Russian man who killed a Swiss air traffic controller appointed to high-level government post in Russia

Apparently justice was done:



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...&sn=003&sc=551
Russian Who Killed Controller Gets Post

Friday, January 18, 2008

(01-18) 07:28 PST MOSCOW, Russia (AP) --

A Russian man who killed a Swiss air traffic controller he blamed
for a plane crash that killed his family was appointed to a
high-level government post in southern Russia, state-run media
reported.

Vitaly Kaloyev, an architect, was named deputy construction and
architecture minister of his home province, North Ossetia, one of
Russia's 85 administrative regions, the RIA-Novosti news agency
and other media reported.

Kaloyev, 51, was convicted in Switzerland in October 2005 of
killing Peter Nielsen, a controller with the Swiss company
Skyguide, and sentenced to more than five years in prison. He was
released in November in accordance with Swiss legislation that
allows early release of convicted criminals for good behavior.

Nielsen, a Dane, had been the only person on duty when a plane of
Russia's Bashkirian Airlines and a DHL cargo jet collided on July
1, 2002, in airspace he had been responsible for over southern
Germany. The crash killed 71 people, most of them schoolchildren
on a holiday trip to Spain.
...
Kaloyev's ordeal has brought him widespread sympathy in Russia.

In September, four Skyguide employees were found guilty of
negligent homicide in a separate case examining the events that
led to the crash. Their punishments ranged from a one-year
suspended prison sentence to fines.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashkir...es_Flight_2937
Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937

The two aircraft were flying at 36,000 (FL360) feet on a collision
course. Despite being over Germany, the airspace was controlled
from Zürich, Switzerland, by the private Swiss airspace control
company Skyguide.

The air traffic controller handling the airspace, Peter Nielsen,
was working two workstations at the same time and did not realise
the danger facing the two aircraft until less than a minute before
the accident. At that time he contacted Flight 2937, instructing
the pilot to descend by a thousand feet to avoid collision with
crossing traffic (Flight 611). Seconds after the Russian crew
initiated the descent, however, their Traffic Collision Avoidance
System (TCAS) instructed them to climb, while at about the same
time the TCAS on Flight 611 instructed the pilots of that aircraft
to descend. Had both aircraft followed those automated
instructions, it is likely that the collision would not have
occurred.

Flight 611's pilots on the Boeing jet initially followed the TCAS
instructions and initiated a descent, but could not immediately
inform the controller due to the fact that he was dealing with
Flight 2937. About eight seconds before the collision, Flight
611's descent rate was about 2400 feet per minute, not as rapid as
the 2500-3000 ft/min range advised by TCAS. The Russian pilot on
the Tupolev disregarded the TCAS instruction to climb and instead
began to descend, as instructed by the controller, thus both
planes were now descending. During this descent the Russian pilot
went below his assigned flight level by about 33 metres (110 ft),
and also changed his magnetic bearing once again, by another ten
degrees.

Unaware of the TCAS-issued alerts, Nielsen repeated his
instruction to Flight 2937 to descend, giving the Tupolev crew
incorrect information as to the position of the other plane.
Maintenance work was being carried out on the main radar system,
which meant that the controllers were forced to use a slower
system. The Flight 2937 crew tried to locate the DHL flight
visually in the dark, losing reaction time.

The aircraft collided at almost a right angle at 34,890 feet, with
the Boeing's vertical stabilizer slicing completely through Flight
2937's fuselage just ahead of the Tupolev's wings. The Tupolev
exploded and broke into several pieces, scattering wreckage over a
wide area. The crippled Boeing, now with 80% of its vertical
stabilizer lost, struggled for a further seven kilometres (4.3
miles) before crashing into a wooded area close to the village of
Taisersdorf at a 70 degree downward angle;



http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/88/..._Skyguide.html
Swiss court finds Russian man guilty of revenge killing Skyguide's
employee

The man, who lost his wife and two little children in the horrible
air crash above Lake Constance, was sentenced to eight years in
jail

The trial of the 49-year-old resident of North Ossetia, Vitaly
Kaloyev, has recently come to an end in Switzerland. Kaloyev was
charged with killing a flight control officer of the Swiss company
Skyguide. The court ruled that Kaloyev had committed a
premeditated murder of the man, whom he considered guilty of the
death of his family. Vitaly Kaloyev's wife and two children died
in a plane crash over Lake Constance, which made world news
headlines on 2 July 2002. The court sentenced Vitaly Kaloyev to
eight years in jail. ...

The plane crash occurred in the area controlled by the Swiss
company Skyguide. The company's administration originally refused
to claim responsibility for the horrible tragedy. The authorities
of Germany and Switzerland had to present official condolences to
the families of the plane crash victims instead, while Skyguide
brought its apologies only two years after the accident.
Investigators concluded that the air traffic in the area of the
crash was not heavy that night, although it required the work of
three flight control officers. However, there was only one officer
at the control panel, Peter Nielsen of Denmark.

The question of financial compensations is still unsolved:
Skyguide refused to pay, which made the victims of the plane crash
sue the Swiss company in February of 2005.

