Air crash alert ‘came too late’

AN AIR traffic controller, who was later killed by a bereaved father, left it too late to warn the pilots involved in the crash which killed the man’s family.

German investigators said in their final report that the 2002 mid-air crash happened after the Swiss-based controller was too slow to notice that the planes were on a collision course.

However, they added that Peter Nielsen, who was stabbed outside his Zurich home earlier this year, was not the only one at fault over the deaths of 71 people in the collision between a Russian charter airline filled with schoolchildren and a cargo plane.

Instructions from Mr Nielsen, a Danish national, gave the planes only 43 seconds' warning and set off a series of mishaps that led to the July 1, 2002, crash over southern Germany.

The controller told the Russian pilots to descend, while their onboard collision-avoidance system demanded they climb to avoid the DHL cargo jet which was also descending.

The report suggested that the Russians' training led them to give priority to the controller, and that Nielsen's instructions sparked an argument between the Russian pilots.

The Bashkirian Airlines crew obeyed the controller, sending the jetliner with 69 people aboard straight into the DHL plane.

The investigators said the risks had been noticed too late at Swiss air traffic control company Skyguide.

Mr Nielsen was on duty alone in the Zurich control room because a colleague was taking a break and had not been told that a collision-avoidance system at Zurich was partly down for maintenance.

Russian architect Vitaly Kaloyev, whose wife, son and daughter died in the crash, was arrested after Mr Nielsen was killed on February 24. He is being held at a psychiatric clinic and has not been charged.