Air crash victim father arrested in controller death probe

Swiss police today arrested a man who lost his wife and two children in a midair collision on suspicion of stabbing to death the air traffic controller blamed for the crash

Zurich prosecutor Pascal Gossner said the 48-year-old man has denied killing the 36-year-old Peter Nielsen at his home on Tuesday night.

Gossner and the police said it could have been an “act of revenge”.

He declined to give the arrested man’s nationality, although he said the man had only been in Switzerland since February 18 – six days before the murder.

The collision between a Russian charter airliner and a cargo plane over southern Germany 19 months ago killed 71 people – 45 of them prize-winning Russian schoolchildren bound for a Spanish holiday.

At the time the planes were under Swiss air control,

Dane Nielson, who was on duty alone because a colleague was taking a break, gave only 44 seconds of warning to the Bashkirian Airlines airliner and a DHL cargo plane that they were getting too close.

Preliminary accident reports have said that the controller then told the Russian plane to descend, countermanding the jetliner’s onboard collision-avoidance system which was demanding it climb.

The pilot followed the instructions of the controller – sending the jetliner straight into the DHL cargo plane, which also was descending in accordance with its collision-avoidance equipment.