to Barcelona (Spain), and a Boeing‑757 cargo plane of the international air transportation company DHL, flying from Bergamo (Italy) to Brussels (Belgium). On board the Tu-154 there were 12 crew members and 57 passengers - 52 children and five adults. Most of the children were sent on vacation to Spain as a reward for excellent studies by the UNESCO Committee of Bashkiria. By a tragic accident, Svetlana Kaloyeva was on the plane with 10-year-old Kostya and 4-year-old Diana, who was flying to her husband, Vitaly Kaloyev, in Spain, where he worked under a contract. The Boeing cargo plane was flown by two pilots.
As a result of the collision, the Tu-154 fell apart in the air into several parts that fell in the vicinity of the German city of Uberlingen.
As a result of the plane crash, 52 children and 19 adults were killed.
The tragedy occurred a few minutes after German air traffic controllers handed over the escort of the Russian aircraft to their Swiss colleagues from the SkyGuide air control center operating at one of the largest European airports, Zurich-Kloten (Switzerland).
That night, at the Skyguide air traffic control center, there was one controller on duty instead of the required two - Peter Nielsen. He gave the Tu-154 crew a command to descend when the approaching aircraft could no longer occupy safe levels.
The main equipment for telephone communication and automatic notification of center personnel about the dangerous approach of aircraft was turned off. The main and backup telephone lines did not work. A dispatcher from the German city of Karlsruhe, who noticed the dangerous approach of the planes, tried to call 11 times - and was unsuccessful.
After the plane crash, Nielsen was suspended from work, and Swiss investigative authorities conducted a criminal investigation into the Skyguide company and its management.
On February 24, 2004, Peter Nielsen in the Zurich suburb of Kloten by Russian citizen Vitaly Kaloev, who lost his entire family - his wife, daughter and son - in a plane crash over Lake Constance. On this day, Kaloev came to the dispatcher’s house to show him photographs of his dead wife and children, but Nilsen pushed him away, and the photographs fell to the ground, which led to the grief-stricken man losing control of himself.
In October 2005, Kaloev was found guilty of murder and. In November 2007, he was released early and returned to his homeland, North Ossetia. In 2008, Vitaly Kaloev construction and architecture of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania.
Immediately after the disaster, the Swiss company Skyguide placed all the blame on the Russian pilots, who, in its opinion, did not understand the air traffic controller's instructions in English well.
In May 2004, the German Federal Office for Aircraft Accident Investigation published a conclusion following its investigation into the crash.
Experts admitted that the collision of a passenger airliner Tu-154 of Bashkir Airlines with a cargo Boeing from Skyguide.
The control center in Zurich did not notice in time the danger of two aircraft converging on the same flight level. The crew of the Russian Tu-154 followed the dispatcher's command to descend, despite the fact that the on-board TICAS flight safety system required an urgent climb to altitude.
Only after the publication of the report did the Skyguide company admit its mistakes and, two years after the disaster, its director Alain Rossier apologized to the families of the victims. On May 19, 2004, Swiss President Joseph Deiss sent an official letter of apology to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the plane crash over Lake Constance.
In December 2006, Skyguide director Alain Rossier.
In September 2007, the district court of the Swiss city of Bülach found four employees of the Skyguide air traffic control service guilty of criminal negligence leading to a plane crash over Lake Constance. In total, eight employees of the Swiss company appeared in court. The accused, shifting it to the murdered dispatcher Peter Nielsen.
Four Skyguide managers accused of manslaughter. Three of them were sentenced to suspended imprisonment, one to a fine. Four other defendants were acquitted.
The Skyguide company offered the families of the victims of the disaster some compensation, provided that their claim was not considered in one of the US courts. Some families did not agree with this proposal, and at a meeting of the committee of parents of dead children in June 2004 in Ufa, in which 29 people took part, there was legal action, including the payment of compensation.
On July 1, 2004, it became known that claims were filed in the courts of the United States and Spain against the Swiss air traffic control service Skyguide, who lost relatives in a plane crash over Lake Constance.
In February 2010, the Federal Administrative Court of Switzerland opened a memorial complex dedicated to the victims of the disaster to the relatives of the victims of the plane crash.
In 2004, at the scene of the tragedy in the German city of Uberlingen, in a plane crash, it was a torn necklace, the pearls of which scattered along the trajectory of the wreckage of two planes.