Another tragedy took place on February of 2004: Vitaly Kaloyev,
who lost his wife and children in the plane crash over Germany,
arrived in Zurich, in an attempt to receive official apologies
from Skyguide's Director, Alan Rossier, but received nothing for
his pains. The grieving man decided to go to the town of Kloten (a
suburb of Zurich), where the above-mentioned flight control
officer was residing with his wife and three children. Kaloyev
came to the Nielsens', and the two men talked to each other
privately; the conversation was held in loud voices. When Kaloyev
left, Peter Nielsen's wife found her husband dead with numerous
stab wounds. Vitaly Kaloyev was arrested in Zurich the next day.
...

Kaloyev presented a document received from a law firms in Hamburg
dated 11 November 2003. It was an amicable agreement, in which
Skyguide offered Kaloyev 60,000 Swiss franks for the death of his
wife and 50,000 franks for the death of each of his two children.
In return, Skyguide asked Vitaly Kaloyev to decline any claims to
the company. The document infuriated the man: he decided to meet
the company's Director Alan Rossier and flight control officer
Peter Nielson in person.

”Apparently he did not expect that he would have to answer for the
results of his work, - Kaloyev said. – He murmured something to
me. Then I showed him some pictures of my children and said: “They
were my children. What would you feel if you saw your children in
coffins? I was infuriated about Skyguide's initiative to haggle
over my dead children,” the man said.

Vitaly Kaloyev said that he wanted Peter Nielsen to apologize to
him for the death of his family. “He hit me on the hand, when I
was holding the envelope with the photographs of my children. I
only remember that I had a very disturbing feeling, as if the
bodies of my children were turning over in their graves,” said he.
The man added that he did not remember what he did afterwards. ...






http://dailyblitz.motime.com/archive/2005-10
[photo of Vitaly Kaloyev and children]
... Russian citizen Vitaly Kaloyev had a pretty good life. He was
an architect married to a woman that he loved and had two beautiful
children, a boy and a girl. Then, on July 2, 2002, Vitaly's world was
destroyed. On that day, two planes collided in midair. Seventy-one
people died as a Russian Tu-154 filled with 45 schoolchildren plane
collided with a DHL Boeing cargo jet over Bodensee in southern
Germany. Vitaly lost his wife and both of his children in the crash,
which, was the fault of Swiss air traffic controller Peter Nielsen, an
employee of the Swiss Skyguide air control company, who failed to
notice that the planes were on a collision course and ordered the
passenger plane to descend on a path that took it right into the DHL
plane (even though its anti-crash system indicated that they should
climb)....

Larry Dighera wrote in
:


Apparently justice was done:



As a natural born policman, this must make you feel all warm and fuzzy.


Bertie

On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:54:23 +0000 (UTC), Bertie the Bunyip
wrote in :


As a natural born policman, this must make you feel all warm and fuzzy.

Two years imprisonment seems like a light sentence for premeditated
murder to me. But that is what the justice system found appropriate
in this case apparently.

Don't get me wrong. From the news accounts of the attitude of the ATC
company, perhaps they should have jailed the Skyguide CEO as well, but
it would seem that the Swiss, in this case, found it difficult to
impose appropriate fines or jail terms on the ATC personnel or their
superiors.

Larry Dighera writes:

Don't get me wrong. From the news accounts of the attitude of the ATC
company, perhaps they should have jailed the Skyguide CEO as well, but
it would seem that the Swiss, in this case, found it difficult to
impose appropriate fines or jail terms on the ATC personnel or their
superiors.

Had the pilot obeyed the TCAS--which he is required to do--there would have
been no accident. "Deals" occur from time to time, and the controllers don't
go to prison because of them. The main guilty party here seems to be Skyguide
management, since it allowed one person to staff two scopes, which is unsafe.

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Larry Dighera writes:

Don't get me wrong. From the news accounts of the attitude of the
ATC company, perhaps they should have jailed the Skyguide CEO as
well, but it would seem that the Swiss, in this case, found it
difficult to impose appropriate fines or jail terms on the ATC
personnel or their superiors.

Had the pilot obeyed the TCAS--which he is required to do--

No, he wasn;t, fjukkwit.



Wrong again.


Bertie

Larry Dighera wrote in
:

On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:54:23 +0000 (UTC), Bertie the Bunyip
wrote in :


As a natural born policman, this must make you feel all warm and fuzzy.

Two years imprisonment seems like a light sentence for premeditated
murder to me. But that is what the justice system found appropriate
in this case apparently.

Don't get me wrong.

Like anyone could do that with you.


Bertie

Larry Dighera writes:

Apparently justice was done:

Which part do you interpret as justice?

On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:28:09 +0100, Mxsmanic
wrote in :

Larry Dighera writes:

Apparently justice was done:

Which part do you interpret as justice?

Due process.

Larry Dighera writes:

Due process.

Granted, but the sentences seem strange. The sentence for murder was pretty
light, and so were the punishments for the other parties. And it seems that
Skyguide management, which was ultimately responsible for the situation,
didn't receive any penalties at all.

This is the danger in hiring private companies to handle activities that are
naturally monopolies. Quality _always_ declines.

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Larry Dighera writes:

Due process.

Granted, but the sentences seem strange. The sentence for murder was
pretty light, and so were the punishments for the other parties.

Depends. What jury would convict your murderer?

Bertie