More than 13 years have passed since the memorable date when two airliners collided in the sky over Germany - the Russian passenger TU-154M and the Belgian cargo Boeing 757. 71 people became victims of this terrible catastrophe, most of whom are children.
Pre-Flight Events
On that fateful night from July 1 to July 2, 2002, when the disaster over Lake Constance occurred, there were 67 passengers on board the Russian passenger plane TU-154, owned by Bashkir Airlines, including 52 children and 12 crew members. The main part was made up of talented schoolchildren from Bashkiria who flew to Spain on vacation. Vacations were provided by the Committee for UNESCO of the Republic as an incentive for high performance in studies. And indeed, in this group all the children were like a match: artists, poets, athletes.
As it turned out later, Ufa schoolchildren were not supposed to be in the sky at all on that ill-fated night. Just by mistake, the adults who accompanied them, who brought a group of Bashkir children to Sheremetyevo Airport, instead of delivering them to Domodedovo, they were late on the eve of their plane flying to Barcelona.
A series of accidents
Almost all children who go on vacation abroad came from families of high-ranking parents. For example, 15-year-old Leysan Gimaeva was the daughter of the head of the presidential administration of the Bashkir Republic. If these were children from ordinary families, then they would simply return home, albeit upset, but alive, and the plane crash over Lake Constance would not have happened.
But the influential parents of the schoolchildren decided to send for them to Moscow one of the aircraft belonging to the Bashkir Airlines, which was then to be delivered to Spain by charter flight No. 2937. The crew was headed by Alexander Gross, who had previously flown to Barcelona several times and knew the route well.
And here is another accident - after the children boarded the plane, it turned out that there were still a few empty seats. It was immediately decided to sell these extra tickets. There were only seven of them. Four of them went to the Shislovsky family from Belarus, who were also late for their plane, and three to Svetlana Kaloeva from North Ossetia, flying with her two children (the eldest son of Kostya and 4-year-old Diana) to her husband Vitaly, who worked in Spain on a contract basis. After the disaster over Lake Constance, even the names of these random passengers did not immediately become known.
Before the disaster
On that July night, both planes were in the sky over Germany, but despite this, the air traffic control for that period was transferred to the Swiss company Skyguide, located in Zurich. In this center, as usual at night, only three people remained to work: two dispatchers and an assistant. However, almost before the collision, one of the officers on duty went for a break, and only Peter Nielsen remained behind the console, who was forced to monitor two terminals simultaneously. When the dispatcher noticed that two aircraft in the same level of 36 thousand feet began to approach, there were already a few seconds before the crash. The clash over Lake Constance was almost inevitable.
Team mismatch
The courses of the aircraft flying towards each other should inevitably intersect. The dispatcher tried to correct the situation and sent a command to the crew of the Russian airliner to reduce. It must be said that by this time the TU-154 pilots had already noticed another vessel approaching them from the left side. They were ready to perform a maneuver that would allow the planes to disperse safely.
Immediately after the dispatcher’s command, an automatic proximity warning system (TCAS) came to life in the cockpit of Russian pilots, which informed that it was urgent to gain altitude. And at the same time, the same instruction was received on board the Boeing from an identical system, but only for reduction. The co-pilot of the TU-154 aircraft drew the attention of the rest of the crew to the discrepancy between the dispatcher and the TCAS teams, but he was told that they would comply with the order received from the ground. That is why no one ever confirmed the order received from the dispatcher, although the ship began to decline. After only a few seconds, the command from the ground repeated. This time it was immediately confirmed.
Fatal mistake
As the investigation later shows, the clash over Lake Constance was due to an untimely command issued from the lips of Skyguide dispatcher Peter Nielsen. By mistake, he told the crew of the Russian aircraft incorrect information about another airliner, which supposedly is to their right.
Subsequently, the decryption of the data of the black boxes showed that the pilots were misled by such a message and, apparently, decided that another plane was flying nearby, which the TCAS system for some reason did not detect. It remains unclear why not one of the pilots informed this contradiction in the commands of the duty dispatcher.
