On 1 July 2002, BAL Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev Tu-154 passenger jet, and DHL International Aviation ME Flight 611, a Boeing 757 cargo jet, collided in mid-air over Überlingen, a southern German town on Lake Constance, near the German-Swiss border. All of the passengers and crew aboard both planes were killed, resulting in a total death toll of 71 including 52 children.

The official investigation by the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (; BFU) identified the main cause of the collision to be a number of shortcomings on the part of the Swiss air traffic control (ATC) service in charge of the sector involved, as well as ambiguities in the procedures regarding the use of the traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) on board.

On 24 February 2004, Peter Nielsen, the air traffic controller on duty at the time of the collision, was murdered in an apparent act of revenge by Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian architect whose wife and two children died in the accident.

Background

Tupolev aircraft and crew

BAL Bashkirian Airlines flight BTC2937 was a chartered flight from Moscow, Russia, to Barcelona, Spain, carrying 60 passengers and 9 crew. Forty-six of the passengers were Russian schoolchildren from the city of Ufa, in Bashkortostan, on a school trip organised by the local UNESCO committee to the Costa Daurada beach area of Catalonia. Most of the parents of the children were high-ranking officials in Bashkortostan. One of the fathers was the head of the local UNESCO committee. They travelled on an overnight train to Moscow and arrived on 29 June, then, as their driver accidentally took them to the wrong airport, they missed their original flight. They remained there for two days until 1 July in order to find the arranged chartered flight. Flight 2937 departed from Moscow Domodedovo Airport at 22:48 Moscow Time (18:48 UTC) bound for Barcelona International Airport (now Josep Tarradellas Barcelona–El Prat Airport).

The aircraft was a 1995-built Tupolev Tu-154M, with aircraft registration .

The flight was piloted by an experienced Russian crew: 52-year-old captain Alexander Mikhailovich Gross () and 40-year-old first officer Oleg Pavlovich Grigoriev (). The captain had more than 12,000 flight hours (including 4,918 hours on the Tu-154) to his credit. Grigoriev, the chief pilot of Bashkirian Airlines, had 8,500 hours of flying experience (with 4,317 hours on the Tu-154) and his task was to evaluate Captain Gross's performance throughout the flight.

Murat Akhatovich Itkulov (), a 41-year-old pilot with close to 7,900 flight hours (4,181 of them on the Tu-154), who was normally the first officer, did not officially serve on duty because this was the captain's assessment flight. Sergei Gennadievich Kharlov (), a 50-year-old flight navigator with approximately 13,000 flight hours (including 6,421 hours on the Tu-154), and Oleg Irikovich Valeyev (), a 37-year-old flight engineer who had almost 4,200 flight hours (all of which were on the Tu-154), joined the three pilots in the cockpit. 47-year-old British Captain Paul Phillips and 34-year-old Canadian first officer Brant Campioni, who had to fly the second leg of the journey. Both pilots were very experienced — Phillips had logged close to 12,000 flight hours (including 4,145 hours on the 757) and Campioni had accumulated more than 6,600 flight hours, with 176 of them on the Boeing 757. Campioni had also previously worked as an air cadet and corporal in the Canadian Military Engineers. At the time of the accident, the aircraft was en route from Bahrain International Airport in Manama, Bahrain, to Brussels Airport in Brussels, Belgium, with a stop at Orio al Serio Airport in Bergamo, Italy, and departed Bergamo at 23:06 CEST (21:06 UTC). DHL Flight 611 reported to the area control center responsible for southern German airspace. Nielsen then instructed Flight 611 to climb from flight level 260 () to flight level 320 (). Flight 611 requested permission to continue the climb to flight level 360 () to save fuel. Nielsen permitted Flight 611 to climb after about four to five minutes, after which Flight 611 reached the desired altitude at 23:29. Meanwhile, Flight 2937 contacted Nielsen at 23:30, which also reported to be at flight level 360. Nielsen acknowledged the flight, but did not assign a different altitude to either aircraft. That meant that both were now at the same altitude and on a collision course. The collision would thus not have occurred if both the aircraft's crews had obeyed the TCAS's instructions.

Flight 611's pilots followed their TCAS instructions and initiated a descent, but could not immediately inform Nielsen as he was dealing with Flight 2937. The crew of Flight 2937, however, descended as instructed by Nielsen, contrary to the TCAS's instructions which advised the crew to climb. Both planes were now descending.

Unaware of the TCAS-issued alerts, Nielsen repeated his instruction to Flight 2937 to descend, giving the crew incorrect information as to the position of the DHL plane, telling them that the plane was to the right (2 o'clock position) when it was in fact to the left (10 o'clock position). About eight seconds before the collision, Flight 611's descent rate was about , not quite as rapid as the range advised by the TCAS.