In 2006, in Zurich, in front of the Skyguide building, there was a spiral with 72 candles in memory of the 71 victims of the plane crash and the killed air traffic controller.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources
MK found out how the fates of relatives of the victims of the terrible plane crash turned out
They were only 1.6 seconds short of missing the American Boeing in the sky. This is less than it takes to say “one-two-three”...
Their parents have been living without them for 10 years.
Children of Bashkir Airlines Flight 2937, which completed its last flight over Lake Constance on the night of July 1-2, 2002.
That summer there was terrible heat over Ufa. Funeral buses walked in even rows across the city; neatly glued to each windshield were pieces of paper with the names - Savchuk Veronica, Savchuk Irina, Savchuk Vladislav. Grigorieva Zhanna. Biglov Bulat. Nelyubina Elena...
71 surnames. Most of the dead were talented schoolchildren, the pride of the republic and their parents, who went on vacation to Barcelona through UNESCO Bashkiria.
“...I live as if I were flying” - Dasha Kozlova wrote in her poem on April 8, 2002, three months before the tragic flight. Now these lines are a memorial epitaph on her monument.
All the i's have been dotted a long time ago. Life and death as final destinations. The chain of accidents that led to one of the most famous and sad plane crashes of the early 21st century has been studied.
Died - was killed by Vitaly Kaloev, who lost his entire family in the sky over Lake Constance - the same ill-fated Swiss controller of the Skyguide airline, Peter Nielsen, who, out of fatigue or absent-mindedness, confused right and left, and became the unwitting cause of a collision in the air of two airliners: our Tu-154M of Bashkir Airlines, tail number RA-85816, flying on the Moscow-Barcelona course, and the Boeing 757 flying to Brussels...
“I only remember that I woke up when the lights suddenly turned on in the middle of the night, and the room was filled with strangers,” says 14-year-old Katya Kuleshova, daughter of the deceased flight attendant Tatyana Kuleshova, today. - Grandma felt bad. It smelled like medicine. Grandfather took me in his arms - I was only four years old then - I asked him: “Where is mom?” He replied: “Mom is at work. But she will come very soon." He said it somehow SO that I immediately understood: my mother is no more...
The plane is out of schedule
I fell from the month, from its sharp edge.
I flew for a long time
And flew to heaven...
Zoya Fedotova, 14 years old, passenger on flight 2937
They shouldn't have been in the sky that night at all. Ufa schoolchildren who, due to the fault of adults, missed their plane to Barcelona the day before.
The accompanying people brought the group to Sheremetyevo instead of Domodedovo. The mistake turned out to be fatal. The first plane took off without them.
If these children were ordinary, ordinary children, they would have been upset and returned home, but to their misfortune, almost all of them turned out to be from high-ranking families. The head of the presidential administration of Bashkortostan, Ildar Gimaev, the youngest official in the Bashkir White House, sent his 15-year-old daughter Leysan to Spain. (Later, it was he who would head the government commission that investigated the circumstances of the tragedy, in 2003 he would write a voluntary resignation, and in 2008, six years after the tragedy, he would die after surgery to remove a lung.)
Evil tongues were whispering in the city: the vouchers were intended for orphanages with many children, but the flights were entirely “golden” girls and boys.
However, the guys were truly a perfect match: young poets, artists, athletes and even one beauty queen...
Good children from good families. They were just late for their plane.
And calls began to Ufa with a request to influence the situation, urgently equip a charter and send it to Moscow...
Of course, for ordinary teenagers, it’s unlikely that anyone would go to such lengths, but in this case...
— They hastily called for a reserve. This was the flown crew of Alexander Gross. They just got back from vacation the day before, and they were offered to take the children,” recalls Yuri Evstratov, at that time an employee of Bashkir Airlines. — Gross himself flew on this route to Barcelona 5 times, but as a co-pilot. For this reason, inspector Oleg Grigoriev went with the crew, who, according to instructions, was supposed to help the ship’s commander along the entire route.
Alexander Gross was “pulled out” on an unscheduled flight from the garden.
The very first pilot, Gross, was pulled out of the garden on an unscheduled flight: yesterday’s vacationer was watering tomatoes. The co-pilot, Murat Itkalov, Murik, as everyone called him, promised his wife goodbye: “I’ll quickly leave and go fishing!”
