a bunch of russian school children from the town of ufa are flying to barcelona from moscow on a baskerian airlines tu-154 flown by 5 russian pilots and it wasn’t their original flight due to a error from the travel agency meanwhile a dhl 757 prepares to depart bergamo italy for brussells with just two pilots onboard. zurich atc is under the control of peter nelisen that night but maitence shuts down a lot of safety features inclduing the phone lines and colision avoidance equipemnt which should be illeagel when aircraft are flying. the russians are at 36000 feet while the dhl is cleared to the same altitude meanwhile the controller than has to handle an unscheduled flight to fredicsharven which he can’t hand off to due to the matience people this becomes a big probolem and after a thai flight is handed over to munich they are the only 3 planes under his control even another controller can’t get through due to the maitence people messing with the phone line. the russians find out about the dhl first from tcas and are told to climb by tcas while the dhl is told to decend by tcas but the russians are told by neilsen to decend which he didn’t know that call means the dhl couldn’t get their message of decent to him the russian plane hits the dhl the russian plane is destroyed and crashes the dhl pretty much has the same fate with no survivors. the blame is on the russian pilots for disobeying tcas and the maitences effect as well as bad management leaving a lone controller in command but the controller neilsen who did not have a direct part in causing the colision is stabbed by a man who lost his family in the colision (not part of the school group but on that plane) and the stabber gets away with murder litterally only spends a few monuths in jail shows no remorse (this isn’t shown in the show) and goes to his soviet home (only say soviet because i can’t verify if its still part of russia or part of a southern automonius region that might be its own country) and he has done things for his community but he should not have been let out of jail at all.
next time a christmas tragedy in the andes.
Harrison’s world 