The Mid-Air Collision Of Flight 2937 And Flight 611 | Mayday S2 EP4 | Wonder

paper was light gold in medieval times i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong [Music] three thousand we're not getting any [Music] options we are in an emergency [Music] july 2002 over germany the middle of the night where is it a russian plane is taking children on holiday to spain but the pilots can't believe what they see heading towards them [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's among the most poignant air disasters of recent times how could two planes collide over one of the most closely regulated areas in the world problem with charlie faulty technology or human error oh [Music] june 2002 the city of ufa in western russia ufa is populated by both christians and muslims this year its most outstanding teenagers have been chosen to go on a two-week vacation organized by unesco near barcelona in spain they are among the most clever athletic or artistic children of ufa kirill dictarioff is a 14 year old prodigy he's been painting since he was four years old and has already had two public exhibitions he's halfway through his new work he was very good at painting he felt colors he received good reviews [Music] the trip sounded very exciting that's why we agreed that karil should go to spain he just graduated from grade nine he needed some rest and it was a good opportunity for a summer holiday [Music] alina hananova is a 12 year old who's won several gymnastics competitions we were very glad for her because indeed very smart and very talented children were flying there all extraordinary children in terms of their personalities she studied very well and she got only excellent marks i remember that she was pleased to go on the trip she loved getting ready for it she was so excited we purchased some clothes and some vacation stuff as she was born i informed my husband and he cried because he was happy to have a daughter [Music] the 46 children from ufa accompanied by a few teachers leave on a train to moscow there they're due to catch their flight to barcelona but in moscow things start to go wrong the tourist agency accidentally takes the children to the wrong airport so they miss their plane they're terribly disappointed while the agency tries to sort out the mess the children go sightseeing in the russian capital it takes two days to charter another jet but finally they're on their way to barcelona [Music] on july the 1st 2002 the children from ufa board their plane at a moscow airport the kaloyevs are not part of the school group they're going on a holiday to meet their father who's an architect and is finishing a project near barcelona [Music] [Laughter] no fewer than five russians are flying this plane the captain is alexander gross who's been a pilot for over 30 years [Music] alexander had a good theoretical knowledge he was very smart today the first officer is oled gregoriev but actually grigoriev is the airline's chief pilot on this trip he'll be evaluating captain gross is flying if you did something wrong some captains would criticize you very rudely others would be very formal and polite grigoriev would express his disapproval and a gesture like that meaning why on earth did you do that captain gross is in command but captain grigoriev is his supervisor if it comes to the crunch who will really be in charge seated in the left rear is murat is normally the first officer but who's not officially on duty because grigoriev is in his seat nevertheless since he'll soon be promoted to captain his opinions are considered proficient [Music] was a very professional pilot he loved to fly murat was interested in the new stuff in aviation and always kept up to date on the most progressive things brought in also on the flight deck are an experienced navigator and a flight engineer just before 11 that evening bashkirian airlines flight 2937 leaves moscow the plane is a tupolev 154 [Applause] like most modern aircraft it carries collision avoidance equipment called t-cass or traffic collision avoidance system defend tcas works because all commercial aircraft carrier transponder which sends a constant stream of radio signals identifying them and saying where they are [Music] tcas listens in and calculates whether any of the planes is on a collision course if they are it will tell the pilot what action to take to avoid collision if air traffic control should ever let them down t-cass will be their last line of defense [Music] hundreds of miles away in bergamo italy a boeing 757 is getting underway it's flying for dhl the international freight company and is heading for their european base at brussels in belgium the russian tupolev will cross its path over southern germany the boeing has only two people aboard captain paul phillips who's british and first officer brandt campioni who's canadian and due to fly the next leg of the journey the dhl takes off at six minutes past eleven on what will be its last journey [Music] hmm [Music] ten to eight at the sky guide area control center in zuri switzerland the busy day shift has ended and the night shift is reporting for work [Music] peter nielsen is an experienced controller he's been doing this job for eight years