We worked out the route according to the scheme on the simulator in advance. We flew to Moscow and took the children, who by that time were perfectly accommodated in the hostel and no longer even seemed very worried about what had happened.
But there were still empty seats on the charter. And then it was decided to put extra tickets on sale.
An invisible spiral of accidents, probabilities, tragic coincidences began to spin...
Seven additional tickets were sold.
“The Belarusian Shislovsky family was supposed to fly to Spain from Moscow together with a tour group; from Belarus they were traveling on the Prague-Moscow train, and on the way a UAZ crashed into their train,” they tell me. — As a result, they were also late in Moscow in obtaining a visa - the group flew away without them... And then, unfortunately, charter 2937 turned up.
Svetlana Kaloeva with her children Kostya and Diana went to Spain to visit her husband Vitaly, who worked as a builder. In the initial list of passengers, published immediately after the disaster, there are not even names next to these seven people, only initials - seven random people.
"Bread" piece of heaven
“That night, daughter, time stopped forever in our house,” 83-year-old Gennady Kharlov, the father of navigator Sergei Kharlov, takes out scattered parts of his dead son’s watch from a plastic bag: the dial, the strap and, almost untouched, only slightly crumpled, an international passport . “The plane didn’t explode in the air, so all his papers survived, there was no fire.”
Gennady Semenovich Kharlov knows what he is talking about. He himself gave 37 years to our aviation. Party organizer, squadron commander, with the Order of Lenin on his chest - for long service and, probably, special merits that he does not want to talk about.
His wife, Sergei’s mother, has not gotten out of bed for many years after the disaster - she is right there, in the next room, we hear her faint breathing.
- What to talk about? “Everything has long been finished and forgotten,” as the Kharlovs’ youngest son snaps.
If only the old man didn't cry. He is so old, hunched over, and shaking all over.
We turn the conversation to what is closer and dearer, more understandable to him, a former pilot.
About the Soviet “carcasses”, on which he started very young, having transferred from the military “Mi-2”.
And about how happy he was when his first-born, Seryozhka, also entered flight school...
The son’s 13 thousand flight hours are against his father’s 12,500.
Children should always be better than their parents.
And don't be the first to leave. Do not leave fathers alone on this earth.
“I’ll show you something that I haven’t shown to anyone yet,” the old man takes out sheets of paper on which his poems are written. “It’s more like the prose of life in rhyme, so I started composing it in my old age,” he tries to joke.
“We were very afraid that, as often happens, the human factor, that is, the crew, would be found guilty,” Kharlov says with difficulty. - They said that the pilots did not speak English sufficiently, although this was clearly not true, or something else... Of course, the guilt and inattention of the Swiss were quickly figured out, but will this bring back human lives?..
Only a dispatcher can bring two planes together to one point.
A tired Swiss in distant Zurich replaced a colleague who had gone on a break, working at two terminals at once. Despite the fact that both planes that collided were flying over German territory, they were flown by the Swiss company Skyguide. This problem between Switzerland and Germany has existed for a long time: a lack of personnel, congestion on the highway and only one dispatcher on the night shift - but who will give their “bread” piece of heaven to the other country?
There were many dangerous approaches in the skies of Europe that night. A lot of work. Attention is distracted. And I really want to sleep...
A colleague from Munich called Peter Nilsson and tried to warn him of the danger: two planes were too close to each other, but the telephone line was always busy, busy, busy...
On earth everything is decided by the clock.
In the air, time is measured in minutes, seconds and even fractions of a second. 1.6... Less than a blink.
The Germans were investigating the collision. The report identified Skyguide as the main culprit. She denied it to the last and refused to pay compensation to the Russians. In May 2006, the trial began. Three company managers were sentenced to suspended prison sentences, one was fined, and four more were acquitted.
2 million 600 thousand euros were received by the relatives of the victims. Opinions were divided.
Some parents were ready to accept the losses and receive compensation on the proposed terms, while others demanded a new investigation.
Bashkir Airlines never recovered from the blow. Despite the fact that everyone understood that it was not the pilots’ fault, tickets for flights that summer were almost not sold out, and very soon this regional carrier died for a long time...
