On the night of Monday, 1 July 2002, BAL Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev Tu-154 passenger jet, and DHL International Aviation ME Flight 611, a Boeing 757 cargo jet, collided in midair over Überlingen, a southern German town on Lake Constance, near the Swiss border. All of the passengers and crew aboard both planes were killed, resulting in a total death toll of 71.
The official investigation by the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation ( -BFU) identified the main cause of the collision to be a number of shortcomings on the part of the Swiss air traffic control (ATC) service in charge of the sector involved, as well as ambiguities in the procedures regarding the use of the traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) on board.
In 2004, Peter Nielsen, the air traffic controller on duty at the time of the collision, was murdered in an apparent act of revenge by Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian citizen whose wife and two children had been killed in the accident.
Aircraft involved
Flight BTC2937 was a chartered flight from Moscow, Russia, to Barcelona, Spain, carrying 60 passengers and nine crew. Forty-six of the passengers were Russian schoolchildren from the city of Ufa, in Bashkortostan, on a school trip organised by the local UNESCO committee to the Costa Daurada beach area of Catalonia. Most of the parents of the children were high-ranking officials in Bashkortostan. One of the fathers was the head of the local UNESCO committee. They travelled on an overnight train to Moscow and arrived on 29 June, then, as their driver accidentally took them to the wrong airport, they missed their original flight. They remained there until 1 July in order to find the arranged charter flight. Flight 2937 departed at Moscow Domodedovo Airport at 22:48 Moscow Time (18:48 UTC) bound for Barcelona International Airport (now Josep Tarradellas Barcelona–El Prat Airport).
The aircraft, a 1995-built Tupolev Tu-154M registered as was first delivered to BAL Bashkirian Airlines before being sold to Transeuropean Airlines in 1998. The aircraft was once again sold to Shaheen Air in 1999 before being returned to BAL Bashkirian Airlines in January 2002. The flight was piloted by an experienced Russian crew: 52-year-old Captain Alexander Mikhailovich Gross () and 40-year-old First Officer Oleg Pavlovich Grigoriev (). The captain had more than 12,000 flight hours (including 4,918 hours on the Tu-154) to his credit. Grigoriev, the chief pilot of Bashkirian Airlines, had 8,500 hours of flying experience (with 4,317 hours on the Tu-154) and his task was to evaluate Captain Gross's performance throughout the flight.
The 41-year-old seasoned pilot, Murat Akhatovich Itkulov (), with close to 7,900 flight hours (4,181 of them on the Tu-154), who was normally the first officer, did not officially serve on duty, because this was the captain's assessment flight; 50-year-old Sergei Gennadyevich Kharlov (), a flight navigator with approximately 13,000 flight hours (including 6,421 hours on the Tu-154), and 37-year-old Flight Engineer Oleg Irikovich Valeev (), who had almost 4,200 flight hours (all of which were on the Tu-154), joined the three pilots in the cockpit.
DHL International Aviation ME Flight 611, a Boeing 757-23APF cargo aircraft built in 1990 and first delivered to Zambia Airways as before being sold to Gulf Air as in late 1993. It was then sold to SNAS Aviation in 1996 under the same registration. The aircraft was then sold to European Air Transport as in 2000 until 2002 before being sold once again to DHL International as . The flight was being flown by two Bahrain-based pilots, 47-year-old British Captain Paul Phillips and 34-year-old Canadian First Officer Brant Campioni. Both pilots were very experienced — Phillips had logged close to 12,000 flight hours (including 4,145 hours on the Boeing 757) and Campioni had accumulated more than 6,600 flight hours, with 176 of them on the Boeing 757. Campioni had also previously worked as an air cadet and corporal in the Canadian Military Engineers. At the time of the accident, the aircraft was en route from Bahrain International Airport in Manama, Bahrain, to Brussels Airport in Brussels, Belgium, with a stop at Orio al Serio Airport in Bergamo, Italy, and departed Bergamo at 23:06 CEST (21:06 UTC).
Accident
The airspace was controlled from Zürich, Switzerland, by the Swiss federal airspace control Skyguide. Air traffic controller Peter Nielsen, the only controller handling the airspace, was working two workstations at the same time.