Court convicts four over Swiss mid-air plane crash

Four employees of a Swiss air traffic control company were convicted of negligent homicide over a mid-air plane crash that killed 71 people.

A district court in Buelach, near Zurich, sentenced three middle managers to one-year suspended prison terms, while the other employee – a project manager - was ordered to pay a fine of 13,500 Swiss francs (€8,290).

The four employees of Skyguide were found responsible for the July 1 2002 collision of a Bashkirian Airlines plane and a DHL cargo jet near the south German town of Ueberlingen. The two cargo pilots and everyone on the passenger plane were killed.

All four will have to share court costs of £10,350 (€15,322).

Four other officials of Skyguide were acquitted of wrongdoing in the accident, which killed dozens of Russian schoolchildren and their families on a holiday trip to Spain. Although they were over Germany, the planes were in airspace controlled by Skyguide.

The only air traffic controller on duty at the time of the accident, Danish-born Peter Nielsen, was stabbed to death in 2004 by a Russian man whose wife and children died in the crash.

Vitaly Kaloyev is currently serving a prison sentence of five-and-a-quarter years for killing Nielsen.

Some of the defendants, who have not been identified because of Swiss privacy laws, blamed Nielsen for not following proper procedures.

But prosecutors in the trial said a culture of negligence and lack of risk awareness at the company contributed to the accident, and that it was not solely Nielsen’s fault.

Francis Schubert, Skyguide’s interim chief executive, said the company had “learned the lessons from this tragic event and has done everything to ensure that an accident of this kind cannot happen again”.

He said the tragedy was the result of a number of factors including people, technology and procedures.

“The legal proceedings and now the court’s judgments have been a very difficult and emotional time for everyone concerned,” Schubert said.

Vladimir Savchuk, a victim’s relative, said the verdict should serve as a warning for others.

“It’s not a punishment (for them) which we need, but a warning to others what kind of flight security they get so that their flight doesn’t end up in tragedy,” Savchuk said on Russian state television Rossiya.

Presiding judge Rainer Hohler said the three sentenced to suspended prison terms were responsible for ensuring that at least two air traffic controllers were on duty. They also should have informed the neighbouring control centres of problems that were being caused by maintenance work.

Before his death, Nielsen told investigators that he had worked under stressful conditions on the night of the crash, because a colleague took a break and maintenance on the air traffic control system had affected monitoring and communications.