Vitaly Kaloyev should have his neck stretched - end of story !

Spuds McKenzie

If your German (or, for that matter, French) is insufficient to understand the documents that are in the public domain on this issue, I cannot help you.

BTW, my own experience with Swiss ATC is based on my years with the Swiss air force.

LostThePicture

Well put. Let’s hope this thread doesn’t descend into petty bickering.

Does anybody know which (if any) recommendations or changes have been implemented within Skyguide?

There has been a rumour flying around for many a year, that when TCAS was mandated for European airspace, many companies fitted it, but did not train the crew either sufficiently or in some cases, at all... the mere carriage of the equipment is/was all that is required by the letter of ICAO rules. .... DISCUSS!!??

As for blame for the accident, like many things, it was many small errors that led up to the one tragic outcome. If any one of the small errors had not happened, chances are we would not be discussing this today.

However, despite not having suffered like Mr Kayolev has, it was still cold blooded murder. It happened well after the accident, surely this cannot be called a crime of passion or impulse?

If the Kayolev did, as suggested earlier in this thread, help arrange the trip, was his revenge an attempt to assuage his own feeling of guilt (which any human being would feel.... he must have been thinking "if only I had never arranged this trip etc". Amateur psychologists discuss!

Alpha Leader,

From a post of yours, dated 3rd July 2002 at 11:24:

I am not too familiar with (Swiss) civilian ATC (only military ATC)

No further questions...

I wouldn't recommend the National Geographic 'Air crash investigation' show on this topic, it's not an even coverage and skips much of the facts. The graphic reenactments can also be quite disturbing if you're closely involved with what happened.

The Crowded Skies program (either Channel 4 or BBC) is much more professionally done.

The full accident report is available on the BFU website, makes an interesting read, but most of this has already been discussed on the original thread.

Moufs.

Spuds McKenzie

Still more familiar - thanks to private contacts within Skyguide - than you will ever be, right?

As you say: no further questions
:ok:

You could be wrong... :E

quite frankly 8 years is a joke!!Is it ok for the wife of that atco to now go to russia and kill this guy's brother or mother or whoever he has left?

N380UA:

Quote:

............ I'd rather fly through Swiss air space than through Indian.......

Unquote


Really....??

http://www.nzz.ch/2005/10/30/il/articleD9VFI.html

In english:

Skyguide reporting more incidents

Crash of Ueberlingen leads to a new safety culture in air traffic in Europe

The numbers look frightening: In 2004 77 airproxes were reported in Switzerland.

An airprox means, that the minimum distance between two aircraft has dropped either below 9 kilometers horizontally, 300 meters vertically or 5.5 kilometers in approach.

In 1998 the number of dangerous airproxes was at 20 and has increased significantly since.
That the incidents with a high risk of collision have deacreased from 25 (in 2003) to 16 (in 2003), doesn't inspire confidence either. In Germany, only three airproxes of this category had been reported, in Great Britain it was only one.

Do passengers have to expect the increased likelihood of a crash over Switzerland?
No, says Erik Merckx, Head of Safety Enhancement Business at Eurocontrol in Brussels. "I'm reducing these numbers to the fact, that the reporting culture in Switzerland is exceptionally well developed."
This is being appreciated by Eurocontrol: "Authorities and those involved can learn from mistakes reported by pilots, ATC and airlines, and draw their conclusions." According to statistics from various countries, Merckx notices that since recently, more but less serious airproxes have been reported.

Since 2001, Skyguide is building up a safety management, for which 22 people are working.
In 2004, 1180 bigger and smaller incidents have been reported to them, from near miss to worn aircraft tyres. 90 percent of those reports are forwarded to the FOCA (Federal Office of Civil Aviation), which then enacts safety regulations for all involved.
Airproxes do not always happen because of ATC, but the reasons can be found with everyone in aviation.

Skyguide CEO Alain Rossier says, that it wasn't easy, to enforce the new philosophie: "In normal life, one gets punished for every mistake. We on the other hand want our controllers to report any irregularity. This culture of trust we had to build up."
In order to create this trust, so called safety improvement reports can be filed confidentially. Although this type of reporting is available, 95 percent of reports have been signed with the names of those involved. The crash over Ueberlingen on July 1st also resulted in a setback for safety management. "If such an accident happens, the public is looking for a culprit, this is part of human nature. This accident was a shock for all the staff and we will never forget it."