the center regulates air traffic in southern germany as well as northern switzerland tonight there are only two controllers on duty but the traffic in their sector is light and nielsen's colleague decides to take a lengthy break a common practice at sky guide peter nielsen is now responsible for all air traffic on two radar screens which sit several feet apart at 10 past 11 two technicians arrive they inform peter that sky guide management has authorized them to carry out maintenance work on the main radar while they do so the screens will work much more slowly and will give no visual two-minute warning if planes are getting too close to each other tie into 933 routes again algoy bavarian 3-5-0 descend flight level two seven zero the engineers now tell peter nielsen they have to shut down the telephone system as well they switch over to the standby phones no one realizes it yet but the seeds of disaster have been sown [Music] the russian plane filled with school children is now over central germany and flying towards switzerland captain grigoriev gets final clearance from the last german control center before they cross south into switzerland 128 decimal 05 bravo tango charlie 29 37 goodbye the german controller hands over the russian plane to sky guide where peter nielsen is at the helm [Music] meanwhile the dhl plane is climbing north over the alps and is now entering swiss airspace zurich radar good evening dilmoon611 i'm climbing flight level 260 direct obesity captain paul phillips of the dhl requests clearance to climb to a higher altitude the thinner air there will mean less air resistance and safe fuel roger climb flight level three two zero direct tango golf oscar and recruiting climb flight level 360. the dhl reaches flight level 360 or 36 000 feet the same altitude as the russian plane and they're on a collision course but they're many miles apart so far no danger now the assistant gives peter nielsen a new flight strip an airbus aero lloyd flight 1135 is flying to the airport of friedrichshafen nearby it's going to increase peter's workload dramatically over the next five minutes and have him switching from one screen to another peter tries to dial the airport control tower at friedrichshafen to discuss handing over the aeroloid flight to them but the line is dead he tries a second time the phones aren't working is trying to make contact with peter he has to leave the russian pilots unattended but the russian pilot is also calling him on the other screen airloid1135 roger call you back uh station calling please ah zurich good evening bravo tango charlie nine three seven level three bravo tango charlie two nine three seven squat uh seven five to zero the arrow lloyd is calling again now another plane needs him a thai airways flight heading north tie into 933 contact now on munich 132 decimal one four zero good luck air traffic controllers are used to handling tricky situations but tonight peter's equipment isn't working properly and he's controlling two screens at the same time normally his radar would warn of any impending collision what he doesn't know is that tonight it's out of action correct what is your present heading roger right turn heading two eight zero vector ils two four right heading two eight zero peter wants to get this aero lloyd flight off his hands he tries dialing the public number for the friedrichshafen control tower for the third time meanwhile the russian airliner and the dhl plane are still heading towards each other at a closing speed of over 800 miles per hour neither crew is aware that they're only two and a half minutes apart [Music] the dhl plane is now approaching the swiss border with germany the russian tupolev is heading for exactly the same spot and at the same altitude finally someone at another air traffic control center in germany spots the danger he grabs the phone to warn nielsen but can't get through international air traffic rules prevent him from talking to the pilots directly [Music] look look at that now for the first time the russian pilots can see the dhl plane on the screen of their tcas anti-collision computer but peter nielsen is still focused on getting the aero lloyd flight safely down earloid1135 yeah i lost my connection to friedrichshafen airport could you please call them on your second set one two four decimals three five uh tell them you're coming in ils24 with 20 miles now okay we'll do thank you okay taking over on the dhl cargo plane the crew is relaxed they don't know they're on a collision course their tcas hasn't sounded a warning yet stuff i can get you the first officer goes to the washroom on the russian plane the pilots are getting concerned the other plane is getting closer and closer but they're not exactly sure whether he's on the same altitude as them he's going below us why below 500 no 100 meters [Music] traffic traffic no [ __ ] traffic why tcas the collision avoidance computer is warning the russian pilots that the other plane is getting too close for comfort at the same moment the tcas in the dhl cockpit detects the russian plane defend descend peter nielsen finally realizes what's happening uh bravo tango charlie 2937 descend flight level three five zero expedite i have crossing