>>712482069
Not really, but it's a complex story
It was night, usually 3 people staff the air control, but the swiss civil aviation cut down costs to only 2 people. One of them went to sleep for a couple of hours, so 1 guy was doing the work of 3 people.
That night there was also maintanance going on, so most of the instruments in the tower control were turned off.
Two planes were on collision course. There is an automated system on planes that makes sure they don't collide, tells one to go up and the other to go down. The Cargo plane received the notification to go up, the Russian to go down. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Now, the russians phoned in to tower control just to make sure, and the air control guy, while on the phone with another emergency, told the russians to go up.
This is the funny bit: In NATO civil aviation, automated instruments have priority. So the Russian pilot should've went down, but in former soviet countries the doctrine is that air control has always the last word.
The air control guy was cleared of guilty, but that doesn't bring comfort to a grieving father, and he couldn't take it on Bashkirian Airlines for not training their pilots, so...