But the collision over Ueberlingen had positive implications as well. In order to prevent such accidents in the furure from happening, Eurocontrol initiated a strategic safety action plan in late 2002, which should improve the quality of ATC in 41 countries.
Interim results of this process were published in March 2005. Eurocontrol determines that regarding reporting, improvements are necessary. "Although it is indisputable, that the exchange of information about incidents would have big advantages, several countries and companies are concerned, that their performance regarding safety could be compared to their disadvantage", it says in the report.
That these numbers at this stage are not in favour of Switzerland, is being accepted by the FOCA, says spokesperson Daniel Goering. "We as the regulatory authority support an active reporting culture. Skyguide, in case of doubt, reports one occurence too many rather than too little. This is positive, because one can learn also from situations which finally didn't lead to a near miss."

Not only Eurocontrol is striving to get convincing and therefore comparable numbers. According to Jean Overney, head of the BFU (Office of air accident investigations), the collision over Ueberlingen "lead to a worldwide shock": But the data are still variable.
Under the leadership of the BFU, a workshop took place in Belp (Canton of Berne) in mid October, where investigation authorities from Germany, France and Great Britain agreed to harmonise their incident reporting. Switzerland is now working on a proposal regarding standardization, which will be discussed next year amongst the parties involved.

Draw your own conclusion.

Mine is:

Alpha Leader, you're a sad case. :*

ZRH:

As you would no doubt know, such profanities (if posted in English) would not be tolerated by any moderator.

My point to N380UA was simply to point out that air space in Switzerland is no safer than elsewhere.

Anyway: merci vielmal, da gseht me wider was für äs Bildigsniveau i de Schwiiz herrscht :D

Alpha Leader

This being the Professional Pilots Rumor Network I understand that not all of us are/were pilots. But we are professionals of this industry. You on the other hand seem to have a serious weed up your ass when it comes to skyguide or Swiss airspace. So let me give you a moment of pause that you may contemplate and ponder on the shortcomings of this organization.

One, if not the most important aspect of PPrune is to exchange information and knowledge gained from within and from the line in order to improve aviation safety. I'll be listing to your justified and well based comments which you can, of course back up with a wealth of evidence.

You have posted a link to a newspaper article by the NZZ. A paper which is renowned for reporting facts, well researched and current issues. I'll quote from the English translation:

Do passengers have to expect the increased likelihood of a crash over Switzerland?
No, says Erik Merckx, Head of Safety Enhancement Business at Eurocontrol in Brussels. "I'm reducing these numbers to the fact, that the reporting culture in Switzerland is exceptionally well developed."
This is being appreciated by Eurocontrol: "Authorities and those involved can learn from mistakes reported by pilots, ATC and airlines, and draw their conclusions." According to statistics from various countries, Merckx notices that since recently, more but less serious airproxes have been reported.

That these numbers at this stage are not in favour of Switzerland, is being accepted by the FOCA, says spokesperson Daniel Goering. "We as the regulatory authority support an active reporting culture. Skyguide, in case of doubt, reports one occurence too many rather than too little. This is positive, because one can learn also from situations which finally didn't lead to a near miss."

This goes in line with a statement I once heard while I was in Brussels on a aviation safety seminar: Just because a day goes by without a safety report doesn’t mean that safety was not compromised.

Let me close up, in English, Alpha leader you’re an idiot. And yes, also in English, the educational levels leave quite obviously much to be desired.

… Ich frög mi ja scho was de alpha tuet liide?

N380UA:

The letter written on 7th May 2004 by UVEK/BFU to the German Air Accident Investigation Bureau admits that two (out of three) systemic faults had contributed to the mid-air collision over Ueberlingen.

These two systemic faults are clearly identifed as being in Skyguide's court.

Thus - as opposed to the innocence of Peter Nielsen - who was simply doing his job - there is no innocence on the part of Skyguide, its management and its political masters.

:bored:

Alpha

Very well! Let me see that letter.

Had contributed . Which I read not as caused . In the mean while, I further await of your systemic analysis of skyguide.

A very sad event with no real winner's.

However, the swiss court's result adopts the following logic;-

let's imagine; your daughter, 23, is driving home, her mobile phone rings and whilst reaching for it she mounts the curb killing a 40 year old woman.
A blatent death by negligence on the part of your daughter. Yes I know that she didn't go out with the intention of killing the woman but she is licenced to drive the car and if you hold a driving licence you have a responsibility of due care.

Now if that woman is my wife, your daughter in my eyes is responsible and I want revenge.

What will I get if I kill her, 4/5 years after parole! GIVEN MY GRIEF, FAIR DON'T YOU THINK!

and where would it stop?

This example is only made to make a point of logic.

My condolences to both parties in this case.

N380UA:

Your earlier name calling was totally unfounded, and your request for substantiation of my remarks regarding the mess at Skyguide on that fatal night further reinforces the impression that you are more inclined to shoot from the hip than to entertain an intellectual discourse. Given the fact that 60% of all causes involved in the Ueberlingen mid-air are laid at Skyguide's doorstep, there is no need to deride other countries' ATC.