There were other reasons for bankruptcy, of course, not only this.
“The guys, the pilots, the staff didn’t disappear—they went all over the place,” says Rashid Mustafin, former deputy commander of the flight squad for organizing flight work. “We get together, perhaps, only once a year - we fly from different places, to the funeral service at the cemetery...”
Paper airplane graveyard
They lie just like they sat in the cabin of the airliner. One after another. Black armchairs of monuments. On the back of the gravestones are lines of children's and parents' poems.
“The world is quite cruel, but I will learn so that I won’t be afraid to live,” wrote 15-year-old Zhanna Grigorieva, a passenger on flight 2937.
“Back then, by order from above, the graves were dug up very quickly; soldiers from the nearest unit were brought in to help,” says gravedigger Emil. “There was a forest here, but it was immediately uprooted, literally in one day.” Yes, the order was not small...
Photographs have been preserved taken in those days near the local White House, Government House - lines of ambulances, white on white. There were no obituaries in the newspapers for a very long time. Nobody dared to give orders. Only two weeks later they appeared in solid mourning squares on the pages: our condolences to the Deputy Minister of Culture, the head of the financial and economic department, the rector of the university...
On the day of the funeral, President Putin came to the meeting. By that time, all mourning events at the cemetery had already ended. The children were buried. But the parents, having learned that the first person of the state would nevertheless arrive, and hoping that only Putin could order a proper investigation of this disaster, returned to the churchyard. They cried and waited for the head of state over the fresh hills. Six hours of waiting.
Time on earth is not measured in fractions of seconds.
“The security was tired of sitting in the bushes: there were mosquitoes that year! - so they bit the FSE officers like that, but Putin was not there and never was...”
Funeral 2 did take place, but only late in the evening. The President appeared, shook hands with everyone, and offered his condolences.
In ten years, little has changed at the cemetery. Unless the old marble slabs were replaced with new ones. And paper airplanes made of metal are still flying in a circle in the sky - a monument to the passengers of the lost flight.
Broken string of pearls
Some families whose children died over Lake Constance, unable to bear the grief, broke up. Most, thank God, were able to start a new life, new babies were born, who probably would not have been born if not for that terrible night from July 1 to 2, 2002.
Nothing is truly hopeless in this world.
The whole world wrote about the children who died over Lake Constance then (and later). Documentary films were made, moment by moment those terrible events were reconstructed. Tu-154 and Boeing 757 collided almost at right angles. The blow hit the fuselage, the "Tu" fell apart in the air into several parts and fell in the vicinity of the cozy German city of Uberlingen.
Yes, everyone wrote about Ufa children then...
The dead crew walked a little to the side - their children were left orphans.
The son of flight attendant Olga Bagina was soon adopted by a German policeman who worked at the scene of the disaster. Now the guy is already twenty years old, he has received a pilot’s certificate and, oddly enough, dreams of coming to Russia to study flying skills.
The son of the co-pilot, Denis Itkulov, is already trying on his father’s flying uniform.
For the sake of his granddaughter Katya, Nikolai Feoktistovich Kuleshov forced himself to forget the terrible night when his flight attendant daughter died.
Katya Kuleshova, the daughter of flight attendant Tatyana Kuleshova, is still only fourteen. She is being raised by her grandfather alone. The grandmother died shortly after the death of her daughter. The girl has no one except her grandfather.
Nikolai Feoktistovich Kuleshov is 76 years old. He is very strong and says that for the sake of his only granddaughter - a beauty and a smart girl - he finally forced himself to forget that terrible night. “I am old and therefore I know for sure: we always lose those we love too much. Therefore, you cannot love too much... For me, Tanya was the light in the window. I remember my wife, Lyubochka, worked in a kindergarten, and one winter, at night, in a snowstorm, she left her daughter in the group for the night. I was so angry with her and, despite the frost, I went into the garden. At least take a peek to see how she is doing. A lilac bush grew near the window - peeling off my hands, I climbed up the bare branches. Tanya did not sleep. And, seeing my face in the window, she screamed loudly: “The folder has come for me!” Lord, if you only knew how afraid I was always of losing her!..” - the old man cannot hold back his tears. And only the approaching granddaughter Katya, who is like two peas in a pod like her dead mother, only twice her age at that time, can calm him down.
