Catastrophe over Lake Constance: causes, investigation, list of deaths

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 Belgian cargo Boeing-757. Victims of this terrible disaster were 71 people, most of whom are children.

Events preceding the flight

On that fateful night from July 1 to July 2, 2002, when a catastrophe occurred over Lake Constance, 67 passengers were onboard the Russian TU-154 passenger airliner owned by Bashkir Airlines, including 52 children and 12 crew members. The main part was made by talented schoolboys from Bashkiria who flew to Spain for rest. The vouchers were provided by the Committee for UNESCO Affairs of the Republic as a reward for high academic performance. And indeed, in this group all the children were like picking: artists, poets, sportsmen.

As it turned out later, Ufa schoolchildren should not have been in the sky at all on that ill-fated night. Just by mistake, the adults accompanying them, who brought a group of Bashkir children to Sheremetyevo airport, instead of delivering them to Domodedovo, they were late on their flight to Barcelona.

A sequence of accidents

Almost all the children who went on vacation abroad were 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 they were children from ordinary families, they would just return home, albeit upset, but alive, and the plane crash over the Lake Constance would not have happened.

But the influential parents of schoolchildren decided to send to Moscow one of the aircraft belonging to the Bashkir Airlines, which then was to charter them to Spain with charter flight No. 2937. The crew of the aircraft was headed by Alexander Gross, who had flown to Barcelona several times before and knew the route well.

And now the next accident - after the children boarded the plane, it turned out that there were still several vacant seats. Immediately it was decided to implement these extra tickets. There were only seven of them. Four of them went to the Shislovskys family from Belarus, who were also late for their plane, and three - Svetlana Kaloyeva from North Ossetia, flying with two children (the eldest son of Kostya and 4-year-old Diana) to her husband Vitaly, who worked in Spain on contract. After the disaster over the Lake Constance, even the names of these random passengers became known not immediately.

Before the catastrophe

That July night, both planes were in the sky over Germany, but despite this, the air traffic management for that period was transferred to the Swiss company Skygayde, located in Zurich. In this center, as usual at night, only three people remained to work: two dispatchers and an assistant. However, almost just before the collision, one of the people on duty left for a break, and behind the remote control there was only Peter Nielsen, who was forced to watch simultaneously two terminals. When the dispatcher noticed that two planes in the same echelon of 36,000 feet began to approach each other, there were already seconds before the disaster. The collision over Lake Constance was almost inevitable.

Command Mismatch

The courses of the airplanes flying towards each other must have been inevitably crossed. The dispatcher tried to correct the situation and gave the command to the crew of the Russian airliner for a decrease. I must say that by this time the pilots TU-154 have already noticed another vessel approaching them from the left side. They were ready to carry out a maneuver that would allow the aircraft safely to disperse.

Immediately after the command of the dispatcher, an automatic system warning of dangerous closures (TCAS) came to life in the cockpit of Russian pilots, who informed that it was necessary to urgently gain altitude. At the same time aboard the "Boeing" was received the same instruction from an identical system, but only to decrease. The second pilot of the TU-154 aircraft drew the attention of the rest of the crew to the discrepancy between the dispatcher and TCAS commands, but he was told that they would carry out the order received from the ground. That's why no one confirmed the order received from the dispatcher, although the ship began to decline. After only a few seconds the team from the ground repeated. This time it was immediately confirmed.

Fatal mistake

As the investigation will show later, a collision over the Lake Constance occurred due to an untimely submitted command, sounded from the mouth of the Skygate dispatcher Peter Nielsen. By mistake, he told the crew of the Russian plane the wrong information about another liner, which allegedly is to their right.

Subsequently, the interpretation of the data of the black boxes showed that the pilots were misled by such a message and, apparently, decided that next to fly another aircraft, which the TCAS system for some reason did not find. It remains unclear why none of the pilots informed about this contradiction in the commands of the dispatcher on duty.

Catastrophe over Lake Constance

Simultaneously with the Russian aircraft, the Boeing-757, whose crew carried out the TCAS instruction, also decreased. About this maneuver they immediately reported to the ground, but the dispatcher Peter Nielsen did not hear him, because another boat came on a different frequency.

In the last moments before the catastrophe, both crews were able to prevent a dangerous rapprochement as best they could, turning the controls all the way to the stop, but, as is known, all efforts were in vain. The Tu-154M aircraft collided with the Boeing 757 almost at right angles. The airplane belonging to the transport company DHL, with its vertical stabilizer, dealt a powerful blow to the fuselage of the Russian airliner, causing it to fall apart in the air. Its wreckage fell in the vicinity of the German town of Uberlingen, near Lake Constance (Baden-Württemberg land). Boeing, in turn, lost the stabilizer and lost control, crashed. A terrible catastrophe over Lake Constance took the lives of the crew members of both aircraft and all the passengers flying to the Tu-154.

Investigation of what happened

According to the results of the crash, an investigation was carried out, which was carried out by a specially created commission at the German Federal Office (BFU). Her conclusions were published two years later. The commission's report indicated two reasons for the collision:

1. The air traffic controller failed to ensure proper separation between the two airliners in time. The reduction instruction was handed over to the pilots of the Tu-154 crew late.
2. The crew of the Russian aircraft continued to decline, despite the TCAS recommendations to gain altitude.

Expert conclusions

The report also noted numerous mistakes made by the center's management in Zurich and the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization). So, the owners of the Swiss company Skyguide for many years allowed such an order of work of air traffic controllers, in which only one person could control the air traffic, while his partner was resting at that time. An air crash above 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 airliners, was switched off that night due to technical maintenance.

As for the phones, they also did not work. It is for this reason that Peter Nielsen was unable to reach the airport in Friedrichshafen (a small town located north of Lake Constance) at the right time in order to convey to the dispatchers there the management of the arriving aircraft with a delay, after which the Swiss watches the second terminal . In addition, because of the lack of telephone communication, the duty officers in Karlsruhe, who had noticed the dangerous rapprochement in the air much earlier, could not warn Nielsen of the impending catastrophe.

Also, the commission that investigated the collision over Lake Constance noted that the ICAO documents governing the use of TCAS and the crew of the Tu-154 were partly inconsistent and incomplete. The fact is that, on the one hand, the instruction to the system contained a strict prohibition on performing maneuvers that did not correspond to the TCAS prompts, and on the other hand it was considered auxiliary, thus creating the impression that the dispatcher's commands are a priority. From this one can draw the only correct conclusion: if it were not for a series of absurd accidents and fatal mistakes, then a plane crash over the Lake Constance (2002) would simply be impossible.

Results

With the fall of aircraft this tragedy did not end. Unfortunate relatives buried their children, and some families after that fell apart, unable to withstand such grief. Many lives have taken with them the disaster over the Lake Constance. The list of the 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 very controller of Skyguide, who made a number of mistakes that led to such a large-scale tragedy. He was killed by Vitaly Kaloev, whose wife and children were flying on that ill-fated flight No. 2937. The trial lasted almost a year. At the end of October 2005 Kaloyeva was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 8 years in prison. Given the circumstances of the case and the severe mental state of the accused, the court reduced the term to 5 years and 3 months.

Near the German city of Überlingen, in the area of Lake Constance, an unusual monument, reminiscent of the tragedy more than 10 years ago, is established. It is made in the form of a torn necklace, whose pearls flew all along the trajectory of the fall of the debris of two airliners.