#überlingen mid-air collision | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pilotful-day · 4 years

Text

2002 Überlingen Mid-Air Collision

1 July 2002

Bashkirian Airlines Moscow to Barcelona 4 pilots and 1 engineer Filled with school children TCAS - Traffic Collision Avoid System [TCAS works because all commercial aircraft carries transponder TCAS listens in and calculates whether any of the planes are on collision course].

DHL Italy Bergamo to Brussels 2 pilots on board 2 controllers on duty but the traffic wasn’t so busy, so 1 controller went for a break. And now only left with 1 person responsible for all radar screens. Engineers shut down telephone system in ATC.

Bashkirian plane flying towards Switzerland DHL climbing North entering Swiss airspace DHL request higher altitude to save fuel (FL360) Traffic controller controlling 2 screens at the same time. Telephone line not working so can't transfer a plane to other ATC to reduce workload.

DHL approaching Swiss boarder and Bashkirian plane on same altitude Another ATC spots the upcoming conflict but cannot reach the sky guard. International ATC rule prevent him from talking to the pilots directly.

Bashkirian pilots sees TCAS but air traffic controller is concentrated on other task. DHL don't know they are on collision course. Planes come closer and closer but they are not sure if they are on the same altitude. TCAS warns both Bashkirian and DHL Controller finally aware of the danger and tells Bashkirian pilots to descend to lower altitude but TCAS is telling the pilots to climb. But DHL is descending because the TCAS is telling them to descend. Russian pilots listens to ATC instead listening to TCAS telling them to climb.

The tail of DHL collides with belly of Russian plane.

Wreckages of two planes on German and Swiss border.

#aircrash #aircrashinvestigation #pilot #aviation #study #student #flying #accident #midaircollision

1 note · View note

tony419c-blog · 5 years

Text

Security Everywhere – My Personal Reflection on the 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

Last week I happened to watch an episode of Air Crash Investigations on 7 TWO after a tiring but enjoyable day of working of COMP6441. That episode recounted the disastrous 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision and I made some research about this accident after watching the TV documentary.

The centre piece of that accident was the confusion between conflicting orders issued by onboard TCAS (Traffic collision avoidance system) system and that given by the ATC (Air traffic controller) on the ground. The TCAS system on both aircrafts did give proper orders – instructing the Boeing to descend and the Tu-154 to climb. But the pilots onboard the Tu-154 followed ATC’s order to descend. The pilots of Tu-154 only changed their minds and followed the TCAS’s order to climb just 2 seconds before the collision.

All occupants onboard of the Russian Tu-154 and all two crew members onboard of the DHL Boeing are dead, with no survivors.

The air traffic controller in charge of the airspace at that night, Peter Nielson, was murdered by a father of the victims two years later, adding another sad chapter on this disastrous incident.

Problems arise as to whom should be given precedence to when two conflicting orders are presented in front of the pilots. The ICAO finally revised the procedure manuals and chose to trust the TCAS system rather than ground humans of ATC.

In Information Technology, confusion due to conflicting advices issued from computer and specialists are common. In the old days of Windows XP, recommendations from system were that normal users should run their application software in a ‘normal account’ rather than an ‘administrative account’. But who would carry out her daily work on computer in a ‘normal account’? Because of this kind of ‘bureaucratic’ design and the prevalent use of administrative accounts, virus and malwares could make their way to our computers with little or no efforts. This situation brought forth the famous UAC in Windows Vista and has been an integral part of Windows ever since. UAC is a perfect example of the combination of decisions made by computer and human. It intercepts crucial or suspicious operations and pop up a yes-or-no dialog for user to decide. Since Windows 7, Microsoft has balanced the frequency of UAC prompts to a level where users feel reasonable.

References

Wikipedia. 2019. 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision - Wikipedia. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collision. [Accessed 22 July 2019].

Wikipedia. 2019. Traffic collision avoidance system - Wikipedia. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_system. [Accessed 22 July 2019].

DulceMontemayor. 2019. How User Account Control works (Windows 10) | Microsoft Docs. [ONLINE] Available at: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/identity-protection/user-account-control/how-user-account-control-works. [Accessed 22 July 2019].

. 2019. How to determine your user account type in Windows. [ONLINE] Available at: https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/2663817/how-to-determine-your-user-account-type-in-windows. [Accessed 22 July 2019].

"Deadly Crossroads". Mayday. Season 2. Episode 4. 2004. Discovery Channel Canada / National Geographic Channel.

#comp6441

0 notes

traktportugal · 7 years

Photo

Mayday 2x06 "Deadly Crossroads: Überlingen Crash (Mid-Air Collision)" January 14, 2017 at 09:31PM http://ift.tt/2jkweas

#IFTTT #André L #traktportugal

0 notes

hms-rodney-official · 6 years

Text

The Überlingen Mid-Air Collision

Exactly 16 years ago, on the night of July 1st 2002, the small town of Überlingen near Lake Constance in southern Germany was rocked by the news of a terrible air accident that happened nearly 10 kilometers above the city. As a search and rescue effort was launched by the authorities, two horrible truths quickly surfaced - that no one had survived and that the accident involved two aircraft.

The sequence of events of the distaster started a few days before in Moscow. A group of gifted students from the town of Ufa were being taken on a trip to Spain organized by UNESCO. Because of a mistake made by the organizers, the children, after arriving by train from Ufa, were dropped off at the wrong airport in Moscow, missing their scheduled flight. After two days, new arrangments were made.

