A German court ruled on Thursday Germany wrongly subcontracted its airspace control to a private firm and was liable for a 2002 crash between a Russian passenger jet and a cargo plane that killed 71 people.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Bashkirian Airlines over the mid-air collision involving a Bashkirian Airlines plane and a DHL cargo aircraft over the German village of Ueberlingen close to the Swiss border.
The court said Germany breached its constitution by subcontracting airspace control to private Swiss firm Skyguide and Germany was responsible for compensation for the crash.
"The sovereign task of securing air space has never been effectively transferred to Switzerland," the court said in its ruling. "This means Germany cannot say that it should be Skyguide's liability," the court added on its Web site.
Germany's Transport Ministry declined to comment immediately on the possible implications of the ruling on air traffic control procedures.
On July 1, 2002, Skyguide was operating with a single air traffic controller who told the pilot of the Russian Tupolev plane to descend to avoid a collision, even though early-warning instruments aboard the plane had told the pilots to climb.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.