While TCAS priority was the technical point of failure, I feel that the transition phase from public to private of the Swiss air traffic control services in 2001 seems to be the greatest disruption of this finely coordinated ATC.
Under the new management of Skyguide which led to the obvious cut in labor cost like reducing the night shift from 3 to 2 controllers. The private company still tolerated the extended break convention during night shift from before but leaving only one person responsible, now. And guess what? Maybe a software update to make some efficiency steps when we are at it. The single one controller was then informed during the update taking place what was still functioning and not which was very little.
>Part way through Nielsen’s shift, a group of technicians arrived to install the update, and he was informed that his work station’s main computer would have to be shut down, causing his displays to operate in fallback mode — a secondary condition in which several features provided by the main computer became unavailable. In fallback mode, the system which automatically correlated an aircraft’s radar return with its filed flight plan would not work, forcing him to enter the information manually, and the Short-Term Conflict Alert light, which illuminates when the system predicts that two planes will pass too close, would be rendered inoperative. But Nielsen had no idea what features would be lost in fallback mode, nor did he have any obvious way of finding out. And as if that wasn’t enough, a few minutes later the technicians informed him that they would also have to disconnect the control center’s direct telephone landline to neighboring centers
For me also surprisingly shocking that back in Karlsruhe multiple (!) controllers had to literally watch the obvious horror unfold while the one controller responsible was not available because of ... maintenance work.
>Heartbreakingly, controllers in neighboring Karlsruhe saw the collision coming, but they did not have the authority to speak to planes in another sector without permission from the responsible controller. The Karlsruhe controllers tried several times to call Nielsen in the minute before the crash, but the landlines were down and they couldn’t get through. By the time they gave up on this effort, it was too late to prevent the crash even by breaking the rules. The controllers were forced to watch, helpless, as the two planes collided and then disappeared from radar, knowing that dozens of people were dying before their eyes, and that there was nothing they could do to save them.
Edit: According to this article [0] and this verdict [1] the controllers in Karlsruhe had the full authority but were illegally instructed otherwise by DFS (German ATC) management which had an informal agreement with Skyguide (Swiss ATC) over this border region.
In the end the heavily traumatized and retired controller Nielsen was brutally stabbed because the modern diffusion of responsibility of companies only operates on the culture of financial compensation and is blissfully ignorant of a desperate man losing his whole family trying to restore his honor. So, no apology before everything is settled accordingly.
> In the end the heavily traumatized and retired controller Nielsen was brutally stabbed because the modern diffusion of responsibility of companies only operates on the culture of financial compensation and is blissfully ignorant of a desperate man losing his whole family trying to restore his honor.
Well yeah. I’d still take innocent until proven guilty over any of the blood debt and honour killing cultures. Particularly when the victim sacrificed to restore someone’s “honour” is not responsible. Desperation is no excuse, and of course we should not base our judicial systems on it.
As usual, the real culprits got nothing. As usual, this is unacceptable and, as usual, nothing has been or will be done to change this.
Vitaly Kaloyev, who killed Nielsen, went to jail for it for a few years and, after release, returned to Russia. He then became deputy minister of construction in North Ossetia, Russia.
> The single one controller was then informed during the update taking place what was still functioning and not which was very little.
According to the text you quoted, it's worse:
> But Nielsen had no idea what features would be lost in fallback mode, nor did he have any obvious way of finding out.
Nielsen never knew which systems were out of order. Given the apparent workload he was under, knowing that the collision warning was out of order probably would not have helped, but it seems that he didn't even know for sure that the system was down.
Is there not a point where ignoring what you’re allowed to do and doing what’s best if it prevents massive human catastrophe is the correct option regardless of personal consequences? Nobody is going to jail for saving hundreds of lives. The media outcry would likely prevent any job loss…or was it that their systems wouldn’t allow them?
>By the time they gave up on this effort, it was too late to prevent the crash even by breaking the rules.
There was too little time. And I imagine it is hard to be that quick and lucid in breaking the rules of ATC.
Edit: I've looked it up and according to this article [0] there was only an informal agreement between Skyguide and the German counterpart DFS regarding this border region. Since ultimately only Germany is solely responsible for their airspace no such an agreement can exist and therefore the federal government (Bund) is partly to blame for the accident.
Indeed the controllers in Karlsruhe had the obligation to intervene asap even without informing the Swiss counterpart but they were instructed otherwise although there had been no legally binding transfer of the sovereign task ("weil es keine rechtlich verbindliche Übertragung der hoheitlichen Aufgabe gegeben habe"); so this was illegal. In both cases a management issue.
> so this was illegal.
> In both cases a management
> issue.
I think attempting to call the other ATC 11 (!) times in the span of a couple of minutes before the crash goes way beyond a management issue, it's also a cultural issue.