Flight 611, responding to the developing situation, increased its descent rate. Eight seconds before the collision, Flight 2937's crew became aware of the situation when they gained visual sight of Flight 611 incoming from the left, and, two seconds before the collision, obeyed their TCAS instruction and attempted to put the aircraft into a climb. Unfortunately, the collision had by then become the aircraft collided at 23:35:32 CEST (21:35:32 UTC), at almost a right angle, at an altitude of , with Flight 611's vertical stabilizer slicing completely through Flight 2937's fuselage just ahead of the wings. Flight 2937 broke into several pieces, scattering wreckage into the Brachenreute neighborhood over a wide area.

Flight 611, now with 80% of its vertical stabilizer lost, entered a flat spin dive, and continued for a further for two minutes, before crashing into a wooded area close to the village of Taisersdorf at a 70° downward angle. Each engine ended up several hundred meters away from the main wreckage after being torn from the plane due to airframe stress, causing the black boxes to stop before the plane hit the ground, and the tail section was torn from the fuselage by trees just before impact. All 69 people on board Flight 2937 and the two crew members on board Flight 611 died.

The ground-based optical collision warning system, which would have alerted the controller to the pending collision about two minutes before it happened, had been switched off for maintenance.

The statement by Bahrain, the home country of the DHL plane, mostly agrees with the findings of the report. It says that the report should have put less emphasis on the actions of individuals and more on the faults within Skyguide's organization and management. Bahrain's statement also mentions the lack of crew resource management in the Tupolev's cockpit as a factor in the crash. Russia asserts that the DHL crew had a "real possibility" to avoid a collision, since they were able to hear the conversation between the Russian crew and the controller. At Skyguide, his former colleagues maintained a vase with a white rose over Nielsen's former workstation. Skyguide, after initially having blamed the Russian pilot for the accident, accepted full responsibility and asked relatives of the victims for forgiveness.

The Broken Pearl Necklace memorial was built in memory of the incident near Brachenreute, where much of the wreckage of flight 2937 landed.

Skyguide paid compensation to the families of the dead children; the compensation amount was about 36,000 at the time). The Swiss Federal Court turned down appeals from some relatives for higher compensation in 2011.

On 27 July 2006, a court in Konstanz decided that Germany should pay compensation to Bashkirian Airlines. The court found that Germany was legally responsible for the actions of Skyguide. The government appealed the ruling, but in late 2013, Bashkirian Airlines and Germany reached a tacit agreement, ending the court case before a decision on the legal issues was reached.

In another case before the court in Konstanz, Skyguide's liability insurance is suing Bashkirian Airlines for 2.5 million euro in damages. The case was opened in March 2008; the legal questions are expected to be difficult, as the airline has filed for bankruptcy under Russian law. The verdict was announced in September 2007. Three of the four managers convicted were given suspended prison terms and the fourth was ordered to pay a fine.

Murder of Peter Nielsen

Devastated by the death of his wife and two children aboard flight 2937, Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian architect, held Peter Nielsen personally responsible for their deaths. The Swiss police arrested Kaloyev at a local motel shortly afterward, and in 2005, he was sentenced to eight years for manslaughter. However, his sentence was later reduced after a Swiss judge ruled that he had acted with diminished responsibility.

thumb|right|upright|The Skyguide memorial to the aviation accident and killing of Peter Nielsen

He was released in November 2007, having spent three and a half years in prison, because his mental condition was not sufficiently considered in the initial sentence. In January 2008, he was appointed deputy construction minister of North Ossetia. Kaloyev was treated as a hero back home at Vladikavkaz, and expressed no regret for his actions, instead blaming the victim for his own death.

TCAS and conflicting orders

The accident raised questions as to how pilots must react when they receive conflicting orders from TCAS and ATC. TCAS was a relatively new technology at the time of the accident, having been mandatory in Europe since 2000.

In responding to a TCAS RA that directs a deviation from assigned altitude, the flight crew should communicate with ATC as soon as practicable after responding to the RA. When the RA is removed, the flight crew should advise ATC that they are returning to their previously assigned clearance or should acknowledge any amended clearance issued. The manual described TCAS as "a backup to the ATC system", which could be wrongly interpreted to mean that ATC instructions have higher priority. This ambiguity was replicated in the Tu-154 Flight Operations Manual, which contained contradictory sections. On the one hand, chapter 8.18.3.4 emphasised the role of ATC and describes TCAS as an "additional aid", while chapter 8.18.3.2 forbade manoeuvres contrary to TCAS.

