Germany rejects Swiss flight control officers

The crash of the TU-154 and Boeing-757 crash was inevitable. If it had not happened, sooner or later, a similar tragedy would have happened with aother plane, which would have been due to mistakes of the air traffic control service of Switzerland. This is the position of Werner Bucher, observer of Blick daily. To be honest, such statements hardly provide comfort..

Earlier, Bucher also said that, within one year, 22 air accidents took place in Swiss air. Bucher states that, earlier, he also expressed alarm, especially after last July, when planes of the Swiss Air and Cross Air companies almost collided with each other. The planes passed one another at a distance of 30 miles (it is too little for air space). Then, Bucher started his own investigation, wrote articles, though there was no reaction from the authorities.

Heiko Tiegen, expert of Federal Office of Airlines, editor-in-chief of the Pilot und Fluegzeug” magazine, and professional pilot also complains about it: he has also many times warned about certain services… “I would like the leadership of the guilty companies to find the courage to admit their guilt to avoid the repetition of such tragedies,” – he says.

In his interview to the Russian-language newspaper Russky Berlin, Tiegen stated that a catastrophe of the kind cannot happen suddenly. “Flight control officers, both in Munich and Zurich, certainly could have defines the probability of the collision on the screens of their radar long before it became too late to do anything.”

According to the expert, the main guilt lies on the Swiss flying control service Skyguide and the German service DSF, which handed over control over the Russian plane to the Swiss when it was at a distance of 14 km from the fatal place. “In general, the system of flight tracking in Europe, especially in Central Europe, has become hopefully obsolete,” Tiegen believes. He means “bad organization, poorly trained flight control officers, and the lack of the specialists.”

Will there now be a reaction from the leading functionaries, or again, after the investigation, there will be only “Russian pilots” mentioned? Maybe, the case will be dropped.

However, Switzerland already understood that it should have listened to Buchers and Tiegens: Germany refused the services of the Swiss flight control office. Therefore, 20 million euros of yearly income were lost for tracking of non-stop flights.

According to RTR-Vesti, in the air space over Switzerland, there is the biggest flow of air transport, and every year, its grows approximately by 6 percent. However, flight control offices like Skyguide do not develop. The sky over the confederation will probably be shared between countries of the European Union.

The Swiss flight control officer has been isolated by the authorities from the press and placed in a clinic in Klotten.

Sergei Yugov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Vera Solovieva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/07/18/44349.html