Holocaust over Lake Constance
Simultaneously with the Russian aircraft, the Boeing 757, whose crew complied with the TCAS instruction, was also declining. They immediately reported this maneuver to the ground, but dispatcher Peter Nielsen didn’t hear it, because another vessel on the other frequency got in touch.
In the last moments before the disaster, both crews, as they could, tried to prevent a dangerous rapprochement by rejecting the helms to the stop, but, as you know, all efforts were in vain. The Tu-154M aircraft collided with the Boeing-757 almost at a right angle. A plane belonging to the DHL transport company, with its vertical stabilizer, dealt a powerful blow to the fuselage of the Russian airliner, causing it to crash right in the air. Its fragments fell in the vicinity of the German town of Uberlingen, near Lake Constance (Baden-Württemberg land). The Boeing, in turn, having lost its stabilizer and losing control, crashed. A terrible catastrophe over Lake Constance claimed the lives of crew members of both aircraft and all passengers flying on the Tu-154.
Investigation of the incident
As a result of the crash, an investigation was carried out by a specially created commission under the German Federal Office (BFU). Her findings were published two years later. The report of the commission contained two reasons for the collision:
- The air traffic controller in time was unable to ensure proper separation between the two air liners. The reduction instruction was transmitted late to the pilots of the Tu-154 crew.
- The crew of the Russian aircraft continued to decline, despite TCAS recommendations to gain altitude.
Expert Conclusions
The report also noted numerous errors made by the leadership of the center in Zurich and ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization). So, the owners of the Swiss company Skyguide for many years allowed such a procedure for air traffic controllers that only one person could control air traffic, while his partner was resting at that time. The crash over Lake Constance (2002) made it clear that so many personnel were clearly not enough. In addition, the equipment, which was supposed to prompt the dispatcher about the possible rapprochement of the airliners, was turned off that night due to maintenance.
As for the phones, they did not work either. It was because of this that Peter Nielsen was not able to reach the airport at the right time in Friedrichshafen (a small town located north of Lake Constance) in order to transfer the controllers arriving with a delay to the local dispatchers, which the Swiss is monitoring at the second terminal . In addition, due to the lack of telephone communications, those on duty in Karlsruhe, who had noticed a dangerous approach in the air much earlier, were not able to warn Nielsen of an impending disaster.
Also, the commission, which investigated the collision over Lake Constance, noted that the ICAO documents regulating the use of TCAS and located on the Tu-154 crew were partly contradictory and incomplete. The fact is that, on the one hand, the instruction to the system contained a strict ban on performing maneuvers that did not correspond to the TCAS prompts, and on the other, it was considered auxiliary, thus creating the impression that dispatcher commands are priority. From this we can draw the only correct conclusion: if it were not for a series of ridiculous accidents and fatal errors, then a plane crash over Lake Constance (2002) would simply be impossible.
Summary
With the crash of aircraft, this tragedy did not end. Unhappy relatives buried their children, and some families then broke up, unable to bear such grief. The disaster over Lake Constance took many lives. The list of victims initially contained the names of 19 adults and 52 children. But on February 24, 2004, another name was added to it - Peter Nielsen, the same Skyguide dispatcher, who made a number of mistakes that led to such a massive tragedy. He was killed by Vitaliy Kaloev, whose wife and children were flying on that ill-fated flight No. 2937. The trial in this case lasted almost a year. At the end of October 2005, Kaloev was convicted of murder and sentenced to 8 years in prison. Given the circumstances of the case and the serious mental state of the accused, the court reduced the term to 5 years and 3 months.
Near the German city of Uberlingen, in the Lake Constance region, an unusual monument has been erected, reminiscent of the tragedy of more than 10 years ago. It is made in the form of a torn necklace, whose pearls scattered along the entire trajectory of the fall of the wreckage of two airliners.