traffic descent captain gross disengages the autopilot and starts to descend climb climb tcas is telling them to climb the controller is telling them to descend it says climb he is guiding us down probably disseminarly 2937 descend level three five zero expedite descent expedite descent level three five zero peter nielsen thinks he's averted a collision by telling the russian plane to descend but what he doesn't know is that the dhl pilots have received a tcas instruction telling them to descend increase 600. they're trying to tell nielsen that they have a tcas instruction to descend but peter can't hear them if both planes obeyed t-cass there'd be no problem but the russians instead of climbing have followed the controller's orders now both planes are diving towards each other he's going below us [Music] [ __ ] this ain't hard the tail of the dhl clips the belly of the tupelo tearing it apart the pilots soon lose consciousness the dhl struggles on for another two [Music] minutes it will crash four miles away is unaware of what just happened bravo tango charlie 2937 [Music] bravo tango charlie 2937 [Music] robert tang go charlie this is the nightmare that every controller hopes will not happen to him two of his aircraft colliding killing scores of people oh peter nielsen leaves the control room for the last time but his story is far from over [Music] the wreckage of the two planes has fallen just outside the small city of yuba lingan on the german swiss border wreckage is scattered over 130 square miles it's the worst mid-air collision in german post-war history debris comes raining down around a school for handicapped children run by bruno and stella wegmuller the sky was orange red flaming and we saw these pieces falling down and detonations again and again and we realized it couldn't have been a normal thunderstorm it was something we had never heard and seen before it was incredible because there are many many houses here and there was nothing on this place but around our school we find bodies children we very soon also realized that we couldn't do anything really we couldn't save anyone we couldn't help anyone today actually some people still suffer and see the pictures and have to learn to deal with these pictures and for other people it is like a bad dream the problem was that the bodies and debris were dispersed over a very very wide area approximately 40 square kilometers a corridor 20 kilometers long and two kilometers wide it was the largest police operation in the province of baden-wurttemberg lasting a week and involving over 6 000 people searching for the bodies the people were all very sad they were all in a state of extreme shock and naturally the rescue team could feel that and empathized with their suffering the policeman is standing where the dhl crashed here you see no more trees the trees have completely burned down we assume that the turbines of the boeing separated first approximately 700 to 800 meters high before this plane crashed one landed 300 meters that way and the other turbine was another 500 in this garden lay many of the bodies of the children of ufa in this part died 28 children in this field there was a child more over here in this field there was a [Music] when they showed a close-up of an airplane i saw an emblem of our bashkir airlines on the rear of the aircraft i didn't know what to do the hananov family lost their only daughter irina digged her ever lost her only child we hoped for some kind of a miracle that he missed the plane in a word we didn't want to believe in this news it was like thunder in a clear sky and god forbid anyone gets news like this the russian architect was awaiting his family in barcelona he's one of the first to arrive in uber lincoln although the relatives are not encouraged to participate in the search vitali cannot help himself [Music] vitaly finds a broken pearl necklace he recognizes it as his four-year-old daughters angel [Music] amazingly amidst all the carnage vitale finds his daughter's body intact she did not suffer at all the mutilated bodies of his wife and son won't be found until later over six days of searching the rescue workers gather bodies and body parts scattered all over the southern german countryside by thursday of that week two days later the relatives started arriving they could not all see the bodies we'd found because most of the bodies were badly charred or mutilated we didn't permit the relatives to view the bodies in that condition [Music] [Applause] [Music] in ufa in western russia both christian and muslim communities are devastated by the loss of their children in the cemetery where 53 of the people in the tupelo are buried there are two double rows of gravestones with the christian orthodox on one side and the muslims on the other it's eerily reminiscent of the seating arrangement on the plane [Music] the monument evokes a flight of paper planes frozen in flight [Music] this is carriel's grave the young talented artist and this is alina's the 12 year old gymnast [Music] vitaly khalif who lost his entire family has designed and built a huge monument in their memory day and night he lingers at the cemetery inconsolable [Music] at sky guide in zurich after the collision work