Anyway: here is the link to the letter from UVEK/BAZL:



http://www.bfu.admin.ch/de/pdf/ueber...llungnahme.pdf


You will also note that the original report by the German BFU listed two "immediate" causes (one being the much belated realisation by Zurich ATC that there was insufficient vertical separation), and three "systemic" causes (of which two were attributed to Skyguide). Skyguide only requested a change in the wording of the two "systemic" causes.

If you care to read the full report, you will note that Skyguide on that night had, in effect, a SMOP - but this was by themselves certified for daytime operations only. They had also not actively instructed their controllers that due to maintenance word (fall back mode) their STAC was inoperative - something P.N. had not been aware of.

Alpha Leader,

Where is N380UA "deriding other countries' ATC"?
If someone is deriding somebody it is you.

Seit der Katastrophe von Überlingen hast Du dich auf Skyguide eingeschossen, andere Faktoren, welche zum Zusammenstoss geführt haben, sind für Dich offensichtlich irrelevant.
Es ist unbestritten, dass nicht mehr genügend Separation vorhanden gewesen wäre, aber der Grund wieso es schlussendlich knallte, war, dass TCAS als "last resort tool" nicht entsprechend angewandt wurde.

Kein TCAS, kein Zusammenstoss (die Boeing wäre weiterhin auf FL360 weitergeflogen, die Tupolev knapp untendurch geflogen, nachdem sie den Befehl zum absinken bekam).

Nun, TCAS war vorhanden, wären beide Crews dem TCAS gefolgt (und wir wissen, dass die Tupolev Crew dies nicht getan hat) , dann hätte der Zusammenstoss nicht stattgefunden!

Und ich bin nicht der einzige, der diese Meinung vertritt!

ATC Watcher hat am 10 Juli 2002 um 11:41 geschrieben:

From what I know so far the Zurich collision fell exactly into the induced risk in the CAS logic. My reasoning is : Should TCAS had not been present in that case would the collision had been prevented.
You have to answer yes, so here you are. TCAS caused this collision. Not pleasant to hear for some, but this is the ( legal ) reality.
Did the pilots follow ICAO guidelines (looking for each other , but in doing so delaying the follow of the RAs well beyond the 5 seconds required ) or did one ( or possibly both ) pilots manoeuvrered opposite to the RA, against the recommendations of the User manuals …
The lawyers are going to have a good day.

Reading this thread one sees a wide spectrum of differing opinion. On the one side we have the "hang em high" brigade and on the other, Sky Guide are bloody useless and are totally to blame! Well, is there really a bad guy here?

I cannot condone what the Russian did! Nobody can or should. I can imagine his mental state though. I personally cannot envisage my family being wiped out by the vagaries of life and should such an event occur I would probably want to avenge them by whatever means at my disposal, especially if I felt that the authorities concerned ie this guy from Sky Guide ( the boss not the controller) was perhaps being insensitive. However, I would hope that I would be able to see that this is life, nasty as it is, in a more realistic manner and leave the blame culture to the authorities concerned. And therein lies the problem!

HAVE Sky Guide learnt anything from this tragedy or for that matter the operating company of the Russian aircraft? Sky Guide and the Russian pilots are culpable here. Sky Guide for operating to a lower safety standard than their own guidlines set out and the Russian crew for not following standard operating proceedures when dealing with an RA. Okay, I have been retired a few years now, but my recollection was that you always followed the instructions of the RA, REGARDLESS. Has this changed? What is more, SOPs stated that one had to inform ATC that one had received a TCAS warning and was climbing/descending asap. In this case the Russains were remiss and the controller was completely in the dark, going on instinct, which unfortunately was wrong in this case. But one has to ask. What were the sops that the Russians were operating under? Was their company not culpable? Lets face it! This was a tragic result to a situation which under the circumstances was probably unavoidable. Individuals and groups made huge mistakes in this instance. BUT, by pointing fingers and being polemic is not going to bring any solution, or more importantly, closure here. If you feel someone is culable then put pressure where it is due. For goodness sake stop trying to make pixie points by having a go at fellow contributers and lets try and learn from this tragic loss of life of children, families and a controller, who I am sure was only trying to do his best under difficult circumstances.

Proceed as Cleared:

I am beginning to think that your reference to other contributors being "a sad case" is due to your inability to analyse a chain of logic.

Never mind



:ok:

Chain of blame
 

And let's not forget that although the controller allowed a bad situation to develop unnoticed, it was still a rescuable one. If the TCAS had been followed by both aircraft, the situation would have been saved - precisely why TCAS was invented and installed.

This fact has apparently been callously ignored in the Russian press (it was the wrong reaction of the Russian crew which caused their aircraft to deviate in the same sense as the freighter). That was the end of the chain, which began with one controller too little on duty and various ATC system maintenance programmes in progress.

