Five years on, air-crash lawsuits unresolved

By Gisela Mackensen Jun 29, 2007, 8:31 GMT

Ueberlingen, Germany - Relatives of 71 people killed in an air crash over Germany will face wrenching memories when they gather on Sunday to mark the fifth anniversary of the Ueberlingen Disaster.

Legal proceedings over the mid-air crash by two jets after an air-traffic control oversight are still under way.

A Tupolev jet with 69 occupants from the Russian republic of

Bashkortostan was in collision with a DHL Boeing cargo jet with a crew of two. All the occupants were killed.

Many of the Bashkirs were able to view the scene of the July 1, 2002 crash only three days later, as the wreckage and body parts still lay scattered in German countryside close to Lake Constance and Switzerland.

The Bashkirian Airlines plane had been taking 49 children and young people to a Mediterranean holiday.

It took six days to recover all the human remains, so the frantic German rescuers had to organize a funeral without bodies, inviting families to a memorial service where the Tupolev's tailplane had fallen in a field.

Parents, siblings and classmates will be back Sunday at the same spot near the village of Brachenreute to lay wreaths at a monument erected in 2004. It depicts a torn necklace, representing the cut-off lives of the victims.

One man who will not be at the service is a Russian civil engineer who stabbed the duty air traffic controller to death in revenge on February 24, 2004.

The Russian, who is serving a prison term in Switzerland, claimed at trial he had only wanted to meet the air traffic controller personally and hear him apologize for placing the two jets on a collision course. The controller had been alone on duty.

The families of those killed had to wait nearly two years before Skyguide, the Swiss air-traffic control company that was managing the airspace, offered condolence.

Only after Germany's BFU accident-investigation agency issued its final report in May 2004 did Skyguide chief executive Alain Rossier issue a written apology for what had happened.

That delay appears to have been dictated by lawyers concerned that an apology might be exploited by plaintiffs to open up further legal liability.

This year in May, when some of the families attended the trial of eight Skyguide staff in Buelach, Switzerland, Skyguide interim chief executive Francis Schubert took the chance to apologize face to face.

The verdict in the trial is expected on September 4. The relatives travelled to Buelach to highlight their demands for fair compensation.

They were assisted by a US law firm, Podhurst, which is representing 30 of the families in claims in the Swiss courts and in Barcelona, the Spanish destination of the Tupolev flight.

The other 41 families have accepted an out-of-court settlement, under which a joint fund set up by the German and Swiss governments and Skyguide pays them compensation.

There are also corporate lawsuits still pending. A state court in Constance, Germany has ruled that German officials lacked the constitutional authority to put a Swiss company in charge of sovereign German airspace.

This meant that the German federal government had to pay damages to Bashkirian Airlines for the error by Swiss air traffic control and the resulting loss of the plane. However, that ruling is still subject to appeal.

The relatives can count on continued help from local people living near the crash site in Germany though.

Five years ago there was an impressive outpouring of volunteer help. People able to speak Russian came together to interpret for the Russian officials and the bereaved people.

Those helpers, who did not know one another previously, have kept in touch with one another and organized a 'Bridge to Ufa' project to keep alive the friendship forged amid so much pain.

The Bridge invites schoolchildren and culture groups from Ufa, the Bashkortostan capital, to visit the Constance area.

For area people, this is also a way of giving thanks for the extraordinary luck that none of the falling wreckage hit anybody on the ground.