Russian media about the disaster Petr Belkin04 July 13:26 MCK

RIA Novosti says that the crew of the Russian TU-154, one and a half minutes before the collision with the Boeing transport , informed the Swiss air traffic control service about the danger . Sources in the commission investigating the disaster reported this to RIA Novosti on Thursday.
According to them, the Russian crew was informed of the approach of the Boeing, flying at the same altitude as the TU-154, by the activated air collision avoidance system (TECAS). This system detects all moving objects within a radius of 22 kilometers and provides parameters of their height, speed and direction of movement. A few seconds later, the Russian plane reported the danger to the Swiss ground control service, which was guiding the Russian airliner. This happened 1.5 minutes before the tragedy. The controllers had to urgently decide how to separate the planes, the sources said.

However, the dispatchers announced the new flight level (altitude) for the Russian plane only 40 seconds after the crew warned them about the danger of a collision - 50 seconds before the tragedy. By this time, to avoid disaster, the Boeing began an emergency automatic descent . Both aircraft descended approximately 200 meters and collided at flight level 354. If only one of the aircraft had undertaken the descent maneuver, the disaster could have been avoided . At the same time, the RIA interlocutor noted, the exact causes of the accident and the development of events will become known in a few days, when the “black boxes” are deciphered.

Comment: ORT in Novosti at 9 am on July 4 reported that the radar system of the Swiss flight safety company Sky Guide does not meet European standards ( Nikolai Tolstov ):
“The Swiss Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigations last month prepared a report on the work of the Sky Guide air traffic control company. The main task of the specialists then was to determine the causes of at least three near-miss aircraft collisions between 1998 and 2000. The main conclusion is that the Sky Guide air traffic control radar system does not meet European safety standards in a number of key aspects. Experts note that Sky Guide was not able to clearly comply with the requirements of the European Air Navigation Organization , according to which all data from radar stations must be transmitted in accordance with universal time - Greenwich. Because of this, there is a danger of a discrepancy of several seconds between the readings of Swiss radars and the tracking systems of neighboring countries. This means that the location of the aircraft on the radar screens can differ by almost 500 meters . In addition, the report of the Swiss Bureau of Investigation also notes shortcomings in the quality of the radar equipment used. “Sky Guide.” At the moment, representatives of the air traffic control company that signed a contract with the Swiss government for airspace control refuse to comment on the details of the discovered technical deficiencies . Experts from neighboring countries talk about many other serious mistakes that the Swiss made, but the final point in the investigation into the causes of the TU - 154 and Boeing 757 crash in the skies over Germany can only be determined by decoding the flight recorders.”

" Kommersant " (" Switzerland admitted ", Igor Sedykh ) specifically states in the subtitle of the article: " that its dispatcher destroyed two planes ." Details:
“┘The black boxes” of both planes were found and delivered to Braunschweig, where the German Air Accident Investigation Bureau (BFU) is located. As stated by the head of this service, Peter Schlegel , it was established that the warning to the Russian pilot was received only 50 seconds in advance - “ too late ” to avoid a collision, although it had long been clear that the planes were moving along converging trajectories.
His Swiss colleague Jean Overney , who is participating in the investigation of the disaster along with Russian and American experts, spoke in the same spirit. "The air traffic controller will have to explain why he waited so long to give the order to the Russian pilot," he said. The pilots echo the experts. "We have to ask why the planes weren't grounded sooner," said George Forgern , a spokesman for the German pilots' association.
Indeed, even before the Russian aircraft entered the Swiss air traffic control zone, it was obvious that the Tu-154 and Boeing were moving along converging trajectories and at the same altitude level."

"┘At the request of the BFU, Kloten's representatives had to 'adjust' their version of events. Aviation safety officials had already been forced to abandon their initial claims that the warning to the Tu-154 pilot was transmitted two minutes before the collision and was repeated three times." Skyguide management spokesman Patrick Herr , who had not hesitated to lay the blame on the Russian pilot the day before, was forced to admit that the crash was the result of a "chain of extraordinary events." Alas, the whole “emergency” was the result of poor organization of work in the control tower of Zurich Kloten Airport.
It turned out that at 23.30, when Munich handed over the Bashkir Tu-154 to Kloten, there were five aircraft in the Skyguide zone . Meanwhile, there was only one dispatcher on duty, the second one was on a break . Moreover, the automatic alarm system in case of danger of a collision was turned off for several hours. As Mr. Herr explained, this was done to carry out maintenance work, which is usually carried out during periods of less intense air traffic, that is, at night. However, when asked whether the disaster could have been avoided if the system had worked or both dispatchers had been on site, Mr. Herr replied that this could only be discussed “ purely hypothetically ”┘

