Article

2007-09-05 Europe

Guilty air traffic controllers walk free after 71 die in crash

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Posted by lotp 2007-09-05 00:00|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top

#1 mostly Russian schoolchildren.

Posted by gromgoru 2007-09-05 06:35|| 2007-09-05 06:35|| Front Page Top

#2 I happen to know a bit about the accident. First: teh Swisc controller was far overloadad: after 9/11 the air control company had suffeed massive losses and had drastically cut expenses. Result was that he was controlling far more planes that he could manage.

Second: He had a plane to transfer to Francfort air controller. For that he had to phone. Yes dial a number. Why in the hell don't they have a perment number? Everytime Francfort's phone was busy (in fact something was out of order) but I don't remember if it was on German or Swiss side).

Third: Both planes computers had dialogued and one had instructed its pilot to increase altitude and the other had told its pilot to decrease it. At this moment the controler noticed the critical situation at last and told the airplane who had to climb, to dive instead. And the pilot did what all of us would do: trust teh human instead of the computer. In this case it was the wrong decision.

Fourth: At this precise moment another plane contacted the controller I don't remeber if to tell him that it was entering his zone or for leaving it. And the controller allowed hilself to be distracted and replied to the message instead of keeping his attention on the planes on colision couse. So in this he is guilty but the problem is: the workload assigned to him war greater than what could be safely managed.

From distant memories I also think that the automatic collision warning in the controllers' screen (ie spots marking planes change color to yellow and later to red when there is a danger of collision) was not operational (it was on course of being upgraded).

After the accident the air controlling company was forced by authorities to decrease the workload assigned to controllers.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2007-09-05 06:39|| 2007-09-05 06:39|| Front Page Top

#3 Thanks for the details, JFM.

Posted by lotp 2007-09-05 08:33|| 2007-09-05 08:33|| Front Page Top

#4 I was an Air Traffic Controller for more than 10 years in the Air Force. During the controller strike in the aerly 80's, I filled in at Chicago O'Hare, one of the busiest airports in the world. Most of my experience in ATC was in a RAPCON or TRACON environment, not in towers, so I think I can speak to the subject intelligently.

My problem with charging controllers with Negligent Homicide is that 'negligence' is a legal term with a specific definition. In order to prove negligence, you have to demonstrate that a reasonable person in the same circumstances would have known or done differently than the accused and would have prevented the accident.

That's a really difficult task. Overloaded controllers may indeed cause a mishap because the human brain can only concentrate on so much at once. In ATC we use a term called "losing the picture". Essentially, it's a state of mind where you lose your mental 3-D picture of the spacing and sequencing of the aircraft under your control. You don't mean to do it, it just happens when your brain reaches it's saturation point. Of course, the more traffic you have, the more likely this is to occur.

In many years of controlling traffic, I saw controllers 'lose the picture' on seveal occasions. In all these cases, the safeguards we had in place prevented an incident. Most of the time this takes the form of a supervisor or coordinator jumping in and taking over the position of the affected controller. In each case, the affected controller who is pulled from position will have to be evaluated and retrained. In some extreme cases, their rating is withdrawn, and they are forced from the career field. Also, any controller can voluntarily withdraw themselves by citing 'fear of controlling'.

Based on what I've heard of this incident, not only were the controllers saturated, but there were communications and landline problems that were contributing factors as well. I was fortunate during my career in that I never had a separation incident, nobody ever filed a Hazardous Air Traffic Report (HATR) on me, etc. But I did witness some folks who were not as lucky. In each case, they were devastated by their failure, but in no case were any of them intentionally negligent.

This is an extremely difficult job, and an unfortunate reality is that people are fallible.

Posted by mcsegeek1 2007-09-05 13:06|| 2007-09-05 13:06|| Front Page Top

#5 I seem to recall that one of the individuals had left his post for an unauthorized smoke break. Anyone else remember this? If so, it would seem as though at least one defendant was truly culpable.

At day's end, my heart goes out to the residents of Ufa and the other cities in Bashkortostan from which the children came. In a tragic, fiery instant, these remote townships lost the very best and brightest youth who represented their country's future.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-09-05 15:40|| 2007-09-05 15:40|| Front Page Top

#6 I saw the story in today's WP. It seems that the four people sentenced today were middle-level executives in the company with the ATC contract, not the controller himself. Four other people were acquitted, including one of the two controllers on duty that day. That controller was on an authorized break. The other controller on duty that day wasn't charged, because he's no longer with us; a Russian man whose wife and two daughters were on that flight stabbed him to death in 2004.

Posted by Eric Jablow">Eric Jablow 2007-09-05 21:58|| 2007-09-05 21:58|| Front Page Top

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