RE: Air crash warning system ‘switched off’-new tw
some latest news….
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Warning system was off and an air controller was on a break, officials say:
UBERLINGEN, Germany A collision-alarm system in the Swiss air-traffic control tower was out of operation and one of two key controllers had taken a break at the time of the midair crash that killed 71 people on Monday night, Swiss officials acknowledged Wednesday.
.
The disclosures increased suspicion among investigators that the cause of the crash stemmed at least in part from errors on the ground, and not, as Swiss officials had been implying, primarily from errors by the pilot of a Russian passenger plane.
.
The midair collision took place between the Russian plane, a Tupolev Tu-154 carrying 52 children to a vacation in Spain, and a Boeing 757 cargo plane operated by DHL Worldwide, the courier service.
.
Both planes had entered Swiss air space several minutes before the crash and were flying toward each other at exactly the same altitude.
.
As investigators from Russia arrived and joined their German counterparts in combing through the wreckage of two planes, air safety analysts increasingly focused on events in the Swiss control tower just before the crash.
.
It was not until about 50 seconds before the crash that Swiss controllers ordered the Russian plane to descend. The Russian pilot did not react at first, but then began to dive at precisely the same moment that DHL’s pilot made a fatal decision to start descending as well.
.
Officials of Sky Guide, the Swiss air traffic control authority, acknowledged Wednesday that one of the two controllers responsible for the planes had taken a break and was away from the radar screen in the minutes leading up to the crash.
.
At the same time, the traffic control tower had temporarily disabled an alarm system in order to perform routine maintenance work.
.
Neither action by itself would have been controversial. But Swiss Guide’s own rules call for both controllers to remain on duty when the alarm system is not functioning.
.
Anton Maag, head of the control tower at Zurich airport, acknowledged the lapse in protocol in an interview Wednesday with Swiss radio. “We must take care to see that existing prohibitions are carried out better,” Maag said on the DRS radio network.
.
The new disclosure is likely to intensify the conflict between Russian and Swiss aviation authorities, who have been trading accusations of blame ever since the two planes crashed in a fireball 35,000 feet (11,000 meters) above this lakeside village just north of the border with Switzerland.
.
Russian officials have been furious at Swiss officials who repeatedly complained that the Russia pilot was inexplicably slow in reacting to their warnings and orders to change course.
.
Maag, for his part, has defended Sky Guide and insisted that its controllers gave the Russian pilot more than enough time to get out of the way. Independent aviation experts said that the Swiss were technically correct, but they questioned why the air traffic controllers had waited so long before issuing their warning. The Russian Tupolev Tu-154, operated by Bashkirian Airlines, was “handed over” from German to Swiss controllers at 11:30 p.m. on Monday night, five minutes before the crash.
.
“These planes were known to be on crossing paths, and they were known to be flying at the same altitude,” said David Learmount, operational and safety editor of Flight International, an aviation journal based in London.
.
Learmount said that the Swiss officials were correct in saying that the planes could have avoided each other with only 30 seconds of advance warning. But, he said, the Swiss left little or no margin for mistakes.
.
“It’s enough time, but not by much it isn’t,” he said. “It is only just enough.”
.
Investigators have now retrieved the Tu-154’s cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, which are expected to provide key information about events leading up to the crash.
.
One question on many minds is why the collision-avoidance systems on board the planes failed to do their job. All passenger planes flying in European airspace are supposed to have such systems.
.
DHL’s Boeing 757 had such a system, and it apparently carried out the system’s orders. But the Russian plane did not.
.
Another question is why Swiss controllers never bothered to warn the DHL flight, a move that might have prevented it making its own descent when the Russian plane was descending.
.
European officials have hinted that the Russian crew may have been hampered by difficulties with English, the common language for air traffic control.
.
But the Russian plane had just flown through Austrian airspace, and controllers there reported no language problems.
.
“Their English knowledge was excellent,” Heinz Sommerbauer, a spokesman for Austro Control said Tuesday. “It gave us no problems.”
.
The balkanization of Europe’s air traffic control system, which is divided between 49 different authorities, may have played a role.
.
The Russian plane had checked in with Swiss controllers five minutes before the crash, and the DHL plane had crossed into Swiss airspace about 12 minutes earlier.
.
The European Commission, along with the airline industry, is pushing hard for a “single sky” system that would allow aircraft to deal with a far smaller number of controllers.
.
But William Gaillard, a spokesman for the Geneva-based International Air Transportation Association and a supporter of “single sky” concept for air traffic control, said that the multiplicity of authorities has created problems with delay and inefficiency rather than with safety.
.
“This is the first mid-air traffic collision in Europe since the 1950s, so this is a system that operates very well,” Gaillard said. At the site of the crash, workers had recovered 37 of the 71 bodies by Wednesday afternoon from inside and around the biggest chunks of wreckage.
.
Families of the Russian victims, many of them schoolchildren from Ufa, the capital of the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, were planning to come to Germany as soon as the search is complete.
.
They will be met by a team of more than 30 psychologists and counselors and begin the gruesome job of identifying the remains. Warning system was off and an air controller was on a break, officials say
UBERLINGEN, Germany A collision-alarm system in the Swiss air-traffic control tower was out of operation and one of two key controllers had taken a break at the time of the midair crash that killed 71 people on Monday night, Swiss officials acknowledged Wednesday.
.