I see an old man shaking over his only granddaughter. How she dreams of living to see the day when Katya becomes an adult. And how he understands that even great love is not a cage with chains. The girl is growing up. She must fly...
“I sent Katya and the mother of the deceased Kirill Degtyarev to Malta to learn English. I understand that this is necessary for her future, for her studies. And no matter how afraid I am for her, I shouldn’t think about the fact that she will always be there.”
The Kuleshovs gathered for Germany on the eve of the disaster. This is tradition. Relatives of the victims, as usual, go to the site of the plane crash in July to pay their respects. There is also a monument erected there - in the form of a torn string of pearls.
But every year there are fewer and fewer people going to Germany. More than a dozen people, parents and close relatives of the victims, have already died and could not bear the loss.
Sitting in front of the TV, in his chair, the father of 14-year-old Bulat Biglov, 45-year-old Irek Biglov, died. He was just watching a program about the murder of a Swiss air traffic controller.
Vitaly Kaloev himself was released from a Swiss prison without completing his sentence. He became an official in his native Ossetia. Everyone there knows him and respects him for what he has done.
And on Saturday, on the eve of the mournful date, he was detained by the German authorities: despite the fact that Kaloyev was given a Schengen visa to fly to the 10th anniversary of the tragedy in Uberlingen, the Swiss protested. They do not want to see the murderer of Peter Nelsen, that wild Russian mountaineer, even near their own country. They are afraid of him, apparently, and do not know what else to expect from him.
10 years is quite a sufficient period for a civilized person, they believe in the prosperous West, to forget and forgive.
On the morning of July 1, a German plane, not ours, took all the relatives and friends of the victims and flew to a memorial service in Uberlingen. Vitaly Kaloev was also allowed to visit the site of the tragedy.
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, DHL flight 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 when 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, several near misses had occurred 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 Nielsen photographs of the children and wanted Nielsen 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.
Vitaly Kaloev, a suspect in the murder of an air traffic controller for the Swiss company Skyguide, due to whose mistake two planes collided over Lake Constance, gave his first interview. Now the Russian is awaiting trial. Kaloev does not deny his guilt, but says that he does not remember how he committed the crime while in a state of passion. In a telephone interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, he spoke about what happened on the day when air traffic controller Peter Nielsen was killed.“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 suspect in the murder, a native of 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 Beslanites better than me. I don’t know how they can continue to 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, that I 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.
A crashed plane 4 years before the disaster
A crashed plane 6 years before the disaster
Collision over Lake Constance- a major aviation accident that occurred on July 1, 2002. The Tu-154M airliner of Bashkir Airlines (BAL), operating flight BTC 2937 on the route Moscow - Barcelona, collided in the air with a cargo plane Boeing 757-200PF of DHL airlines, operating flight DHX 611 on the route Bahrain - Bergamo - Brussels. The collision occurred near the small town of Uberlingen near Lake Constance (Germany). All 71 people on board both planes were killed - 2 on the Boeing (both pilots) and 69 on the Tu-154 (9 crew members and 60 passengers, among whom were 52 children).
Encyclopedic YouTube
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✪ Seconds to Disaster: Collision over Lake Constance (National Geographic) #HD
✪ TEARS OF BASHKIRIA | TRAGEDY OVER LAKE CONDITION - HOW IT REALLY HAPPENED
✪ Anapa St. Petersburg plane crash in 2006 Chronicle of the disaster
✪ Airbus A-321 DISASTER. Pulkovo, relatives
Subtitles
Aircraft information
Tu-154
Tu-154M (registration number RA-85816, factory 95A1006, serial 1006) was produced by the Kuibyshev Aviation Production Association (KuAPO) on August 8, 1995. On the same day it was transferred to Bashkir Airlines (BAL). Leased to Transeuropean Airlines (from November 25, 1998 to September 6, 1999) and Shaheen Air International (from September 6, 1999 to January 15, 2002). Equipped with three bypass turbojet engines D-30KU-154-II from the Rybinsk Engine Plant. On the day of the disaster, he had flown 10,788 hours.
The plane was flown by a crew consisting of:
Four flight attendants worked in the aircraft cabin:
- Olga Aleksandrovna Bagina, 45 years old - senior flight attendant. In Bashkir Airlines since November 10, 1979. She flew 11,546 hours.
