Überlingen significant event Überlingen mid-air collision
2002 midair collision
The city received international attention in July 2002 with the midair collision of Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev Tu-154, and DHL Flight 611 (a Boeing 757-23APF cargo jet manned by two pilots) on 1 July 2002. In this incident, the passenger plane carrying 69, mostly children and a few adult chaperones, who were travelling to Spain, collided with a cargo plane in midair, at about 30,000 ft (9,144 m). The debris fell throughout the northern Überlingen suburbs. Seventy-one people died in the accident, including all the children, their chaperones, and the pilot and co-pilot of the Boeing cargo plane. One of the largest portions of the debris landed in a glade by Brachenreuthe, and the victims of the crash are commemorated there with a string of oversized "pearls".Less than two years later, on 26 February 2004, Peter Nielsen, the air traffic controller on duty at the time of the accident, was stabbed to death by an architect, Vitaly Kaloyev, who had lost his wife and two children in the accident. Nielsen was 36 years old.On 19 May 2004, the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation  published its determination that the accident had been caused by shortcomings in the Swiss air traffic control system supervising the flights at the time of the accident and by ambiguities in the use of TCAS, the on-board aircraft collision avoidance system.