has all but come to a standstill people were in a state of shock they were shocked they were helpless there was a lot of sadness people crying and we were criticized for being too technocratic after the accident i have to accept that uh one of the biggest tasks was to maintain operations because there were planes coming in going out after this tragedy and that was a very very difficult situation for everybody for the next three weeks of the zurich air traffic control center capacity is reduced for lack of available controllers peter nielsen never again worked on an air traffic workstation if you go through something like that you're not able to come back it's too deep in and it's too too big from an emotional point of view of course it was shattering and it was for me really really terrible terrible in the sense that um it happened to one of my colleagues it happened to our profession but it also happened to to families who who lost their children the hunt begins for a scapegoat if two planes collide in empty skies someone must be to blame at first some suspect the russians the pilot of the russian plane is said to have ignored repeated instructions from air traffic controllers repeatedly they contacted the russian pilot and asked him to change altitude because he was flying at the level where he should not have been now the russian pilot never responded to those warnings from air traffic control russian pilots particularly in soviet times and also now but to a lesser extent were extremely well trained i have no concerns about the training of pilots they've been trained for almost every operational possibility that could happen why did the tcas device meant to avoid collisions in this case maybe help cause one and why didn't the russian plane descend when first ordered a language problem controller commands are always in english i knew everybody from that crew everybody knew english enough to speak with controller so who is to blame the media spotlight now falls on controller peter nielsen he was the man who guided the two planes towards each other they were under his control he must have caused them to collide i was as shocked as i could have been with any other name or any other colleague i was just very sorry for him the media coverage about the the incident very often makes you angry because these statements are taken out of context you really get the impression they they just want to fill the newspaper they they write whatever they get they go after colleagues they give them a call at home they like follow you wherever you are you don't deserve to be the boogeyman for everybody and that's something which which really uh is is still very difficult to accept that suddenly we are some sort having to to take to blame because the others are dead or or the others are hiding behind politics rules and things like this we started to leave this building by by the underground exit which leads through another building just not to see anybody they were asking people on the street in clothing people were not involved at all just to to broadcast something in the evening and that makes you angry and you cannot resist it and what more do we know about this swiss control at the center of the investigation it was chased by the media he was accused of being a murder he's the man obviously everyone wants to talk to but at the moment the swiss say he's in no position to talk and we heard today the swiss authorities have opened an investigation to see whether there's enough evidence for charges of manslaughter the accusation was manslaughtered by negligence in 71 cases and the speciality is that in this case the investigating judge has been working on on a investigation on his own independently from what the aviation investigation board of germany did meanwhile that investigation is underway headed by germany's air crash detectives the bfu by the fifth day they've read all the black boxes so this is a typical voice recorder which was built into the tuple 154 it shows two reels the recording time of this recorder is 30 minutes and this is rather solid but the original voice recorder of the tupolev was heavily damaged so we had to remove the tape and replay it on such a specialized tape recorder this is the hangar where wreckage of the planes was examined this one here is the lower surface of the right wing of the tupolev and that remaining stop here went below the triple left and caused these scratches that top part of the vertical tail remained at the exit inside on the main wreckage of the boeing but could this accident have been avoided tcas normally has a safeguard mechanism called a reversal if an alert is issued and one aircraft crew ignores an instruction t-cass orders a reversal if the t-cass on aircraft a senses that aircraft b is still on a collision course it will tell it to go in another direction but it didn't why and the vehicle one of the major requirements for that is that both planes have to be at least 100 feet apart in altitude but this requirement was not met at the time that's why no reversal was given when the dhl's tcas saw that the tupolev wasn't climbing it could only tell its pilots to descend even faster if the reversal had been possible the children of uffa