With proper TCAS training and use, this sorry story would have been "just another airmiss" but perhaps one from which we could have learned a lot.

I also feel sorry for the German controller who witnessed the whole accident but couldn't contact his Swiss colleague due to maintenance on the telephone connection.

As for the killing, well it was premeditated murder and revenge, of which we see too much in the world these days. Judging by some of the reactions on this site, it is no wonder that wars happen.

Alpha Leader,

Deine Arroganz spottet jeder Beschreibung. Ich möchte gar nicht erst darüber spekulieren, was Dein Problem sein könnte (werde mal meine Kontakte bei Skyguide fragen... :E).

And of course you possess this ability to analyse a chain of logic based on your vast experience in ATC, don't you?

:rolleyes:

Fact is, you never worked for Skyguide as a civil ATCO, and yet you claim to carry the ultimate truth regarding the events of July 1st 2002. You might be a "cut and paste" expert, but that's about it.

BTW, notice Few Cloudy's post. I suppose, you accuse him as well of being unable to analyse a chain of logic, since his remarks regarding TCAS concur with mine...

:hmm:

Alpha

Sorry if I hurt your feelings. As they say: If ya cant take the heat, stay out of the kitchen!

Now as I said, lets exchange knowledge and experience to make our industry better and safer. If you are not a member of this industry but have an interest and care to know a little bit what we do than ask questions and educate yourself but don’t come on this board and tell folks what is going on at skyguide, Swiss airspace or anything in relation to those issues.

You said:

As what?

You also said on 3rd July 2002 at 11:24:

Further:

What for? To evade responsibility before any investigation has concluded let alone begun? (on the by by I like your expression: the absolute sh1thouse)

So there you answer your own Q. skyguide does have proper SOPs in effect. The fact that they were not adhered to or only partially implemented is and was an issue of concern at that particular time. That would be a human factor failure under these particular circumstances and not a systemic failure.

So who antagonizing who here?

You have send a link to a BFU (NTSB) document which I haven't seen before. Thank you.
Let me roughly translate some of the highlights of that report:

- The impending reduction in separation was noticed late by the ATCO.
- The crew of the TU154M followed the advice of the ATCO and initiated a descent.
- The TU154M continued the descent even though TCAS was calling for a climb.
- Thus the crew flew the opposite of a TCAS RA maneuver.
- Upon reaching FL350 the TU154M had a sink rate of 1900 ft/min
- The TU154M has left the ATCOS assigned flight level.
- The ANSP does not guarantee for a permanent staffing of all open WP during the night shift.
- The ANSP allows the second ATCO to rest during the times of low/none traffic during the night sift.

Are you relating the last 2 points as systemic skyguide failures?
These are not uncommon SOPs to my knowledge.

Yes, it leaves room for improvements and these improvements have been implemented on all fronts.

So there you have it Alpha! I said it before and I says it again! If one would want to reproduce the event of Ueberlingen willfully one would not be able to.

This was a freak accident and it just had to happen.

Now, where do you come in? What is your knowledge? What is your wisdom? What can you do to prevent such similar freaky event from reoccurring elsewhere under such impossible conditions?

This is correct, N380UA.

There are (western) ATCs with no Controller Assistant, no Radar Planner, only one ATCO per sector all day and night.

One ATCO on the sector at night wasn't and isn't a specific Skyguide-only procedure.

N380UA:

Glad you've read that letter.

You will, however, have noted that Skyguide's SMOP rules at the time did not permit two adjacent sectors to be covered by one controller, yet on that night that precisely was the case....... (apart from the fact that the SMOP rules had never been approved for night operations at Skyguide).

There is also clear reference to the fact that the Duty Supervisor must - according to SMOP rules - regularly check for actual traffic load on SMOP-controlled sectors. There was, as we know, no Duty Supervisor assigned on that night.


Proceed as Cleared

Permit me to yawn....... and add that if this collision had taken place over a third world country with a Swiss aircraft involved and a similar mess had been identified at that country's ATC, there would have been a massive outcry (with tabloid Blick leading the pack, of course).

Checking out now
:hmm:

Alpha Leader,

The controller worked with two adjacent radar screens which were located at one sector.

Looks like we've cornered the b*****d :E

Alpha

As it has been pointed out by PAC and SMK, SMOP was not an issue or even a factor. In the case of adjacent screens covering an active sector and under low traffic SMOP is applicable. As it is further common practice (globally) to unman inactive sectors during the night shift the BFU has confirmed that not all WP were staffed, which as I said is common just about with any ANSP.

On this issue however I'd like to understand your knowledge on skyguides SMOP and its night ops implementation.

For as long as you keep trying to lay the blame on skyguide you will have to prove your accusation. "Nulla poena sine culpa"

Thus far you've come a bit short of proof.