- Gulnara Alfredovna Bilyalova, 35 years old. With Bashkir Airlines since January 21, 1992. She flew 7467 hours.
- Tatyana Nikolaevna Kuleshova, 34 years old. With Bashkir Airlines since December 25, 1991. She has flown 3,787 hours.
- Aisuak Yarkeyevich Yakshidavletov, 31 years old. With Bashkir Airlines since July 11, 1994. Flight time was 3316 hours.
| Citizenship | Passengers | Crew | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Russia Russia | 56 | 9 | 65 |
| Belarus Belarus | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| Total | 60 | 9 | 69 |
Among the passengers on board were three representatives of Bashkir Airlines:
- 51-year-old Shamil Minvafovich Rakhmatullin, who worked for the airline for 7 years (since September 21, 1994).
- 44-year-old Yuri Mikhailovich Penzin, an aircraft technician who worked for the airline for 22 years (since November 10, 1979).
- Artyom Gusev, flight manager of the airline, accompanying the flight.
In total, there were 69 people on board the plane - 60 passengers and 9 crew members.
Boeing 757
Boeing 757-200PF (registration number A9C-DHL, factory 24635, serial 258) was released in 1990 (the first flight was made on January 12 under the test registration number N3502P). Operated by Zambia Airways (from October 18, 1990 to December 30, 1993, flight 9J-AFO) and Gulf Air (from December 30, 1993 to April 1, 1996, flight VH-AWE). On April 1, 1996, it was purchased by the airline DHL, in which it changed three tail numbers - VH-AWE, OO-DLK and A9C-DHL. Equipped with two Rolls-Royce RB211-535E4-37 bypass turbofan engines. One of the airline's oldest aircraft. On the day of the disaster, he had flown 39,022 hours.
Flight DHX 611 was flown by two pilots:
- The aircraft commander (PIC) is 47-year-old Paul Phillips, an Englishman. Very experienced pilot, worked for DHL airlines for 13 years (since 1989). He flew the SA-227 and Boeing 767 aircraft. As a Boeing 757 commander since October 11, 1991. Flight time was 11,942 hours, 4,145 of which were in Boeing 757s.
- The co-pilot is 34-year-old Brent Campioni, a Canadian. Experienced pilot, worked for DHL airlines for 3 years (since 1999). As a Boeing 757 co-pilot since March 22, 2002. Flew 6,604 hours, 176 of them on a Boeing 757.
Chronology of events
Preceding circumstances
Tu-154M board RA-85816 was traveling on flight BTC 2937 from Moscow to Barcelona. On board there were 9 crew members and 60 passengers, including 52 children, who were flying to Spain on vacation. For most children, this trip was organized at the expense of the republican budget by the Committee for UNESCO of Bashkortostan as an incentive for the best students of the UNESCO specialized school, winners of various Olympiads. Many high school students were children of civil servants and heads of a number of large educational institutions and industries. The father of the deceased Yulia Sufiyanov (Rim Sufiyanov) was just the head of the Bashkortostan Committee for UNESCO.
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.
Boeing 757-200PF board A9C-DHL operated cargo flight DHX 611 from Bahrain to Brussels (Belgium) with an intermediate stop in Bergamo (Italy).
Flight BTC 2937 took off from Moscow at 18:48.
Flight DHX 611 took off from Bergamo at 21:06.
Collision
Despite the fact that both planes were over German territory, air traffic control at this location was carried out by a private Swiss company, Skyguide. The control center, located in Zurich, only had two air traffic controllers working the night shift. Shortly before the collision, one of the dispatchers went on a break; Only 34-year-old dispatcher Peter Nielsen (German: Peter Nielsen), who was forced to work simultaneously at two terminals, and an assistant remained on duty.
Some of the control tower equipment was turned off, and Nielsen noticed too late that two aircraft, which were at the same flight level FL360 (11,000 meters), were dangerously approaching each other. Less than a minute before their courses were supposed to intersect, he tried to correct the situation and gave the crew of Flight 2937 the command to descend.
At this point, the Tu-154 pilots had not yet seen the Boeing approaching from the left, but were prepared for the fact that they would have to perform a maneuver to diverge from it. Therefore, they began to descend immediately after receiving the dispatcher's command (in fact, even before it was completed). However, immediately after this, a command from the automatic proximity warning system (TCAS) sounded in the cockpit, informing about the need to gain altitude. At the same time, the pilots of flight 611 received instructions from the same system to descend.