might have lived july 2003 many parents returned to uber lincoln in germany for the first anniversary the germans built a memorial on the site of the tragedy it's made up of a series of giant silver pearls on a broken necklace [Music] the head of sky guide is among the crowd can you tell us what are the mistakes you made i don't think this is the time to talk about it i'm sure you'll understand have you apologized okay thank you among the parents is vitaly khalif he asks the head of sky guide which controller was responsible for the accident but received no answer yes in fact the man asked if it is possible to meet the controller to meet peter and the answer was it is not possible the request passes almost unnoticed but vitaly khalif is not satisfied meanwhile as the investigators work they discover a fog of confusion surrounding tcas when it was introduced 20 years previously there'd been a fatal emission descend flight level 350 expedite no one said what should happen if there was a conflict between what t-cass was saying and what the controller was saying it says climb there's no hard and fast rule to guide the pilots he is guiding us down increased defense whilst pilots in the west have always been taught to obey tcas descent in the rest of the world it's anyone's guess we're not accustomed to not trusting controllers in civil aviation there were lots of situations when pilots didn't follow instructions of the controller and that led to plane crashes or other accidents the mentality of of russians is still very much in the lines of the old soviet ways and they're much more inclined to follow instructions than to do what they think may be appropriate they always reckon that the other guy knows better the potential for a terrible accident was there and a year and a half before the yuba lincoln tragedy it nearly happened over japan two jumbo jets with 677 people aboard came so close that they filled each other's windscreens the violent avoidance maneuver caused 100 people to be injured some of them seriously this was seconds away from being the worst plane crash in aviation history once again a pilot had listened to the controller instead of his tcas it should have served as a warning to everyone yet from iko the international civil aviation organization there was only silence iko is responsible for drawing up the rules of commercial aviation german investigators say that their vagueness about how to use tcas was one of the reasons for the uber lingan disaster i think this is the first time that i remember any major accident investigation the one done by the bfu fingering any any of the aviation authorities in any serious way and this is a serious way so i think this is quite unique if iko had carried out a detailed investigation of the incident in japan and made recommendations that led to changes in procedures this probably would not have happened iko did not feel it's necessary to get involved in this and they left it entirely up to the japanese authorities had it been a collision maybe they would have got involved after this near-miss the japanese government immediately asked for their guidance but unfortunately iko only acted on the request 18 months later after the uber lincoln disaster perhaps the iko procedures and standards but in particular operating procedures for airborne collision avoidance were somewhat ambiguous or open to interpretation the japanese incident was not the only warning ikea received in the two years leading up to the yuba lingan collision four other near misses happened in europe alone because one set of pilots evade air traffic control instead of their tcas if i have to summarize the advice that we gave the world if a warning comes from acres pilots should immediately follow it at all times with the benefit of hindsight you always ask yourself could we have done more and an accident is a wake-up call for everybody all of these regrets are of little comfort now to the grieving parents of uffa everything that was good is in the past and was connected with my child all the hopes dreams were connected with him with his future and now nothing left at least i've got nothing left so the right way to put it is my life didn't change it stopped [Music] it's getting stronger every year [Music] it's getting harder to live at first we had a hope that she'd come back that time would pass and things would fall into right places and now the hope is gone and the worst thing is is that the kids were flying happy healthy kids were going on a vacation and some grown-up people made a mistake made a fatal mistake and the kids were gone can you stop she was loved she was very kind gentle she was the beloved daughter beloved daughter this is room everything in this room is like it was when he was alive after he was killed there were also two exhibitions one exhibition took place here he planned that he'd finish it when he'd get back to you vitaly the russian architect has lost his entire family everything he himself has gone to pieces [Music] he's become obsessed with finding out who is responsible for the collision khalif decides to travel to zurich to play out the last tragic chapter in the uber lincoln story on february the 24th 2004 a stranger calls at