Questions are being raised whether air traffic controllers could be to blame for a mid-air collision, after the Russian airline whose plane collided with a cargo jet launched a staunch defence of its pilot.
Nikolai Odegov, director of Bashkirian Airlines (BAL), whose plane crashed into a DHL Boeing over southern Germany has denied its pilot could have been responsible for the crash by failing to heed warnings.
He was given less than a minute to change course by the Swiss air traffic controllers responsible for the border area where the collision happened.
In the ensuing disaster, 71 people were killed - 69 people, mainly Russian children flying on a holiday to Spain, on the Tupolev 154 airliner along with both pilots on the DHL Boeing 757.
Dive to disaster
German investigators report that the air traffic controllers' first warning to change altitude to avoid the Boeing came 50 seconds before impact.
The Russian pilot did not respond and only began his descent on a second warning, issued just 25 seconds before the crash.
By that time, an automatic safety device on board the cargo jet meant it too was plunging downwards and - instead of avoiding each other - the two planes collided.
In Germany, a commercial pilots' union representative dismissed the Swiss controllers' argument that the 50-second notice was "not irresponsible but tight".
"Normally we count on five to 10 minutes for two planes heading for a planned crossing of their flight paths to be separated," said Georg Fongern from Cockpit.
"Of course we must ask why the two planes were not brought apart earlier. That would have been the usual thing to do."
The Swiss air traffic control organisation, Skyguide, had initially said that it had given three warnings to the Russian pilot, the first up to two minutes before impact.
It later confirmed that the first warning came only 50 seconds before the crash.
It has also emerged that at the time of the crash only one controller was on duty while the other took a break.
Experienced pilots
In Moscow, Mr Odegov said that chief pilot Alexander Gross, 52, had clocked up 12,000 hours of flight time and had flown Unesco humanitarian aid flights to Brazil and Pakistan.
Both he and his navigator knew English, in line with international flight control requirements, he added.
Swiss air traffic also confirmed that there had been no language problem with the Russian crew.
The head of BAL, a regional company operating out of Bashkortostan in the Urals, instead blamed the Zurich air traffic controllers.
"They put the planes on the same path," he said.
Patrick Herr, of Swiss air traffic controllers Skyguide, said there were two main questions:
"Why did the Russian pilot not react immediately and why did the TCAS (automatic warning system) on the 757 advise its crew to dive?"
New planes
Investigators at the crash site around Lake Konstanz have found the flight recorders for both the Tupolev and Boeing.
Axel Gietz, a spokesman for DHL, said the Boeing had been built in 1990 and had been constantly maintained, and he could not explain the accident.
The Russian-built Tupolev 154 was even newer - built in 1995 - and equipped with modern safety systems, the Russian news agency Itar-Tass reports.
The planes dived from 11,500 metres (36,000 feet) and collided in mid-air, scattering burning debris for tens of kilometres.
Both had refuelled shortly before the collision, which would have added to the fireballs reported by eyewitnesses on the ground.
Amazingly, no-one on the ground was injured or killed, despite flaming wreckage pouring down around the German town of Ueberlingen.
(China Daily July 3, 2002)
