Many Children Die as Jets Collide over Germany
Updated 8:38 AM ET July 2, 2002
By Michael Steen and Knut Engelmann
UEBERLINGEN, Germany (Reuters) - A Russian passenger jet taking children to Spain on a dream vacation collided with a cargo plane, killing 71 people and strewing body parts and burning debris onto this scenic resort in southwest Germany.
One witness said the Monday night crash, about 35,000 feet above Ueberlingen, caused a fireball followed by a black rain of wreckage tumbling to earth close to Lake Constance.
Swiss air traffic controllers said the pilot of the Bashkirian Airlines jet flying to Barcelona reacted too slowly to orders to lower its altitude, and collided with a plane operated by the international courier company DHL.
The director of the Russian airline in Moscow defended his crew and said he was certain no mistakes had been made.
Sergei Rybanov, head of Bashkirian's Moscow office, told reporters the seven-year-old Tupolev 154 airliner had been chartered for the group from Moscow at the last minute because they had missed their original flight the previous day.
Russian officials said 69 Russians, including 52 children and teenagers, were aboard the plane to Barcelona. Two pilots, a Briton and a Canadian, were killed on the Boeing 757 cargo plane which had no passengers and was operated by DHL.
Authorities said the mid-air collision occurred just minutes before midnight on Monday above the German-Swiss border on Lake Constance, one of Europe's largest lakes and a popular holiday destination that also borders Austria.
The two jets were both diving to avoid colliding when they flew into each other in what officials said was one of the worst air accidents in German history.
Witnesses saw a fireball, and debris was scattered over a wide area of about three square miles around Ueberlingen, a resort town of 20,000.
"I had just got up for a minute and wanted to go back to bed when I heard these two enormous bangs and then a fireball lit up the sky," said Guenter Bauer, a retiree. "I could still hear the roar of the jet engines as the whole thing came crashing down, just a few kilometers (miles) away.
"There's a highrise apartment building just up the road from my house," he added. "Just imagine if it had hit that. It gives me the chills, I tell you."
Authorities said the crash occurred at 5:40 p.m. EDT on Monday in airspace over the north rim of Lake Constance. No one on the ground was believed injured although pieces of burning debris just missed one house and crashed near a home for handicapped children.
BALL OF FIRE
"I was lying in my bed, saw a ball of fire in the sky and ran out onto the balcony. Behind the forest it looked like a firework display was going off," said Klaus-Dieter Schindler, janitor at a school in the village of Owingen.
"In the glow of the fire I saw wreckage falling out of the sky. It looked like black rain."
Swiss air traffic control repeatedly told the pilot of the Bashkirian airliner to reduce altitude to avoid a crash, said Ulrich Mueller, transport minister in the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg where the accident occurred.
The Russian pilot started a steep dive only after Swiss controllers instructed him to do so three times, said Anton Maag, from Skyguide, the Swiss air traffic control agency.
He said it was unclear why it took so long for the pilot to respond to increasingly urgent instructions from Swiss flight control in Zurich which oversaw the two flights.
Austrian flight controllers, who had been spoken to the Russian plane during its 20-minute flight over Austria before handing it over to German controllers, said the pilot's English skills were excellent.
The cargo plane started to dive when its on-board warning system instructed the pilot to descend to avoid a crash, he said. If the Boeing had maintained its course, "there certainly would not have been a crash," Maag said.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder sent his "heartfelt condolences" to Russian President Vladimir Putin, government spokeswoman Charima Reinhardt said in a statement in Berlin.
DREAM VACATION
The youths, most of them 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.
Rescue workers had recovered about 20 bodies by midday on Tuesday and the Tupolev's flight data recorder, vital for investigating the accident. "A large number of body parts have been recovered," along with small pieces of the Boeing, said police spokesman Egon Haak.
Helicopters equipped with infrared cameras clattered overhead as more than 800 rescue workers combed the area seeking victims and examining wreckage. The lake is being checked for drinking water contamination.
Officials warned residents that body parts could be strewn across a wide area of the resort region on the Swiss border.
Reporters on the scene saw the charred tail of the Russian plane in a field surrounded by apple trees. About a kilometer away was what appeared to be part of a wing. A large piece of debris just missed a house in the rural region.
ERROR ON GROUND OR IN SKY
The airline, based in Bashkortostan, was one of many to emerge from the break-up of state airliner Aeroflot after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It relies mainly on a fleet of Tu-154s, one of the most common Russian planes used for medium-range flights.
The two planes were flying at an altitude of 35,300 feet above Ueberlingen at the northwest end of Lake Constance when they collided, Swiss air traffic controllers said.
A spokeswoman for German flight control said one of two things could have caused the crash: either ground controllers had entered incorrect data for the flight paths, or one of the two planes had failed to follow its approved flight path.
Another spokesman said there had been no problems contacting the Tupolev while it was in German airspace. A DHL spokesman said there were no problems with their plane before the crash.
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.
DHL said in a statement there was no evidence of any technical or operational problems with its aircraft. "It is too early to comment on the cause of the accident. Any premature explanation can only be speculation," it said.
DHL said the Baden-Wuerttemberg transport ministry confirmed that Swiss air traffic control had repeatedly asked the pilot of the Russian plane to change his altitude but he did not reply.
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 plane crashed in Siberia.
There were two other major post-war air accidents in Germany. In 1972 an Ilyushin aircraft run by East German airline Interflug crashed shortly after taking off from Berlin Schoenefeld airport, killing all 156 passengers and crew.
In 1958, 23 were killed at Munich airport shortly after a plane carrying members of the Manchester United soccer team took off after a refueling stop.
In 1968, 48 were killed when a British Eagle Airways Viscount crashed into a motorway between Munich and Nuremberg. |