One of the crew members of flight 2937 (co-pilot Itkulov) drew the attention of the others to the TCAS command, and was told that the controller had given the command to descend. Because of this, no one confirmed receipt of the command (although the plane was already descending). A few seconds later, Nielsen repeated the command, this time its receipt was immediately confirmed. At the same time, he mistakenly reported incorrect information about another aircraft, saying that it was located to the right of the Tu-154. As later decryption of the flight recorders showed, some of the pilots of Flight 2937 were misled by this message and may have decided that there was another aircraft invisible on the TCAS screen. The Tu-154 continued to descend, following instructions from the controller rather than TCAS. None of the pilots informed the dispatcher about the contradiction in the received commands.
At the same time, Flight 611 was descending in compliance with TCAS instructions. As soon as possible, the pilots reported this to Nielsen. The controller did not hear this message because another aircraft simultaneously contacted him on a different frequency.
In the last seconds, the pilots of both planes saw each other and tried to prevent a collision by completely deflecting the controls, but this did not help. At 21:35:32, flights BTC 2937 and DHX 611 collided almost at right angles at an altitude of 10,634 meters (FL350). The Boeing's vertical tail stabilizer hit the fuselage of the Tu-154 and broke it in half. While falling, the Tu-154 broke into four parts in the air, which fell in the vicinity of Uberlingen. The Boeing, which had lost its stabilizer, lost control and, having lost both engines during the fall, at 21:37 crashed to the ground 7 kilometers from the Tu-154 and was completely destroyed. Everyone on board both planes (69 people on the Tu-154 and 2 on the Boeing) were killed. Despite the fact that some debris from both airliners fell on residential buildings (in their courtyards), no one died on the ground.
Transcript of negotiations
| 21:34:42 | TCAS | TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC. |
| 21:34:47 | Dispatcher | BTC 2937... descend, flight level... 350, accelerate, I have an intersecting side. |
| 21:34:52 | VTS 2937 | We are descending. |
| 21:34:54 | DHX 611 (TCAS) | DESCEND, DESCEND. |
| 21:34:57 | BTC 2937 (TCAS) | CLIMB, CLIMB! |
| 21:34:58 | VTS 2937 | Clym says! |
| 21:35:00 | BTC 2937 | He brings us down. |
| 21:35:02 | Dispatcher | BTC 2937, descend, flight level 350, accelerate descent. |
| 21:35:07 | BTC 2937 | I am accelerating the descent to level 350, BTC 2937. |
| 21:35:12 | Dispatcher | Yes, we are on board, you have two hours, now on 360. |
| 21:35:13 | DHX 611 (TCAS) | DESCEND, DESCEND. |
| 21:35:19,3 | DHX 611 | 611, TCAS-descend. |
| 21:35:21 | BTC 2937 | (swearing), where is he? |
| 21:35:23,5 | BTC 2937 (TCAS) | INCREASE CLIMB, INCREASE CLIMB! |
| 21:35:27,3 | BTC 2937 | Clym, he speaks! |
| 21:35:29,8 | DHX 611 | (swearing) . |
| 21:35:31,8 | BTC 2937 | (swearing) . |
| 21:35:32 | Impact sound . |
Investigation
The investigation into the causes of the crash was carried out by a commission created by the German Federal Bureau of Aviation Accident Investigation (BFU). Bundesstelle Für Flugunfalluntersuchung).
According to the report, the immediate causes of the collision were:
- The air traffic controller was unable to ensure safe separation between the aircraft; the instruction to descend to the crew of the Tu-154 aircraft was transmitted too late.
- The crew of the Tu-154, according to the instructions of the air traffic control center, performed a descent and continued it, despite the TCAS instruction to gain altitude. Thus, a maneuver contrary to the TCAS-RA requirement was performed.
The Commission also noted the following:
- The integration of ACAS/TCAS into the aviation environment was incomplete and did not meet all the criteria of the manufacturer's philosophy. The ICAO instructions regulating the operation of ACAS/TCAS, the operating instructions of the TCAS manufacturer, and the documents that guided national air carriers were not standardized, were incomplete and partially contradicted each other.
