A peaceful dark night in Uberlingen, Germany turns into one of the debris fields of the one of the world's worst mid-air collisions where two planes have collided killing hundreds of people. What happened? who was to blame? and why did systems which...
Our story begins in the city of Ufa in Western Russia on the 1st of July 2002. The local UNESCO committee is taking a number of school children on a trip of a lifetime to Costa Dorada on the Spanish coast. The school children and their teachers board a train on their way to Moscow to catch their flight. Once they reach the airport, they find to their despair it is the wrong airport and they miss their flight. Eventually, a new plane is obtained to take them to Spain. The school children arent the only people on this flight but many others including families visiting relations in Spain. The plane is a Russian manufactured Tupolev 154-M with the registration RA-85816 operated by Bashkirian Airlines. The Tupolev 154 is one of the most popular soviet airliners of the time, sleek, powerful and able to land on hard terrain, it was perfect for Russian airfields. It was so popular that when the Soviet Union collapsed many airlines in the former republics used it well into the 21st century, including LOT Polish Airlines, Ukrainian Airlines and Malev Airlines of Hungary. The crew are highly experienced. The plane is carrying 60 passengers and 9 crew, including the 45 school children. In the evening of the 1st July, Bashkirian Airlines flight 2937 takes off from Moscow Domodedovo on it's way to Barcelona El Prat Airport. They should arrive in a few hours.
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Meanwhile, in the Italian city of Bergamo in Northern Italy. A DHL Boeing 757 Freighter is getting ready for a flight to its European base in Brussels, Belgium. The plane had landed from Bahrain where the two pilots are based. Once the aeroplane is refuelled, the Boeing 757 registration A9C-DHL, takes off from Orio al Serio Airport on it's way to Belgium. The two planes will cross each others path over Southern Germany. This area, as well as a large area of Switzerland, is controlled by a private air traffic control centre based in Geneva Switzerland. In the daytime, this is one of the most congested airspaces in the world with aeroplanes landing in nearby Zurich Airport and Friedrichshafen Airport in Germany, alongside aeroplanes travelling around Europe. The private ATC can't instruct aeroplanes to land but communicates with nearby airports to help guide planes down. In the control tower today there is an only a limited amount of controllers on duty as the traffic on a night time in this airspace is low with only a few planes at any one time. Furthermore, the operators of the system have instructed maintenance to be done on the telephones which are out of action for tonight apart from emergency lines and the radar system is also in back up mode, which means the radars will be slower than usual. Additionally, a key system will assist in preventing collisions, called Short Term Conflict Alert (STCA). This will play a significant part in the disaster.
