GERMANY: INVESTIGATIONS CONTINUE INTO COLLISION BETWEEN TUPELEV AIRCRAFT AND BOEING 757 CARGO PLANE
Record ID:
588589
GERMANY: INVESTIGATIONS CONTINUE INTO COLLISION BETWEEN TUPELEV AIRCRAFT AND BOEING 757 CARGO PLANE
- Title: GERMANY: INVESTIGATIONS CONTINUE INTO COLLISION BETWEEN TUPELEV AIRCRAFT AND BOEING 757 CARGO PLANE
- Date: 3rd July 2002
- Summary: UEBERLINGEN, GERMANY (JULY 2, 2002) (REUTERS) 1. SLV PAN WRECKAGE OF PLANE AND ACCIDENT INVESTIGATORS IN WOODLANDS 0.07 2. SLV GERMAN INVESTIGATOR EXAMINING DEBRIS; SMOULDERING DEBRIS; GERMAN INVESTIGATORS EXAMINING DEBRIS (4 SHOTS) 0.26 3. MV INVESTIGATOR WITH SNIFFER DOG; SLV ZOOM OUT INVESTIGATORS AT SITE/MV /SCU DEBRIS (4 SHOTS) 0.47 4. SLV TILT UP EXTERIOR CHURCH/ PEOPLE ARRIVING FOR MEMORIAL SERVICE; SLV INTERIOR CHURCH / VARIOUS OF PEOPLE AT MEMORIAL SERVICE; SCU CANDLE; SLV MEMORIAL SERVICE IN PROGRESS; MV PRIEST LIGHTING CANDLE; MV PRIESTS; PEOPLE AT MEMORIAL SERVICE/ CANDLES; SLV SERVICE (11 SHOTS) 2.00 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 18th July 2002 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: UEBERLINGEN, GERMANY
- Country: Germany
- Reuters ID: LVA60VSPO2QZQ51GK98GCMAO33EP
- Story Text: Scores of Russian children heading for the holiday of
their lives have died when their plane collided with a cargo
jet over Germany, leaving the resort of Lake Constance strewn
with bodies and burning debris.
German crash investigators were busy at the scene of
the disaster on Tuesday (July 2, 2002) and are expected to be
joined by a Russian team later in the day.
Officials said 71 people, including 52 children and
teenagers, were killed in the Monday night crash between a
Bashkirian Airlines jet bound for Barcelona, Spain, and a
Boeing 757 cargo jet operated by the international courier
company DHL.
The children had only been on the plane, chartered at the
last minute, because they had missed an earlier flight.
The collision prompted experts to question the safety
commitment of Russian airlines, as Russian and Swiss air
officials began to trade blame for the disaster.
Witnesses said they heard rolling thunder and saw an
orange glow and fireballs resembling comets in the night sky.
A black rain of wreckage then poured down on the northern
shore of this picturesque lake in southwestern Germany.
There were 69 Russians on board the seven-year-old Tupolev
and a crew of two, a Briton and a Canadian, on the Boeing 757
bound for Brussels.
Swiss air traffic controllers, in charge of Lake Constance
airspace because it is close to Switzerland, said the Tupolev
reacted too slowly to orders to lower its altitude.
They said the Russian pilot got Swiss orders to decrease
altitude a "good minute" before the collision.
Swiss air traffic controllers said earlier it was only on
the third instruction that the Russian pilot had begun to
reduce altitude to avoid collision.
By the time the Tu-154 began to descend, the 757 was also
diving because its on-board collision-avoidance system had
instructed its pilot to do so. So the planes hit each other in
one of the worst air accidents in German history.
Maag said the air traffic controller in charge at the time
was working alone as his partner took a break because of the
light air traffic. Five planes were in the sector they were
monitoring at the time, which included the two crashed planes.
Bashkirian Airlines denied the Tupolev crew had made any
mistakes. "My version is that the (air) traffic controllers
are to blame," Nikolai Odegov, the airline's director, said in
Moscow.
Aviation safety analyst Chris Yates said Russian airlines
had a poor crash record, which he said generally stemmed from
failure to follow correct procedures, not from faulty planes.
The Tupolev should also have been fitted with a collision
warning system, which all planes flying over Europe are
obliged to use, airline experts said.
Families along the shore of Lake Constance were counting
their blessings at special church services late on Tuesday as
they recalled how tonnes of flaming aircraft wreckage crashing
out of the sky missed their homes by a whisker.
There were no casualties on the ground even though police
said they found pieces of wreckage in at least 57 different
places.
Debris was scattered over an area of more than five square
kilometres (two square miles) around Ueberlingen, a resort
town of 20,000.
The Russian youths, mostly children from the political
elite in Russia's oil-rich, mainly Muslim, region of
Bashkortostan, were heading for a UNESCO festival in
Barcelona.
Airline officials said many of the passengers on the
flight had the same surname, indicating families may have lost
more than one relative.
The young passengers were looking forward to two weeks of
fun and sun at a four-star Spanish hotel by the Mediterranean.
Rescue workers had recovered about 26 bodies and a large
number of body parts by mid-afternoon on Tuesday as well as
the Tupolev flight data recorder, vital for crash
investigation.
The airline, based in Bashkortostan, was one of many to
emerge from the break-up of the state airliner Aeroflot after
the collapse of the Soviet Union. It relies mainly on a fleet
of Tu-154s, Russian planes commonly used for medium-range
flights.
The cargo flight, operated by DHL Worldwide Express, which
is majority-owned by Deutsche Post, originated in Bahrain and
had taken off from Bergamo in Italy en route to Brussels.
Tu-154s have crashed several times over the past year. An
Iran Air Tours Tu-154 crashed in February in Iran killing all
119 aboard. A year ago 136 passengers and nine crew were
killed when a Russian Tu-154 crashed in Siberia.
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