Prior incident

About a year before the incident, another incident had occurred involving confusion between conflicting TCAS and ATC commands. In 2001, two Japanese airliners nearly collided with each other in Japanese airspace. One of the aircraft had received conflicting orders from TCAS and ATC; one pilot followed the instructions of TCAS, while the other did not. A collision was only averted because one of the pilots made evasive manoeuvres based on a visual judgment. The aircraft missed each other by about , and the abrupt maneuver necessary to avert disaster left 100 occupants injured on one aircraft, some seriously. Japan published its report 11 days after the Überlingen accident, in it calling on the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to make it clear that TCAS advisories should always take precedence over ATC instructions. ICAO accepted this recommendation and amended its regulations in November 2003.

Technical solutions

Before this accident, a change proposal (CP 112) for the TCAS II system had been issued. This proposal would have created a "reversal" of the original warning – asking the DHL plane to climb and the Tupolev crew to descend.

Additionally, an automatic downlink for TCAS, which would have alerted the controller that a TCAS advisory had been issued to the aircraft under their control, and notified them of the nature of that advisory, had not been deployed worldwide at the time of the accident. The TCAS II system was redesigned, with its ambiguous "Adjust Vertical Speed" RA voice command changed to "Level-Off", to increase proper responses from pilots.

In media

Films

  • The crash and the subsequent killing of the ATC were used as the basis of a motion picture produced by German and Swiss TV stations SWR and SF, called Flug in die Nacht – Das Unglück von Überlingen (Flight into the Night – the Accident at Überlingen) (2009), starring Ken Duken as Nielsen and Evgeni Sitochin as Kaloyev.
  • The U.S. film Aftermath (2017) is loosely based on the Überlingen mid-air collision, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a character largely based on Kaloyev.
  • The Russian film Unforgiven (2018) is based on the Überlingen mid-air collision, with Dmitry Nagiyev portraying Kaloyev.

Music

  • "Ballad of Vitaly", the closing track on the U.S. rock band Delta Spirit's album History from Below (2010), recounts the story of the midair collision and Vitaly Kaloyev's actions following the crash.
  • The German futurepop band Edge of Dawn alludes to Kaloyev's story and mentions his name in the song "The Flight (Lux)", which appears on their EP The Flight (2005) and their full-length album Enjoy the Fall (2007).
  • Russian rock-band "Year of Snake" has created a song 2000 bucks for a cigarette about unrelated topics: friendship, treachery, love and smoking addiction. Later the band lead Alexei Markovnikov has repurposed some lyrics of the song to create an eponymous air traffic control themed power ballad loosely-based on the accident. The ballad was published using the name of a non-existing rock band "Air traffic controllers". The song text is of the second controller going smoking due to severe smoking addiction, irresponsibly leaving another one to work alone for some time.

Podcasts

  • On 3 and 10 February 2019, Casefile True Crime Podcast: "Peter Nielsen", Case 106 (Parts 1 and 2) covered the story of the mid-air collision and subsequent killing of the former Skyguide controller Peter Nielsen, by Russian architect Vitaly Kaloyev.
  • On 12 January 2021, the Hard Landings podcast covered the story in Episode 64: The Überlingen Mid-air Collision.
  • On 5 May 2022, the Rooster Teeth Black Box Down podcast covered the story in Episode Season 3, episode 17: Accident Ends in Murder / Accident Ends in Murder / The Überlingen Mid-air Collision.
  • On 3 March 2023, the Take to the Sky: the Air Disaster Podcast covered the story in "Episode 137: The Uberlingen Midair Disaster."

Television

  • The collision featured in multiple segments of the Canadian TV series Mayday:
  • "Deadly Crossroads", a season-two episode (2005)
  • "Collision Catastrophe", a season twenty-five episode broadcast in 2025 with an entirely different cast.
  • The flight was also included in a Mayday season-eight (2009) Science of Disaster special titled "System Breakdown", which looked at the role of air traffic controllers in aviation disasters.
  • The National Geographic Channel documentary series Seconds from Disaster featured this mid-air collision in the episode entitled "Collision at 35,000 feet", released on 26 September 2011.
  • The episode is dramatized in the episode "Fatal Flaws" of Why Planes Crash.

Theatre

In the U.S. off-Broadway play My Eyes Went Dark, which opened 7 June 2017 and closed 2 July, playwright and director Matthew Wilkinson tells Kaloyev's story, which featured, among other characters, Declan Conlon as Kaloyev and Thusitha Jayasundera as his wife. It played at 59E59 Theaters in New York City.