On the evening of July 1st 2002 Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a chartered Tupolev Tu-154M, took off from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, en route to Barcelona. Overall, there were 69 people on board - 60 passengers (including 45 children, parents of some of the children also taking on the role of guardians of the group as well as and the wife and two children of russian architect Vitaly Kaloyev) and 9 crew members. The cockpit of the Tupolev was crowded - the command of the flight was in the hands of 52-year-old captain Alexander Gross. He was an experienced pilot, with over 12,000 hours of flight time behind his belt. Normally, the duties of the first officer would be fulfilled by 41-year-old Murat Itkulov - however, Flight 2937 was also supposed to be Captain Gross’ evaluation flight. Because of this, Itkulov’s duties were taken over the chief pilot of the airline - 40-year-old Oleg Grigoriev. The cockpit crew was rounded off by 37-year-old flight engineer Oleg Valeev and 50-year-old navigator Sergei Kharlov. There were also 4 flight attendants on board.

Another act of the tragedy began in the evening of July 1st on the tarmac of the airport in Bergamo. One of the planes taking off was DHL Flight 611. The cargo Boeing 757 was completing a second leg of a routine flight from Bahrain to Brussels, with a scheduled stopover in Bergamo. Since the Boeing was a cargo plane, there were only 2 pilots on board - 47-year-old British captain Paul Phillips and 37-year-old Canadian First Officer Brant Campioni.

Because of the assigned air corridors, the paths of both planes would intersect in the airspace around Überlingen. Even though the town is located on the German side of Lake Constance, the air traffic control survelliance and guidance in that area is handled by the private Skyguide air traffic control center in Zürich. On the night of the 1st of July, the center was, however, not fully operational. At the time, the scheduled maintenance of both the radar array and the telephone lines was planned. Because of this, the anti-collision warning was switched off and the radar picture was delayed. The telephone lines were also switched off. During the evening, there were two controllers on duty responsible for the southern German sector. However, since the traffic had been light that evening, the second controller decided to take a break - while it was against regulations, it was a common practice at SkyGuide. This meant that as both planes flew into the control area, there was only one controller on duty - 34-year-old Peter Nielsen.

Because of international aviation regulations, both planes were equipped with a system called TCAS - Traffic Collision Avoidance System. In case both planes were on a collision course, the system would identify a conflict and issue opposite oral commands to the flightcrews, ordering one to descend and one to climb until they are clear of conflict. As they entered the Skyguide controlled airspace, both aircraft were cruising at an altitude of 36 thousand feet and on a collision course. However, at the time Nielsen’s attention was fixed on an AeroLloyd flight attempting to land at Friedrichshafen Airport. Since the telephone lines were disconnected, Nielsen could not contact the airport’s control tower to hand the flight over to them. Also, since the Friedrichshafen approach area was displayed on a different radar screen than the area over Überlingen and the collision alarm was switched off for maintenance, Nielsen at first did not spot the danger.

The TCAS system, however, did. As both the Tupolev and the Boeing closed the distance, the system activated on both planes. At first, it only advised the crews of approaching traffic. However, as the planes neared each other, the warning step activated. It instructed the Russian pilots to climb, while the DHL crew was given the instruction to descend. The DHL pilots followed the system’s command and began their descent. The cockpit voice recorder in the Russian plane, however, registered audible confusion on the part of the Russian pilots, who were unsure of whether to follow the commands of the TCAS, or to wait for the ATC to respond to the situation.

As Nielsen came back to his original station, he quickly spotted the danger. In his haste, he contacted the Russian airliner and ordered it to descend, not knowing that the DHL plane was descending as well (the pilots of the cargo plane did radio in the fact that they were descending as told by TCAS, but Nielsen did not hear their radio call due to his attention being diverted to the AeroLloyd flight). The Russian pilots followed the command of the controller, even though TCAS was telling them to climb. Seconds before the collision, both crews spotted each other in the night sky - but with the closing speed of both jets, it was too late to avoid the collision.

At 11:35 PM local time, both aircraft collided in mid-air at a near 90 degree angle at an altitude of 34,890 feet. The tailfin of the 757 sliced through the midsection of the Tupolev just before the wings, tearing open the central fuel tank and causing a catastrophic explosion. The Tupolev disintegrated in mid-air, with the wreckage falling in a large area in the farmland around Überlingen. The crippled DHL plane, having lost 80% of its vertical stabilizer, became unflyable and later crashed in a forest near the village of Taisersdorf. As the German authortities began the rescue operation, it quickly became clear that no one had survived the violent impact. 71 passengers and crew on both planes were killed.

The German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation helmed the main part of investigating the disaster. The final report laid most of the blame on Skyguide, citing the actions of controller Peter Nilsen and substandard facility management as heavily contributing to the disaster. The German report also called for clearer procedures regarding the handling of situations where TCAS and ATC commands conflicted with each other. The ICAO, also accepted those suggestions, implementing a rule by which TCAS commands now have precedence over ATC instructions in all situations.

The story of the Überlingen would, however, take an even darker turn. After the crash, Peter Nielsen had to be hospitalized and put under psychiatric care due to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He would never work as an air traffic controller again.On the 24th of February 2004, Nielsen was stabbed to death by Vitaly Kaloyev - the Russian architect who lost his entire family in the accident. Shortly after the murder, Kaloyev was arrested by the Swiss police and later handed a prison sentence for murder. He was, however, released from prison in November 2007, since the appeals court deemed that the original sentence did not account for Kaloyev’s mental state while committing the crime. He returned to Russia, where he would later serve as a Minister of Construction in the Republic of North Ossetia. He would retire with honors in 2016.

dailymotion

#überlingen mid-air collision #aviation #air crash #germany #russia #switzerland #dhl flight 611 #bashkirian airlines flight 2937 #anniversary

74 notes · View notes