I do agree about keeping this site professional.
To quote " we are all pilots and not crash examiners "
" people rely on us to get us home safely "
Interestingly, I wonder if you consider Khazakhistan First World or Third World. There was a mid-air collision over New Delhi some years ago with a Saudi linerThe worst actual midair collision to date occurred in 1996 when a Saudi Arabian Airlines 747 collided with a Kazakh-owned cargo jet near New Delhi, India, killing 349.
And do you know what was quoted as the cause of the crash ?
" An inability by the pilot of the KHazakh plane to interpret the ATC commands in English !!!"
Read what CNN had to say on July 4, 2002 very carefully.
We all go through the SAME motions everytime we hear of a crash on this site !
QUOTE :
Tuesday morning's crash over the Swiss-German border took place at what Eckes describes as "a crossroads of the sky."
The area near Lake Konstanz marks the intersection of some of the world's busiest air corridors as well as being at the frontier of German, Swiss and Austrian air traffic control.
Standard aviation rules dictate that aircraft traveling across the same territory in different directions fly at different altitudes.
Aviation experts say in the case of the two aircraft involved in Tuesday's collision the distance separating them should not have been less than 600 meters (2,000 feet).
What caused them to break that limit will be the focus of the investigation.
Human factor
One possibility is that instructions from ground controllers were misinterpreted or were simply incorrect.
Eckes says that initial reports on the crash indicate that this human factor was the most likely cause of the crash, as has been the case with previous collisions and near misses.
Another possible factor may have been the handover from one country's air-traffic controllers to another -- a consideration that Eckes says could focus attention on Europe's extremely fragmented air space.
Aside from the human error possibility another consideration will be on the technical capabilities and their functioning on the two aircraft.
Many modern aircraft are fitted with a collision avoidance system known as TCAS, which can automatically pull the plane off collision-course or sound an alarm alerting pilots and telling them which way to turn.
However, although mandatory in many Western countries, TCAS is only slowly being retrofitted onto older aircraft and is not required on Russian-owned aircraft.
Eckes says the only way to ensure mid-air collisions do not occur is for all aircraft to be fitted with TCAS -- and even then the possibility remains that technical problems or poor maintenance will cause the equipment to fail.