Those controllers were looking at a screen showing that two airplanes were about to crash into one another.
In most other western countries that person would have thought "well, fuck this!" and started yelling at them on the channel itself, implied procedures, stepping on toes, and pecking order be damned.
I wasn't aware of any direct connection between Snowden's leaks and lives saved. I have seen vague-ish claims from intel communities that he cost lives, but not the other way around. Anything concrete about how he saved lives?
It isn't necessary. "How someone who breaks the rules for the sake of greater good" is the relevant metric, whether it pertains to life, health or liberty.
Plus, a life in the gulag is pretty much a life lost.
Sorry, I thought in your previous comment you were drawing a connection with Snowden due to the "lives saved" quotation you included.
With Snowden, it is a lot more complicated - many people don't believe he did the world a service, and is in fact a traitor. (Not to mention, he's living in a Russian apartment which although not my preferred lifestyle, it is still far from being a gulag.)
> many people don't believe he did the world a service, and is in fact a traitor.
I'm not sure what to respond. Ok, why do people believe that, label him this - what are their arguments? I think the point here is how authorities act, and what they are allowed to get away with. PRISM, apparently, is something they are allowed to get away way. Where are the "traitors" spying on Americans? Or are those all unquestionably "heros"?
> he's living in a Russian apartment
True, because he managed to escape, and probably is looking over his shoulder a lot in the meanwhile.
On the other hand, if he ended up in US custody, we might know very little until "found dead in his cell", which would no doubt be yet another unaccountable accident.
He is a free man, he is a citizen of Russia living in Russia. We can speculate on whether he would have been successfully prosecuted and would still be in prison today had he not left the US, but he is definitely not in jail.
Why was TCAS priority the point of failure? As I understood it, the TCAS said the correct thing to both aircraft, but the ATC overrode it in one, resulting in the accident.
>Official guidance from the International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO, which signatory nations use to create their own regulations, did not say what to do if TCAS and ATC issued conflicting avoidance instructions. Similarly, European regulations failed to cover this scenario.
Technical in the sense of giving priority one over the other; the priority was clear in the US but at the time not strictly set in Europe or Japan (a near miss happened one year before because of conflicting instructions) and in Russia the opposite (highest priority ATC) was true with TCAS being a new thing obligatory for flights to Europe, of the five crew members only one pilot seemed to be aware that the two TCAS are tightly coordinated (CLIMB/DESCEND) for a last resort, but nobody listened to him.
Under the new management of Skyguide which led to the obvious cut in labor cost like reducing the night shift from 3 to 2 controllers. The private company still tolerated the extended break convention during night shift from before but leaving only one person responsible, now. And guess what? Maybe a software update to make some efficiency steps when we are at it. The single one controller was then informed during the update taking place what was still functioning and not which was very little.
>Part way through Nielsen’s shift, a group of technicians arrived to install the update, and he was informed that his work station’s main computer would have to be shut down, causing his displays to operate in fallback mode — a secondary condition in which several features provided by the main computer became unavailable. In fallback mode, the system which automatically correlated an aircraft’s radar return with its filed flight plan would not work, forcing him to enter the information manually, and the Short-Term Conflict Alert light, which illuminates when the system predicts that two planes will pass too close, would be rendered inoperative. But Nielsen had no idea what features would be lost in fallback mode, nor did he have any obvious way of finding out. And as if that wasn’t enough, a few minutes later the technicians informed him that they would also have to disconnect the control center’s direct telephone landline to neighboring centers
For me also surprisingly shocking that back in Karlsruhe multiple (!) controllers had to literally watch the obvious horror unfold while the one controller responsible was not available because of ... maintenance work.
>Heartbreakingly, controllers in neighboring Karlsruhe saw the collision coming, but they did not have the authority to speak to planes in another sector without permission from the responsible controller. The Karlsruhe controllers tried several times to call Nielsen in the minute before the crash, but the landlines were down and they couldn’t get through. By the time they gave up on this effort, it was too late to prevent the crash even by breaking the rules. The controllers were forced to watch, helpless, as the two planes collided and then disappeared from radar, knowing that dozens of people were dying before their eyes, and that there was nothing they could do to save them.
Edit: According to this article [0] and this verdict [1] the controllers in Karlsruhe had the full authority but were illegally instructed otherwise by DFS (German ATC) management which had an informal agreement with Skyguide (Swiss ATC) over this border region.
In the end the heavily traumatized and retired controller Nielsen was brutally stabbed because the modern diffusion of responsibility of companies only operates on the culture of financial compensation and is blissfully ignorant of a desperate man losing his whole family trying to restore his honor. So, no apology before everything is settled accordingly.
[0]https://www.dw.com/de/deutschland-haftet-f%C3%BCr-fehler-der...
[1]https://research.wolterskluwer-online.de/document/2ceee0e8-5...