Plane Crash Kills Russian Children over Germany

[Geoffrey]

Plane Crash Kills Russian Children over Germany
Tue Jul 2,10:41 AM ET
By Michael Steen and Knut Engelmann

UEBERLINGEN, Germany (Reuters) - Scores of Russian children heading for the holiday of their lives died when their plane collided with a cargo jet, leaving the German resort of Lake Constance strewn with bodies and burning debris.



Officials said 71 people, including 52 children and teenagers, were killed in the Monday night crash between a Bashkirian Airlines jet bound for Barcelona, Spain, and a Boeing 757 cargo jet operated by the international courier company DHL.

Witnesses said they heard rolling thunder and saw an orange glow and fireballs resembling comets in the night sky. A black rain of wreckage then poured down on the northern shore of this lake in southwestern Germany.

There were 69 Russians on board the seven-year-old Tupolev 154 airliner and a crew of two, a Briton and a Canadian, on the Boeing bound for Brussels.

The collision prompted western experts to question the safety commitment of Russian airlines, though a Russian airline official denied the Tupolev crew had made any mistakes.

Swiss air traffic controllers, in charge of Lake Constance airspace because it is close to Switzerland, said the Tupolev reacted too slowly to orders to lower its altitude.

German air traffic investigators said the message traffic between Swiss controllers and the Russian plane showed the Tupolev pilot did not react to a first warning to lower his altitude to avoid the Boeing.

He responded to a second warning and began to descend 25 seconds before the crash, the air accident investigation authority BFU said.

But then the Boeing also began to descend, responding to its own onboard collision avoidance system. The BFU said it was still checking why the Boeing's system told it to descend.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov described the collision as a "terrible tragedy" and said the cause was a mystery. "The scope of this tragedy is beyond understanding," he said after meeting French President Jacques Chirac in Paris.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder sent his "heartfelt condolences" to Russian President Vladimir Putin ( news - web sites), and Pope John Paul ( news - web sites) said the victims would be in his prayers.

SCENE FROM HELL

Eyewitnesses described how the collision turned this region of chocolate-box beauty into a scene from hell in seconds. There were no casualties on the ground even though police said they found pieces of wreckage in 57 different places.

"We came across five bodies just lying in the field next to each other," said Wolfgang Steiner, gardener at a children's home just 200 meters (yards) from where the tail section of the Tupolev came crashing down.

"One had his neck broken, one was missing a foot but there was no blood. I kept saying to myself, why is there no blood? They were adults, but they looked so small lying in that field."

One television journalist described families staring white-faced with shock at pieces of burning wreckage in their gardens. Reuters television showed body parts covered by black plastic sheeting.

"In the glow of the fire I saw wreckage falling out of the sky. It looked like black rain," said Klaus-Dieter Schindler, a janitor at a school in the village of Owingen.

"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 firework display was going off."

Witnesses saw a fireball, and debris was scattered over an area of about five square kilometers (two square miles) around Ueberlingen, a resort town of 20,000.

The youths, mostly children from the political elite in Russia's oil-rich, mainly Muslim, region of Bashkortostan, were heading for a UNESCO ( news - web sites) festival in Barcelona.

Airline officials said many of the passengers on the flight had the same surname, indicating families may have lost more than one relative.

The young passengers were looking forward to two weeks of fun and sun at a four-star Spanish hotel by the Mediterranean.

Everything was ready for them at the Estival Park Hotel in the seaside resort of Salou. News of the tragedy stunned staff at the 550-bed hotel in the modern Costa Dorada beach resort near Barcelona.

"We were expecting 43 children between eight and 16. Everything was ready and the coach driver was waiting at the airport. It's a terrible tragedy," said a spokesman for the hotel, just 200 meters (yards) from the beach.

"Plane crashes are always ghastly but knowing there were kids on board makes it even more so. Everybody in the hotel is affected by this, it's a terrible blow," he said.

Rescue workers had recovered about 26 bodies and a large number of body parts by mid-afternoon on Tuesday as well as the Tupolev flight data recorder, vital for investigating the accident.

Helicopters with infrared cameras clattered overhead as more than 800 rescue workers combed the area. Locals were said to be worried the wreckage could contaminate nearby reservoirs.

The airline, based in Bashkortostan, was one of many to emerge from the break-up of the state airliner Aeroflot after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It relies mainly on a fleet of Tu-154s, Russian planes commonly used for medium-range flights.

The two planes were flying at an altitude of 35,300 feet above Ueberlingen at the northwest end of Lake Constance when they collided, Swiss air traffic controllers said.

A spokeswoman for German flight control said one of two things could have caused the crash: either ground controllers had entered incorrect data for the flight paths, or one of the two planes had failed to follow its approved flight path.

A spokesman said there had been no problems contacting the Tupolev while it was in German airspace. A DHL spokesman said there were no problems with their plane before the crash.

The cargo flight, operated by DHL Worldwide Express, which is majority-owned by Deutsche Post, originated in Bahrain and had taken off from Bergamo in Italy en route to Brussels.

Tu-154s have crashed several times over the past year. An Iran Air Tours Tu-154 crashed in February in Iran killing all 119 aboard. A year ago 136 passengers and nine crew were killed when a Russian Tu-154 crashed in Siberia.

There were three other major post-war air accidents in Germany. In 1972 an Ilyushin aircraft run by East German airline Interflug crashed shortly after taking off from Berlin Schoenefeld airport, killing all 156 passengers and crew.

In 1958, 23 people were killed at Munich airport shortly after a plane carrying members of the Manchester United soccer team took off after a refueling stop.

In 1968, 48 were killed when a British Eagle Airways Viscount crashed into a motorway between Munich and Nuremberg