Passenger Airlines and Cargo Plane Collide over Southern Germany

At 11:43 p.m. (local time), in July 1, a Russian passenger airliner, Tupolev Tu-154 collided late Monday night with a Boeing 757 cargo plane over southern Germany, exploding in a fireball and killing all 71 people aboard the planes, the BBC reported.

Two planes have collided over 12,000m above the town of Ueberlingen in southern Germany. Burning wreckage was strewn over 30㎞ from the collision place. The police said that 11 dead bodies were found on the ground, but no one will survive in the crash of two jets.

Witnesses described a huge fireball lighting up the night sky.

Exact cause of the collision hasn’t been founded yet. The police have been in investigation for mistakes of air control.

Russian air ministry officials have described that there was 69 people including 52 of Russian children and teenagers and 12 crew aboard in the Tupolev plan. The Russian plane had been flying from Moscow to Barcelona (Spain), via München (Germany). Most of passenger was Russian who planed to travel for a summer vacation.

The Boeing, flown by a crew with the DHL delivery service, was carrying cargo from Bahrain to Brussels with two pilots. The plane had earlier stopped in Bergamo, in north Italy.

BBC reported “The plane was fitted with avoidance equipment that sounds an alarm or automatically changes course, if another plane is too close. Accordingly, it is very rare to collide large planes”.

Sung-Kyu Kim kimsk@donga.com