the house of the controller peter nielsen oh it was just the saddest thing you can imagine i knew his family i know i knew how much he loved his kids and his wife and [Music] the presumed perpetrator is apparently 48 years old and of eastern origin he is likely the father of one of the families that was killed at the crash he likely lost his wife and both their children they found vitalik nearby in a hotel suspected but not yet charged with the murder he's presently in a psychiatric clinic while they decide whether he's fit to stand trial did he have the capacity to discern was it an impulse or did he have the capacity to commit a crime [Music] certain traces and police evidence were found which seemed to indicate that he could be the murderer we are working on this theory after the accused himself conceded that he could be the murderer we didn't want him to be killed we didn't want to have more victims related to that catastrophe because of our children the killing of the flight controller was a very very sad event and the saddest thing of all was that he was not actually responsible for the accident the system responsible for the accident was the poor sky guide management and quality control of their system the investigators had worked out exactly what went wrong that night at sky guide and how an unfortunate series of events had made disaster almost inevitable first peter's colleague goes for a break leaving him alone to watch two radar screens several feet apart it was a standard practice at the atc company that at night one air traffic controller was responsible for controlling the entire air space of atc zero then following management instructions the maintenance men start to switch things off peter's radar screen is working more slowly and will not warn him if two planes are about to collide he doesn't know that during the maintenance work the radar system had to be run in fallback mode in fallback mode the controller has no sdca available stca is short-term collision alert a warning on the radar screen that planes are in imminent danger of collision he did not know that the stca system would not be available then by chance an unexpected aircraft the aeroloid tourist plane arrives at the critical moment and needs a lot of attention it completely distracts peter he tries to get outside help but the main phone system has been accidentally disconnected by the maintenance crew and the backup phone isn't the working has been robbed of all the technical support he needs the telephone number the phone link with friedrichshafen was down at this time there were various radio transmissions and the controller had to answer them on the different frequencies finally when both planes are descending the dhl pilots cannot tell him what's happening because the radio frequency is busy inside the earliest they could do that was 23 seconds later because until then the frequency was blocked by the atc zurich transmission to the tupolev crew may 2004 it had taken the german bfu investigators 22 months to publish their final report they found that the disaster had two major causes firstly peter nielsen was too late in noticing the danger of a collision secondly the russian crew was wrong to obey him when he told them to descend rather than their own tcas equipment telling them to climb but other pilots understand their dilemma the tcas commands are spoken in such a dispassionate voice descend increased ascent such a matter of fact type of voice and then there's the voice of the air traffic controllers urgent command descend immediately leave this altitude immediately go to another altitude at once so whichever voice sounded more urgent was the one the crew obeyed finally the report severely criticized sky guide for leaving a lone controller on duty that night we have learned our lesson and we don't have single mount operations or only one controller in front of a monitor anymore this might happen again another badly organized air control service or our crew might make a mistake you're guilty or not guilty that's not the meaning of a final report the meaning of a final report is facts what has happened why did it happen what other lessons to be learned safety requirements why didn't they provide safety during that flight when my child was on board they must take the responsibility for not providing security for that flight mistakes were made by us also and we regret them deeply [Music] we acknowledge our responsibility as set out in the bfu report and we ask the families of the victims for forgiveness at sky guide in zurich a rose now sits in a vaz in memory of peter nielsen and the tragedy of uber lincoln you

Channel: Wonder

Views: 2,380,205

Keywords: Wonder, wonder channel, survivial videos, survival stories, i shouldn't be alive, wonder i shouldn't be alive, outdoor channel, extreme documentary, air crash investigation, air crash investigation 2020, seconds from disaster, mayday, mayday plane crash, plane crash doc, plane crash documentary, plane crash disaster, dhl flight 611, bashkirian airlines flight 2937, mid-air collision, dhl crash, air crash investigation 2021, überlingen mid-air collision

Id: iLWxy-SQ6hY

Length: 52min 10sec (3130 seconds)

Published: Thu May 06 2021