Russian Airliner Got Mixed Signals

A Russian pilot received contradictory instructions before crashing into a cargo plane over Germany last week, German investigators said Monday after reviewing voice recorders from the two jets.

The voice recorders show that a Swiss air traffic controller's order for a Russian pilot to descend contradicted the cockpit warning system's command for the Tu-154 to climb, the investigators said.

The automatic cockpit warning systems issued simultaneous instructions for the Russian passenger jet to climb and a cargo jet to descend about 45 seconds before they ultimately collided over southern Germany, killing all 71 people on board.

But one second after the on-board system warnings, the Zurich tower, which was in charge of directing the planes even though they were flying over Germany, told the Russian plane to descend, German investigators said, citing voice recorders from both planes recovered at the crash site.

The Russian pilot did not immediately respond to the tower's command, and the Swiss air controllers repeated the order 14 seconds later, the voice recorders indicate.

The Russian pilot responded, and 30 seconds later the planes crashed at 35,000 feet.

German investigators did not release a transcript of the voice recorders, or further details of any exchanges.

Earlier Monday, German air traffic controllers said they tried to warn the Swiss control tower by phone two minutes before two planes collided, but the only available line was busy.

German controllers in the southern city of Karlsruhe made the call to the Zurich tower after receiving an automatic radar warning in the control tower that the planes were on a collision course, Axel Raab, a spokesman for the Karlsruhe control center, told The Associated Press.

Investigators are focusing on the actions of Swiss air traffic controllers and whether they gave the Bashkirian Airlines Tu-154 enough time to avoid collision with the DHL International Boeing 757.

Under the division of airspace along the German-Swiss border, the planes were being directed by controllers in Zurich, Switzerland. Swiss prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation to determine whether anyone can be charged with negligent homicide.

German investigators said last week that the telephone system at the Zurich control center was being worked on at the time of the crash and that the lone controller on duty was working on a reserve phone line. In addition, the center's collision-warning system was out of service because of maintenance.

Investigators say the Zurich tower was making phone calls to the airport in Friedrichshafen, Germany, to coordinate another flight — the last one 98 second before he gave a first warning to the Russian plane. But Joerg Schoenberg, the lead German investigator at the crash site on the shores of Lake Constance bordering Switzerland, said this did not play a role in the accident.

Most of the wreckage has been recovered and brought to the Friedrichshafen airport for investigation. A German lab in Braunschweig is examining the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of both planes.

Thousands of people turned out to pay an emotional farewell on Monday to the 52 Russian children who died in the mid-air collision as the first bodies arrived home for burial.

Crowds thronged the airport of Ufa, capital of Russia's Bashkortostan region where most of the victims came from, when the remains of 22 children and 11 adults were flown in from Germany.

Thousands, some clutching each other and weeping, others holding photographs of victims aloft, later packed into the city's main square where several coffins were placed.

Altogether 69 people died on board a Tu-154 when it was in collision with a Boeing 757 cargo plane over the Swiss-German border at night on July 1. The two crew members of the cargo plane also died.

The young Russian victims had been on their way to act as goodwill ambassadors for their mainly Muslim region at a festival in Barcelona, Spain, organized by the U.N. educational, science and cultural body UNESCO.

"This is a time of huge mourning since the overwhelming majority of the dead were children. What took place was a fateful combination of circumstance, destiny from which there is no escape," Russian mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying at the city center ceremony.