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American Morning

Plane Crash Over Germany Kills 71

Aired July 02, 2002 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Up front this morning, on to that news out of Germany, that deadly midair collision over that country. A cargo plane with a crew of two was heading to Brussels when it collided at 36,000 feet with a Russian charter jet carrying 69 people, mostly children, on its way to Barcelona. Everyone on board both planes is believed to have died.

CNN's Alessio Vinci is near the crash site. He joins us now live on the phone from Germany.

Good morning, Alessio.

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning to you, Paula.

Police have cordoned off the entire area surrounding the crash site. They also reported another (UNINTELLIGIBLE) near there. A massive recovery operation is under way at this time, involving some 800 police and rescue officials, as well as 22 boats in the nearby Lake of Constance.

The plane, two planes, collided; they crashed about three miles north of this lake in Swiss air space, although we are here now in Germany.

According to police officials, nothing has been recovered from the water of the lake. However, at the crash site, so far, 12 bodies have been found, have been recovered, as well as one of the flight recorders, the black box from the Russian Tupolev 154.

Now, the reasons why this crash has happened are still unclear. We do understand from both early reports here from German officials, as well as Swiss air traffic controllers, that the Russian, the Swiss traffic controllers attempted to ask three times the Russian plane to change its course because they noticed from their radar screens that he was on a collision course with the DHL plane.

We also do understand from both DHL and the Bashkirian Airlines officials that each plane was equipped with a so-called transponder -- which is an anti-collision device, if you want -- which allows a pilot not only to spot ahead of time whether they're on a collision course, but also sometimes automatically turn, swerve the plane into a different direction. There was a German radio report here that suggests -- quoting Swiss traffic controllers as saying both planes may have dived at the same time and eventually collided several thousand feet below them -- Paula.

ZAHN: So Alessio, that is a piece of the puzzle that we didn't have last time we checked in with you. Once again now, these officials confirming that, indeed, this Russian plane had a transponder?

VINCI: That is correct. This is something that I've just gotten from our own producers in Moscow. They do talk to the Bashkirian Airlines officials, and they are telling me that those officials are saying that the Tupolev 154, which was built in 1995, which is a fairly relatively new plane, was equipped with those anti-collision devices and therefore this could give some credit to the possibility that the both planes sort of dived simultaneously because both of those two devices reacted simultaneously at the same time and in the same way.

ZAHN: And tell us a little bit more about the people on board, and particularly the children that were on board this plane.

VINCI: That is correct. This is a Bashkirian Airlines plane, a charter plane that took off from Moscow with a stopover in Munich, Germany, and then on to Barcelona. There were some early reports that this may be a trip organized by UNESCO. However, UNESCO officials in Moscow also are saying that they do not know anything about this.

We do know, however, that the vast majority of the people on board were children. Fifty-seven in total persons were on that plane, excluding the crew. At least 52 of them were, we understand, below the age of 17.

ZAHN: So sad.

All right, Alessio, thank you very much for that update. We'll be checking in with you throughout the morning.

As you can see, bit by bit we're getting more information on what went so drastically wrong in the skies over Lake Constance, Germany, last night.

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