Peter Nielsen (air traffic controller)

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Peter Nielsen was a Danish air traffic controller who worked in Zürich for the private air traffic control company Skyguide.

At approximately 11:35 PM Local time, on July 1, 2002 over Southern Germany (near Überlingen) an aircraft accident occurred between a DHL B757 cargo jet and a Russian Charter Tupolev 154 (similar to a B727). The controller on duty was Peter Nielsen.

DHL (DHX611) was traveling northbound to Brussels and the Russian Bashkirian Airlines jet (BTC2937) westbound to Barcelona with vacationers (many of whom were children). Both aircraft were being worked by the Zurich Area Control Center. This piece of German high altitude airspace was delegated to the Swiss via a Letter of Agreement.

The visibility at the time of the accident was 10 miles, on a dark, moonless night. The controller was working 3 aircraft,

"Aero Lloyd 1135" (Airbus 320) being vectored for an ILS 24 at a satellite airport
"BTC 2937" Russian Charter Jet
"DHX611" Cargo Jet

There were two air traffic controllers working at Zurich Center that night, but the accident report published by the BFU, the German counterpart to the U.S. NTSB, found that one of the controllers “had retired for an extended break,” so Peter Nielsen was simultaneously working both a high and low sector.

To simultaneously control the high and low sectors, the controller was operating two displays separated by several feet. This required him to use two handsets and two speakers to communicate with the aircraft he was controlling. Contention for his time and an overlap of voice communications between the high altitude aircraft and the aircraft on the ILS approach were key elements of this event.

The primary interphone lines that provide facility-facility com had been released to maintenance and were not available. In addition, the back-up system was found later to be faulty and therefore also not available. One additional note on the facility equipment is that the radar/automation system was in backup mode preventing a visual conflict alert that would normally occur 2.5 minutes prior to a possible collision. The controller would have received an automated conflict alert had the system been working. There was later question whether he knew it wasn’t working

The Upper Air Control facility at Karlsruhe tried to contact Zurich ACC to warn them of the conflict, but due to the inter-facility communications condition at Zurich, the Zurich controller could not be reached.

The controller recognized the impending problem and instructed the pilot of BTC2937 to descend. The instruction had to be issued a second time as the pilot did not immediately respond. At about this time, the Traffic Alert and Collision Warning system (TCAS) told the pilot of BTC2937 to climb, and the pilot of DHX611 to descend.

ATC Training/Manuals & Pilot Training/Manuals are consistent in that TCAS takes precedence. However, the Russian pilots training was inconsistent and there were parts of his training history where he was told to follow ATC not TCAS. Both aircraft entered a descent, resulting in a midair collision. All 69 passengers (including 44 children) and crew on the Russian jet and the crew aboard the DHL jet perished, but the tragedy didn’t end there. Peter Nielsen, was murdered in front of his home, 2 years after the accident by Vitaly Kaloyev, a man from North Ossetia who lost his wife and 2 children in the crash.

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