And here is something phantasmagorical in terms of the unbearable work life of the Swiss proletarians of the dispatch business:
“The air traffic control service is short-staffed and many controllers complain of stress and fatigue,” writes Geneva’s Tribune de Geneve . “With an expected surge in air traffic, this problem could soon lead to chaos in the skies.”

" Vedomosti " (" Dispatchers' error ", Tatyana Egorova , Vladimir Fedorin , Ekaterina Kudashkina ) writes that Vedomosti's source in the State Civil Aviation Service (GSCA) refused to discuss the degree of guilt of the participants in the tragedy. “Conclusions can only be drawn after the investigation is completed,” says the official. “But the actions of the Swiss air traffic controllers raise many questions: 50 seconds [to execute a command from the ground] is not enough.”
This position is shared by BAL. The airline's general director, Nikolai Odegov, almost immediately stated that he blamed ground services for the tragedy and promised that BAL would demand compensation from dispatchers through the courts. The company has not yet announced the amount of the claim. It is also not clear to which court the appeal will be made┘"

" Time for News " (" Direct Fire ", Alexander Raskin , Viktor Paukov ) describe changes in the behavior of the Swiss:
"┘ The management of the Zurich air traffic control service claimed that it was the Russian pilots who made a mistake by ignoring the order from the ground to descend several times, and someone even started a rumor that the Tu-154 pilots did not know English well at all. The head of the State Civil Aviation Service (GSCA) Alexander Neradko and the head of Bashkir Airlines Nikolai Odegov in response directly blamed the Swiss for the incident, according to in their opinion, they simply “missed” two planes moving towards each other, representing two small points in the vast airspace...
As the first results of the investigation began to appear yesterday, emotions subsided and experts began to operate with more reliable data. Officially, no one dared to comment on them, but it became obvious that the balance of power in the Russian-Swiss dispute had changed dramatically . After preliminary decoding of the recordings of the crews’ conversations with ground services and the speech “black boxes,” no one spoke about the “lack of understanding” of the Tu-154 pilots. And one of the leaders of the Swiss dispatch service Skyguide, Tony Maag, lowered his tone and actually admitted the possibility that one of the causes of the accident could have been a mistake by their employees ..."

" New news " (" Dispatchers turned off the automation ", Said Bitsoev ) refers to not a certain expert:
"┘According to our aviation expert, the co-pilot of a cargo ship, sitting to the right of the commander, first of all should have noticed the signal lights of a passenger plane moving at an angle on the flight level. The night was cloudless, and the rays of flashing lights were visible at a distance of 20 kilometers. In aviation, there is a left-hand rule. The one who sees an obstacle on the right should automatically gain altitude, and the other, on the contrary, should descend. This is an axiom. Why the crew Boeing's decision to go down remains unclear.
Perhaps the co-pilot did not see the obstacle on the right, was resting or was distracted for a while, our expert believes. And the truck commander, noticing the danger at the last moment, confused the task out of fear and began to descend. And a giant car crashed into a passenger airliner at a speed of 900 kilometers.
But most importantly, experts say, these planes under no circumstances should have intersected at one point. They should have been separated in height and given different corridors for crossing the routes. This is the responsibility of the dispatch services, both Munich and Zurich. Why this did not happen remains to be found out by the commission of investigation, which included specialists from Russia, Germany and the USA┘"

And Lev Bruni (" Abomination ", Vesti.ru ) spoke out harshest on this matter:
“┘“Russians are always to blame” - we are already accustomed to this approach from our Western “friends”. Previously, in Soviet times, all of us were KGB agents. Now we have turned into mafiosi, or, at best, incompetent idiots, without knowledge of foreign languages.
Whatever happens, the Russians are to blame.
However, the case with the Swiss dispatchers still smacks of special cynicism. The Swiss will, perhaps, be even cooler than the Ukrainian missilemen who shot down a Russian plane over the Black Sea. At least they didn’t blame the dead pilots .”