M A I N   N E W S

71 die as planes collide

Parts of the wreckage of a Tupolev 154 is seen after a plane crashed in the southwestern German village of Owingen on Tuesday. The Russian plane flying from Moscow to Barcelona ignored warnings from ground control and collided with a cargo plane over southern Germany late on Monday. A young unidentified German girl mourns during a religious ceremony in tribute to the victims of the collision of two planes near Owingen in the southwestern Germany on Tuesday in the church of Ueberlingen.  — Reuters photos

Ueberlingen, Germany, July 2
A Russian passenger jet taking more than 50 children on a dream vacation collided with a cargo plane over Germany, killing 71 persons, officials said today.

Swiss air traffic controllers said the pilot of the Bashkirian Airlines jet flying to Spain reacted too slowly to warnings to reduce altitude before colliding with a plane operated by an international courier company, DHL.

Mr Sergei Rybanov, head of Bashkirian’s Moscow office, told reporters that the seven-year-old Tupolev 154 airliner had been chartered for the group from Moscow at the last minute because they had missed their original flight the previous day.

Russian officials said 69 Russians, of whom 52 were children and teenagers, were aboard the plane to Barcelona. Two pilots, a Briton and a Canadian, were killed on the Boeing 757 cargo plane operated by DHL.

The mid-air collision occurred at 2.10 a.m. today above the German-Swiss border on Lake Constance. The two jets were both diving to avoid a crash when they flew into each other, the authorities said.

Witnesses saw a fireball, and debris was scattered over a wide area. “I was lying in my bed, saw a ball of fire in the sky and ran out onto the balcony. Behind the forest, it looked like a fireworks display was going off,” said Klaus-Dieter Schindler, a janitor at a school in the village of Owingen. “In the glow of the fire, I saw wreckage falling out of the sky. It looked like black rain,” he said.

Swiss air traffic controllers repeatedly told the pilot of the Bashkirian airliner to reduce altitude to avoid a crash, said Mr Ulrich Mueller, Transport Minister in the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg, where the accident occurred.

The Russian pilot started a steep dive only after Swiss controllers had instructed him to do so three times, Mr Anton Maag, an official from Skyguide, the Swiss air traffic control agency, told a news conference.

The cargo plane started to dive when its on-board warning system instructed the pilot to drop altitude to avoid a crash, he said. If the Boeing had maintained its course, “there certainly would not have been a crash”, Maag said.

The youths killed, most of them children from the political elite in Russia’s oil-rich mainly Muslim region of Bashkortostan, were heading for a UNESCO festival in Barcelona.

Rescue workers found 15 bodies and the Tupolev’s flight data recorder.

Helicopters equipped with infra-red cameras clattered overhead as 800 rescue workers combed the area seeking victims and examining wreckage strewn over an area of 40 km. Reuters