- Air traffic control management did not provide sufficient staffing and tolerated staff shortages during night shifts.
- Air traffic control management failed to take action for several years and tolerated the fact that during the night shift only one controller controlled air traffic while his partner was resting
In addition, the report noted errors by the management of Skyguide and ICAO.
On the night of the collision, the equipment that alerts the controller to the danger of aircraft approaching each other was turned off for maintenance. Telephone service was also cut off and the backup telephone line was faulty. Because of this, Nielsen, at a critical moment, was unable to negotiate with Friedrichshafen Airport to deal with the delayed arrival of Aero Lloyd's Airbus A320 (flight AEF 1135), which he was monitoring at another terminal. Also, due to a disconnected telephone connection, the dispatcher from the Karlsruhe Air Traffic Control Center, who saw the dangerous approach of two aircraft, was unable to warn Nielsen about this, although he attempted to contact the Skyguide center 11 times.
Vitaly Konstantinovich Kaloev, who lost his wife Svetlana (44 years old) and two children - daughter Diana (4 years old) and son Kostya (10 years old) in the disaster. Kaloev stated that he showed Nielsen photographs of the children and wanted Nielsen to apologize to him for what happened. Nielsen hit Kaloev on the hand and knocked out the photographs. According to Vitaly Kaloyev, he does not remember what happened after that - Kaloyev did not admit his guilt in the murder (but did not deny it either). Kaloev himself did not speak German. On October 26, 2005, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to eight years in prison.
On November 25, 2006, the Swiss Court of Appeal decided to review Kaloyev's case. The court refused to overturn the decision against the Russian citizen, but agreed with the point of the appeal that 8 years of imprisonment was too long. On July 3, 2007, the highest court of the canton of Zurich, taking into account the limited sanity of Vitaly Kaloyev associated with the death of his wife and two children as a result of a plane crash, decided that the prison term would be 5 years and 3 months instead of 8 years. This decision gave Kaloyev the right to early release, but it was appealed by prosecutor Ulrich Weder.
On November 12, 2007, after the prosecutor's protest was considered, Vitaly Kaloev was released early and returned to Russia. Arriving in Ossetia, he was enthusiastically received by his fellow countrymen and in January 2008 he was appointed Deputy Minister of Construction and Architecture of North Ossetia.
Civil litigation
In 2005, Bashkir Airlines filed a lawsuit against the dispatch company Skyguide, and a year later against the Federal Republic of Germany, accusing them of not taking the necessary measures to comply with the required air traffic safety standards. The required amount of compensation for the destroyed aircraft was 2.6 million euros. On July 27, 2006, the District Court of Konstanz ruled that the Federal Republic of Germany bears full responsibility for what happened, since the transfer by the state of the rights to control air traffic in German airspace to a private foreign (Swiss) company is illegal, and therefore the contracts concluded with Skyguide are invalid . According to the German Basic Law, ensuring control over a state's air traffic is an integral task of the authorities of that state. According to the court, Germany must compensate Bashkir Airlines. This court decision was challenged by the German government. In 2013, the dispute between Bashkir Airlines and Germany was settled out of court, and the trial in the Higher Regional Court in Karlsruhe was terminated.
Until 2004, the Swiss insurance company Winterthur made insurance payments to Skyguide. The amount of insurance was not disclosed. Total compensation of up to $150,000 was paid to the relatives of 41 victims of flight BTC 2937, who agreed to the company's offer (to accept financial assistance without admitting legal liability). Relatives of 30 victims did not agree with this proposal and decided to defend their rights in court. On January 29, 2009, the Barcelona Court of Appeal (Spain, as the arrival airport) ruled that Bashkir Airlines must pay compensation to the families of the victims in the amount of US$20,400 per person. In May 2011, the Swiss Federal Court finally rejected an appeal to increase compensation payments to relatives of victims of the crash, recognizing that the maximum compensation would be about 33,000 Swiss francs per victim.
In 2005, the insurance company Winterthur filed a claim against Bashkir Airlines demanding reimbursement of 60% of the insurance payments made to relatives of the crew of flight DHX 611, in the amount of 2.5 million euros, on the basis of partial involvement of Russian pilots in the disaster. On September 18, 2008, the district court of Konstanz rejected this claim.
