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American Morning

Air Traffic Controllers Tried to Prevent Collision

Aired July 02, 2002 - 07:01   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, an air disaster which air controllers tried desperately to prevent, but failed. A mid-air collision took place at 36,000 feet above southern Germany over Lake Constance. At least 70 people are believed dead, most of them children.

CNN's Alessio Vinci is at the crash site. He joins us now on the phone from Germany -- good morning. What's the latest from there?

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN ROME BUREAU CHIEF: Well, good morning, Paula. We are actually -- I'm actually speaking to you about three miles away from the crash site. The police cordoned off the entire area, and no reporter is allowed at this time anywhere near where the debris fell from 30,000 feet high in the sky.

A massive recovery operation is under way at this time, involving some 800 police and rescue officials, as well as 22 boats on the Lake Constance. According to a police official, a German police official here, with whom I just spoke, nothing has been recovered from the water so far. However, at the crash site, about four kilometers or three miles to the north from here, 12 bodies so far have been found, and as well as one black box, the flight recorder of the Russian Tupolev flight.

The two planes, as we said, collided in mid-air. The Tupolev carrying 154 -- the Tupolev 154 carrying 57 passengers, plus 11 crewmembers, and we do understand from Russian officials that a majority of those passengers in the Tupolev flight were children on a trip to Barcelona in Spain.

The other plane was a DHL cargo Boeing 757 with two crewmembers on board, the pilot and the co-pilot. German officials here are telling us that, of course, at this time, there is absolutely no hope to find anybody alive.

As to what has caused this incident, there is no official statement yet, but we are hearing preliminary reports, both here on the scene as well as from Zurich in Switzerland -- I must tell you that this crash took place over Swiss air space. We are in an area here where Switzerland and Germany and France meet together.

Now, according to the preliminary information, it does appear that there was no language problem with the Russian jetliner. We do understand from Russian officials that the pilot and the co-pilot were experienced and did speak well English. We do understand, however, that the Zurich air traffic controller attempted to contact the plane three times, the Russian plane three times, asking this plane to lower its altitude. There was no response from that plane.

Also, as far as the DHL plane is concerned, it was equipped with modern detection equipment, if you want, anti-collision equipment that all modern planes are equipped with. We do understand from a German radio report here that both planes may have started -- may have started lowering their altitude simultaneously, and then eventually finding each other at the same altitude again several thousand miles below.

So it was a tremendous crash. Eyewitnesses reported a huge, dark, orange glow. It was the middle of the night here. It was just before midnight. So this was an immediately spottable crash. It was a giant glare. Debris was scattered over an area of about 30 kilometers or 20 miles wide -- Paula.

ZAHN: Alessio, usually with these kinds of flight paths, if Zurich was in control, it would have assigned a certain altitude to the plane. You were saying Zurich made three attempts to get a hold of the Russian pilots, and there was no response. Does that suggest, at least initially, to investigators that the Russian plane was taking its own route?

VINCI: Well, I think that -- and again, this is all speculation at this time, because we don't have anything official. But I think that the Russian control tower may have thought that perhaps the Russian plane was not equipped with modern equipment to detect other planes coming from the other side, and therefore, they thought that perhaps the best idea was to try to change the course of the route of the Russian jet.

They felt that perhaps the DHL plane, who they perhaps knew or could at least assume, because it was a more modern plane, could -- was equipped with this anti-collision equipment. So they tried to attempt and ask the Russian plane to just change its course.

Now, whether this is actually what happened, it is still too early to say. Again, we don't have any official statement exactly as to what happened. But we do know, however, from Swiss air traffic controllers that they did attempt to talk to the Russian plane three times, and they did not respond.

ZAHN: Alessio Vinci, thank you much for that live update. We'll be checking in with you throughout the morning as more information becomes available.

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