start of july 2002 a bunch of school children leave ufa for moscow to catch a flight to spain for a vacation but the trvel agency takes them to the wrong airport so they miss their flight it takes two days to charter another jet they charter brarskian airlines 2937 a tupolev 154 with 69 people on board not all from the scholol group including 5 russian pilots under the command of alexander gross but the airlines chief pilot is first officer. meanwhile a 757 departs bergamo italy for brusells belgium with two piltos on the cargo plane they will cross paths over the german swiss border. in zurich atc peter neilsen is the lone controller tonight as his colleague is on a break (a common practice). but there are only two other aircraft in the area but maitence wants to work on the main radar which is not good and won’t have a warning if theres a possilbe collision and turns off the phones. both planes contact zurich the dhl first who requests 36000 feet the same altitude the russian plane is at and is granted the request. meanwhile he gets a suprise aircraft an aeroloyd bound for freedchisharven and can’t hand them over to there atc this will be a big distraction as he the russians and a thai flight are calling at the same time but there is no issue yet. an air traffic control center in germany knows there could be a colision but can’t ring neilsen and its illegal to contact the aircraft directly. in the cargo plane the fo goes to the toilet at this point the russians tcas goes off to indicate the cargo plane and viceversa a little later the cargoplane is told to decend and the russians to climb by tcas but atc tells the russians to decend. this leads to confusion in the russian plane but they obey atc which is a critical mistake. the controller can’t hear the dhl plane telling them he is told to decend. despite the russians changing to climb its too late the planes hit over uberlinken germany the russian plane is destoryed when the belly is hit by the dhls tail the cargo plane battles on for 2 minutes but they both crash killing all 71 people on board in the worse midair collision in german post war history. the dad and husband of 3 victims kaliov wants revenge and finds his daughters body intact he will play a roll later. atc zurich comes to a standstill neilsen never works as a controller again and there short on staff. the investigation suspects the controller who didn’t make any mistakes that where his fault with the info he had. the russian pilots not obeying tcas is a more likely suspect but they understand whey they obeyed atc the maitence over doing things is the other main cause but they are let off for some reason. a near colision over japan the year before shoudl have alerted authorities to the problem of tcas. kailov decides to get revenge on the controller by stabbing him dead and gets away without going to jail for a substantional sentence (And was a given an award for something not related to the accident as well) which is disgraceful as it was uncalled for.
next time a crash in the mountains ruins a birthday and a lot of christmases.
Harrison’s world 