Airspace capacity reduced after crash:
Following the deaths of 71 people when two planes crashed over Germany on July 1, Swiss air traffic control body Skyguide has reduced its aircraft control capacity by 20 per cent.
Skyguide has reduced the number of planes allowed in Swiss airspace by a fifth due to the stress suffered by its staff after a mid-air crash between a Russian charter flight and a DHL cargo jet killed 45 children.
German officials have now recovered most of the wreckage from the crash. It is hoped the final two bodies of the victims that remain missing will be recovered in the tangled wreckage.
Experts have identified 21 of the victims so far. The majority were children from the eastern Russian region of Bashkortostan, who were on their way to a summer vacation in Spain.
The first of the bodies will be flown to Russia later so families can begin burying their dead.
Recent attention has focused on Swiss air controllers and whether they gave the pilot of the Russian Tu-154 passenger airliner sufficient warning to drop its altitude before it fatally crossed the path of a Boeing 757 cargo jet.
Speaking on Swiss radio yesterday, Alain Rossier, head of Skyguide, said that mistakes in communication had been made in the days after the accident.
Everything that happened would be studied second by second, Mr Rossier said. He said three questions had to be answered: the reactions of the controllers, of the pilots and of the systems in the planes.
“Only then will we be able to say whether it is only a disaster for us or whether it is also a disaster for others,” he added.
German investigators have said the Russian plane did not begin to descend until a second warning was given only 30 seconds before the collision.
This was well below the 90-second minimum for such a manoeuvre under the controllers’ regulations. The planes collided when the Boeing descended at the same time over the Germany-Swiss border.
They were in airspace directed by air traffic controllers in Zurich at the time.
Swiss officials have opened a criminal investigation into possible negligent homicide. Investigators hope the pieces being collected in a hangar at the Friedrichshafen airport can shed some more light.
In Britain, a spokesman for National Air Traffic Services (Nats) said Swiss airspace was not a huge area and it would not be impossible for airlines to reroute.
However, British Airways have confirmed that a couple of its flights to Italy were forced to re-route and were delayed by 20 minutes.
A spokesman for Nats said it was “impossible” to say what impact the cut would have on airlines flying across Europe.
“It’s essentially down to the central flow management unit in Brussels who issue slots for the airlines. It is very difficult to make any predictions at the moment,” he said.
“The airlines may feel it is better to re-route around Swiss airspace if they feel it is an unacceptable situation,” he added.
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By: Bhoy - 8th July 2002 at 15:45
RE: Airspace capacity reduced after crash
From BBC News Online
German investigators have revealed that the pilots of the Russian plane involved in last week’s mid-air collision with a cargo plane which killed 71 people received contradictory instructions seconds before the crash.
They said voice recorders recovered from both aircraft showed Swiss air traffic controllers told the Russian pilots to descend, while the on-board warning system instructed them to climb.
All 69 people – including 45 schoolchildren – aboard the Russian Tu-154, and two crew members on the Boeing 757 were killed when the two aircraft collided at 35,000 feet (10,500 metres) over the German-Swiss border.
The revelation came as at least 1,000 people in the Russian city of Ufa attended an emotional service in memory of their dead.
The ceremony followed the early morning arrival of a plane carrying the bodies of 33 of the 71 people who perished when a Russian Tupolev crashed into a Boeing cargo jet last Monday night.
Funerals
The city of Ufa, in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, lost 45 children in the crash.
On Monday, thousands of people gathered in the central square to pay their last respects to 33 of the victims.
Mourners crowded around wooden coffins bedecked with flowers, many clutching photographs of their loved ones who had lost their lives.
At the memorial service, Orthodox priests and Muslim clergymen offered prayers for the dead.
Then the coffins were taken by bus to the local cemetery and laid to rest.
The BBC’s Steve Rosenberg in Moscow says the tragedy has shocked Ufa and the country.
There is growing anger as the investigation continues, he says, with many people already pointing the finger of blame at air traffic controllers in Switzerland.
Conflicting orders
According to German authorities, cockpit warning systems told the Tu-154 to climb and the cargo jet to descend, just 45 seconds before the collision.
But voice recorders reveal that one second later, Zurich air traffic controllers told the Russian pilots to descend.
The Russian crew did not respond, so the Zurich control tower repeated the order 14 seconds later, investigators say.
The Russian plane responded and the two aircraft collided 30 seconds later.
Although the aircraft were flying over Germany at the time, they were under the control of the Swiss air traffic control body, Skyguide.
Investigations are being carried out by both Swiss and German authorities.
The Swiss inquiry is looking into the possibility of homicide through negligence, which carries a three-year jail term for anyone found guilty.
Irregularities
Earlier, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported that German air traffic controllers had tried to warn Skyguide that the planes were on a collision course.
But all attempts reportedly failed as the telephone network at Skyguide was down at the time for maintenance.
While Skyguide had initially pointed the finger at the Russian pilot’s failure to respond promptly to the air controller’s warning, it has been revealed that there were several other irregularities at the control centre on the night in question.