The disclosures increased suspicion among investigators that the cause of the crash stemmed at least in part from errors on the ground, and not, as Swiss officials had been implying, primarily from errors by the pilot of a Russian passenger plane.
.
The midair collision took place between the Russian plane, a Tupolev Tu-154 carrying 52 children to a vacation in Spain, and a Boeing 757 cargo plane operated by DHL Worldwide, the courier service.
.
Both planes had entered Swiss air space several minutes before the crash and were flying toward each other at exactly the same altitude.
.
As investigators from Russia arrived and joined their German counterparts in combing through the wreckage of two planes, air safety analysts increasingly focused on events in the Swiss control tower just before the crash.
.
It was not until about 50 seconds before the crash that Swiss controllers ordered the Russian plane to descend. The Russian pilot did not react at first, but then began to dive at precisely the same moment that DHL’s pilot made a fatal decision to start descending as well.
.
Officials of Sky Guide, the Swiss air traffic control authority, acknowledged Wednesday that one of the two controllers responsible for the planes had taken a break and was away from the radar screen in the minutes leading up to the crash.
.
At the same time, the traffic control tower had temporarily disabled an alarm system in order to perform routine maintenance work.
.
Neither action by itself would have been controversial. But Swiss Guide’s own rules call for both controllers to remain on duty when the alarm system is not functioning.
.
Anton Maag, head of the control tower at Zurich airport, acknowledged the lapse in protocol in an interview Wednesday with Swiss radio. “We must take care to see that existing prohibitions are carried out better,” Maag said on the DRS radio network.
.
The new disclosure is likely to intensify the conflict between Russian and Swiss aviation authorities, who have been trading accusations of blame ever since the two planes crashed in a fireball 35,000 feet (11,000 meters) above this lakeside village just north of the border with Switzerland.
.
Russian officials have been furious at Swiss officials who repeatedly complained that the Russia pilot was inexplicably slow in reacting to their warnings and orders to change course.
.
Maag, for his part, has defended Sky Guide and insisted that its controllers gave the Russian pilot more than enough time to get out of the way. Independent aviation experts said that the Swiss were technically correct, but they questioned why the air traffic controllers had waited so long before issuing their warning. The Russian Tupolev Tu-154, operated by Bashkirian Airlines, was “handed over” from German to Swiss controllers at 11:30 p.m. on Monday night, five minutes before the crash.
.
“These planes were known to be on crossing paths, and they were known to be flying at the same altitude,” said David Learmount, operational and safety editor of Flight International, an aviation journal based in London.
.
Learmount said that the Swiss officials were correct in saying that the planes could have avoided each other with only 30 seconds of advance warning. But, he said, the Swiss left little or no margin for mistakes.
.
“It’s enough time, but not by much it isn’t,” he said. “It is only just enough.”
.
Investigators have now retrieved the Tu-154’s cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, which are expected to provide key information about events leading up to the crash.
.
One question on many minds is why the collision-avoidance systems on board the planes failed to do their job. All passenger planes flying in European airspace are supposed to have such systems.
.
DHL’s Boeing 757 had such a system, and it apparently carried out the system’s orders. But the Russian plane did not.
.
Another question is why Swiss controllers never bothered to warn the DHL flight, a move that might have prevented it making its own descent when the Russian plane was descending.
.
European officials have hinted that the Russian crew may have been hampered by difficulties with English, the common language for air traffic control.
.
But the Russian plane had just flown through Austrian airspace, and controllers there reported no language problems.
.
“Their English knowledge was excellent,” Heinz Sommerbauer, a spokesman for Austro Control said Tuesday. “It gave us no problems.”
.
The balkanization of Europe’s air traffic control system, which is divided between 49 different authorities, may have played a role.
.
The Russian plane had checked in with Swiss controllers five minutes before the crash, and the DHL plane had crossed into Swiss airspace about 12 minutes earlier.
.
The European Commission, along with the airline industry, is pushing hard for a “single sky” system that would allow aircraft to deal with a far smaller number of controllers.
.
But William Gaillard, a spokesman for the Geneva-based International Air Transportation Association and a supporter of “single sky” concept for air traffic control, said that the multiplicity of authorities has created problems with delay and inefficiency rather than with safety.
.
“This is the first mid-air traffic collision in Europe since the 1950s, so this is a system that operates very well,” Gaillard said. At the site of the crash, workers had recovered 37 of the 71 bodies by Wednesday afternoon from inside and around the biggest chunks of wreckage.
.
Families of the Russian victims, many of them schoolchildren from Ufa, the capital of the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, were planning to come to Germany as soon as the search is complete.
.
They will be met by a team of more than 30 psychologists and counselors and begin the gruesome job of identifying the remains. Warning system was off and an air controller was on a break, officials say
UBERLINGEN, Germany A collision-alarm system in the Swiss air-traffic control tower was out of operation and one of two key controllers had taken a break at the time of the midair crash that killed 71 people on Monday night, Swiss officials acknowledged Wednesday.
.
The disclosures increased suspicion among investigators that the cause of the crash stemmed at least in part from errors on the ground, and not, as Swiss officials had been implying, primarily from errors by the pilot of a Russian passenger plane.
.
The midair collision took place between the Russian plane, a Tupolev Tu-154 carrying 52 children to a vacation in Spain, and a Boeing 757 cargo plane operated by DHL Worldwide, the courier service.
.
Both planes had entered Swiss air space several minutes before the crash and were flying toward each other at exactly the same altitude.
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