See also

  • List of notable civilian mid-air collisions

Notes

References

Official report

  • <!--While this is in the references already, the final report is so crucial and central to the topic that it must stay in the external links section – This is true for every other fatal aircraft disaster as well – Also the German version must be here too, because in case of a conflict between the English and German, the German wins out-->Final Report – German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Investigation (English)
  • Appendices 1 and 3 (Archive)
  • Appendices 2 and 4–10 (Archive)
  • Final Report – German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Investigation – The German version is the version of record.
  • Appendices 1 and 3
  • Appendix 2
  • "Information regarding the air accident at Überlingen on 1 July 2002." Skyguide.
  • Davies, Barbara. "THE LOST CHILDREN; EXCLUSIVE Plane crash that robbed a Russian city of its youth." The Daily Mirror. 13 July 2002. – Includes partial victim list
  • District Court of Konstanz Bashkirian Airlines v. Federal Republic of Germany
  • Photo documentary from Owingen Fire Dept. (German) – Official website from Owingen Fire Dept. with photos from a firefighter's perspective
  • Identifying the factors that contributed to the Ueberlingen mid-air collision (PDF 322&nbsp;KB) – University of Illinois
  • Gallery of crash victim Kyrill Degtyarev's works
  • 'The Uberlingen mid-air collision: Lessons for the management of control rooms in the process industries', Loss Prevention Bulletin issue 196, 2007, IChemE, UK.
  • 'Work Practice Simulation of Complex Human-Automation Systems: The Brahms Generalized Überlingen Model'

On conflicting orders

  • ACAS II bulletin from Eurocontrol: Follow the RA!(PDF)
  • ACAS guiding material: CAP 579 (PDF)
  • Script for Case Study – Mid Air Collision over Ueberlingen

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  • Monument to the victims of air crash is opened – Official website of the City of Ufa
  • Collision en plein ciel – The website (in French) of a book about the disaster
  • Airliners.net Pre-collision photos:
  • RA-85816
  • A9C-DHL

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Official releases

  • Investigation Report of the German BFU (PDF 4095&nbsp;KB), and also:
  • Appendices 1 and 3 (PDF 2048&nbsp;KB)
  • Appendices 2 and 4–10 (PDF 2403&nbsp;KB)
  • ATC transcript (PDF 28&nbsp;KB)
  • Press Release – 3 July 2002, DHL
  • Following the Tragic Events of 1 July 2002, DHL Would Like to Pay Tribute to the Two Colleagues Lost

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Press

  • In pictures: German air disaster – BBC
  • Crash pilots given conflicting orders – BBC
  • Mid-air disaster claims 71 lives – BBC
  • Relatives visit jet crash site – BBC
  • Q&A: Mid-air crash – BBC
  • Nothing left to lose: grief-crazed murder suspect haunted by family's air deaths – The Guardian
  • Children's holiday party on doomed plane – CNN
  • – Russia Journal
  • A woman accompanying the air traffic controller? – Pravda
  • – Mosnews
  • A series of articles about the incident – The Scotsman
  • Father of air-crash victims guilty of revenge killing – The Independent
  • Losing Control of the Skies – The Guardian
  • Russian Pilot 'Error' in Mid-air Collision: BBC Report – People's Daily
  • Photos Haunting Ufa Teachers – The St. Petersburg Times
  • Man Held in Air Traffic Controller Death, The Washington Post
  • Warning Time Becomes Issue In Air Collision, The New York Times
  • Families of Russian children killed in mid-air collision file lawsuit, Airline Industry Information
  • Russians blame Swiss air traffic controllers for mid-air collision, CBC News
  • Anguish Over a Flight's Deadly Delay, The New York Times
  • Swiss: Air Collision Warning System Off, ABC News
  • Die verzweifelte Wut des Witalij K.
  • Plane crash killing trial starts, BBC
  • die story: Rache an einem Fluglotsen. Die zweite Tragödie am Bodensee
  • Skyguide flight control officers deny responsibility for killing 45 Russian children, Pravda
  • Controller admits mid-air crash errors, BBC
  • COLLISION IN THE SKIES: THE VICTIMS: Influence of powerful parents, The Independent
  • Russians Grieve For Victims of Air Collision; Internet Gaming Draws Devoted Followers; Fosset Circles Globe in Balloon, May Glide into Stratosphere, CNN
  • Visa delay saved one girl from disaster, The Telegraph
  • 'If only the children had not missed the first flight', The Telegraph
  • Crash alarm was off and air controller on break, The Telegraph
  • Vitaly Kaloyev Freed – Sky News

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Camphill School

  • The Camphill School Community Brachenreuthe commemorates the victims of the air tragedy of 1 July 2002

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Other

  • Collision en plein ciel Tragédie des enfants russes
  • Passenger list
  • Gallery of crash victim Kyrill Degtyarev's works

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