In addition to work apparently being carried out on the telephone network, the centre’s collision warning system was down for maintenance and only one controller was on duty at the time of the crash.
The controller, who warned the Russian pilot to change course just 44 seconds before the collision, has been described as overburdened by a German team investigating the crash.
By: KabirT - 8th July 2002 at 09:48
RE: Airspace capacity reduced after crash
yes…they have cut it by a fifth….
Swiss cut air traffic to avert new tragedy :
Skyguide, the Swiss air traffic control company which was responsible for directing the two planes that collided over Germany a week ago, has reduced its capacity by a fifth, a move likely to cause considerable delays to flights across Europe.
The company said that it was trying to relieve the pressure on its air traffic controllers, who have been suffering “extreme stress” since the accident, in which a Russian Tupolev 154 and a cargo jet crashed into each other over Lake Constance, killing 71 people.
“They are used to stress in their work, but this is another kind of stress,” Philipp Seiler, a spokesman at Zurich Kloten airport, said.
“We are particularly concentrating on reducing traffic in the periods where there is a high concentration of around 40 planes an hour.”
The announcement came as worrying details emerged of the chaos in the skies over Europe. A leaked report from German aviation experts revealed that there were 74 near-misses – known as “airprox” – over Germany last year.
The panel from the transport ministry, the civil aviation authority, the air force and the national aviation accident investigation committee said that 10 of the cases were classified as acute.
They included a British Airways plane approaching Munich airport which avoided collision with a small aircraft by 30 metres by making an emergency landing.
The report, published in yesterday’s Bild am Sonntag, described the German skies as “busier than the motorways”.
An acute shortage of air traffic controllers in Europe is exacerbating the problem, ac cording to Marc Baumgartner, president of the umbrella organisation for the world’s air traffic controllers, Ifatca, who said: “In some countries, such as Spain and Italy, air safety is only guaranteed if air traffic controllers work overtime.”
Europe-wide there is a shortage of about 2,000 controllers. About a tenth of the vacancies in Germany. Britain’s national air traffic services is suffering a similar shortage, a spokesman said.
German investigators have made public their alarming reconstruction of the moments just before last week’s crash, increasing the pressure on the Swiss air authorities to explain the apparent blunders which led to the collision.
The sole air traffic controller on duty in Zurich at the time of the accident was struggling to keep a watch on five planes on two radar screens. The control tower’s collision warning equipment had been shut down and the controller was using a faulty back-up telephone because the network was undergoing maintenance.
Der Spiegel reported that German air traffic controllers had tried to contact the Zurich control tower minutes before the crash to warn of the impending collision, but could not get through because of the phone problems. The Zurich controller, whose colleague was on a break, gave the Russian pilot just 44 seconds to lower his altitude, period considered wholly inadequate by experts.
Skyguide, which is technically a private company although the Swiss government has a 99.85% stake, has admitted that there were communication failures, but says questions about the two planes’ warning systems need to be answered before the true picture emerges.
“Only then will we be able to say whether it’s just a breakdown by us or a breakdown by others as well,” its director, Alain Rossier, told Swiss Radio.
By what is seen as an incredible coincidence, Skyguide renewed its civil liability insurance policy last Monday, just hours before the crash, taking out cover of 500m Swiss francs (£218m) with Pool Suisse aviation assurance, an increase of 70% on last year, the Tribune de Genève reported.
The reduction in air traffic capacity, which applies not only to take-offs and landings but also to planes using Swiss air space, will be reviewed on July 16.
British Airways was forced to divert several flights from Swiss airspace yesterday, causing delays of up to 20 minutes. Flights to Italy were diverted over Austria.
Britain’s air traffic control service said that more hold-ups were “inevitable” while the capacity restriction was in force.
Salvage workers searching for bodies in the countryside and lake around the crash site found the final two victims yesterday, the Friedrichshafen police said.
A Russian plane was to return to Bashkortostan, home to most of the victims, last night with 33 of the 37 bodies so far been identified.
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By: greekdude1 - 8th July 2002 at 00:30
RE: Airspace capacity reduced after crash
Well, in order to prevent further accidents, perhaps it was a good move. They obviously couldn’t handle it.
GD1
By: Dazza - 7th July 2002 at 21:31
RE: Airspace capacity reduced after crash
On BBC Radio 5 Live this afternoon they said the amount of traffic handled by Swiss ATC is to be reduced by 20%, kind of shutting the gate after the horse has bolted don’t you think?, but surely given the current amount, and inevitable increase in air traffic particularly on short european flights given the increase in destinations by budget airlines, the best course of action is to increase the amount of Air Traffic Controllers, the comment by NATS that Swiss airspace is not large and would be easy to re-route won’t hold sway with airlines, especially the budget ones, who will not want the extra fuel costs associated by the increased journey, what say you guys?
Regards, Dazza.
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July 7, 2002 at 4:00 pm