GERMANY: Court rules Germany liable for air crash between a Russian passenger jet and a cargo plane that killed 71 people in 2002

Court in Germany ruled on Thursday (July 27) that the country was liable for an air crash between a Russian passenger jet and a cargo plane that killed 71 people -most of them children - four years ago. The mid-air collision over the German village of Ueberlingen close to the Swiss border between a Bashkirian Airlines' plane and a DHL cargo aircraft killed 69 people on board the Russian jet as well as the two pilots flying the German plane. The court said Germany had breached its constitution by subcontracting airspace control to private Swiss firm Skyguide - which it found had operated with severe organisational deficiencies - and the country had to foot the bill for the crash close to lake Constance. "The Federal Republic has not controlled skyguide properly, court-spokesman David Eisele told Reuters."Nobody monitored what was going on there and nobody tried to take any influence. The court considered this as inappropriate." The sovereign task of securing air space had never been effectively transferred to Switzerland, the court said in its ruling for the law suite filed by Bashkirian Airlines. "This means Germany cannot say that it should be Skyguide's liability," the court added on its Web site. Germany's transport ministry declined to comment initially on the possible implications of the ruling on air traffic control procedures. On July 1, 2002, Skyguide operated with a sole air traffic controller who told the pilot of the Russian Tupolev plane to descend to avoid a collision, even though early-warning instruments aboard the plane had told the pilots to climb. The DHL Boeing 757's automatic anti-collision system also instructed its pilots, which were headed for Brussels, to descend to the same level, where the plane's tail fin sliced open the Russian passenger jet. Both aircraft disappeared from radar screens 15 seconds later. Skyguide, running its operation with a sole air traffic controller at the time of the collision, had demonstrated severe operational deficiencies while controlling air space over much of southern Germany, said the court. It added that it had not yet decided on the amount of compensation to be paid to Bashkirian airlines for the crashed plane which was flying from Moscow to Barcelona. Two years ago a Russian man who had lost his wife and two children in the crash stabbed and killed the Skyguide air traffic controller in front of his family in Switzerland. The Russian was jailed for eight years for premeditated killing last October.

ITN Source | July 28, 2006

Tags:. .germanys. .village. .traffic. .border. .jailed