And while the agreement did allow controllers to route planes onto runways 16 and 14 after hours if the weather prevented a VOR/DME approach to runway 28, there was considerable pressure on them to avoid doing this. A curiosity was that Captain Lutz had just recently started to fly the RJ100, which meant that the first officer had more experience flying the type. After being hired by Crossair in 1979, his performance was negatively assessed by an inspector from what was then the Federal Aviation Office; however, later that year responsibility for evaluating pilots was devolved to the airlines, and for 17 years Crossair never once criticized his aptitude. Two seconds later, he made his decision. The accident aircraft, a British-made Avro 146-RJ100, registration HB-IXM, was manufactured in 1996 and logged more than 13,000 hours and 11,500 cycles in total before the crash. Melanie Thornton, the lead singer of the Eurodance group La Bouche, was killed in the crash. [2]:12. First Officer Lhrer might not have been doing much better: his wife told investigators that he had felt exhausted and stressed the previous evening, after coming home from a long work day in which he spent 10 hours in the air. Twenty-four people died, including the cockpit crew and a flight attendant, while seven passengers and two flight attendants survived. At 21:58, the plane was cleared for landing on Runway 28 and turned to make its final approach. WebCaptain Hans Ulrich Lutz and First Officer Stefan Loehrer were the cockpit crew of Crossair Flight 3597 that night on 24thNovember 2001. In this particular incident, Lutz missed his approach into Sion and circled over what he thought was Sion's airport for several minutes before passengers spotted road signs in Italian; the navigational error had taken them over the Great St Bernard Pass, and the airport they had been circling was in fact Aosta Valley Airport in Italy. And even if he did know it was there, his misunderstanding about their distance from the runway might have caused him to believe that they had already passed it. The crash of flight 3597, while directly caused by the captains decision to violate one of the cardinal rules of aviation, was therefore made possible by the collapse of Switzerlands aviation safety system at every level. Contributions under this article have been turned off. The accident was caused by a series of pilot errors and navigation mistakes that had put the plane off course. Captain Crash: Hans Ulrich Lutz (the pilot of Crossair Flight 3597) was almost this in real-life, to the point where he once wrecked a plane by retracting the landing gear on the runway. Investigators felt that as pilot monitoring, First Officer Lhrer should have raised some objection to this ill-informed plan. You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Join our discussions. At that time, Swissair was grounded exactly 1 month before the crash. Join the discussion of this article on Reddit! Incredibly, the tail section remained largely intact, and several people seated there managed to survive the crash. Consequently, flight 3597 began to descend below the glide path to the runway. Could he have struggled to keep track his speed, descent rate, and distance from the runway due to fatigue? Membership Member of European Complement Network (board member 2001-2006), European Association for Red Cell Research. Lutz was an extremely experienced pilot with more than 19,500 flight hours approximately 19,300 of which were as pilot in command. Unfortunately, there was no one else to find: all 24 remaining passengers and crew were dead. The lights of another village were just visible through the fog, so he again said, We have ground contact.. Connections Married Ivanka Pistek, July 5, 1942. The BFU's Final Report states that other factors also contributed to the accident: The story of the disaster was featured as the first episode of the tenth season of Canadian Discovery Channel show Mayday (known as Air Emergency in the US). But the system which allowed him to make such a confounding decision was rotten to the core: if there was one thing the accident revealed, it was that flying in Switzerland wasnt safe. As they descended, the lights of a village briefly became visible through the clouds, prompting Captain Lutz to comment that he had ground contact. Shortly afterward, at 10:04, another Crossair flight ahead of them reported that they had landed successfully, but that the weather conditions were near the minimums and they only saw the runway from 2.2 nm (4km) out. "[5] Lhrer hesitated before replying, "Yes". They managed to get away with this because the final approach ran over Lake Lugano, which (being perfectly flat) did not present any obstacles that would pose a hazard to low-flying planes. WebHans-Ulrich Rudel (19161982), German ground-attack pilot during World War II. WebHans Ulrich Lutz Red cell (RBC) deformability and membrane-bound immunoglobulin G (IgG) were studied to better understand premature clearance of erythrocytes in hereditary spherocytosis. Analyzer of plane crashes. When Lhrer reported the plane reaching 100 feet above MDA, the CVR records Lutz asking Lhrer, "Do we have ground contact? All of these incidents showed that Captain Lutz was prone to careless mistakes and did not shy away from risky maneuvers. Half an hour into the flight, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) captured Captain Lutz, giving his first officer a long and unnecessary lecture about interpreting runway reports. Assisting the captain was 25-year-old First Officer Stefan Lhrer, who was fresh out of training with just 500 hours under his belt. With poor visibility due to low cloud, a previous Crossair flight reported that they could not see the runway until they were two miles out. Aviation accidents and incidents in Switzerland, Passenger had Sweden-United Kingdom dual Citizenship, Passenger had Germany-United States dual Citizenship, "Final Report No. This brought the AAIB back to the decision to use runway 28 in the first place. Upon reaching MDA of 2,400 feet (730m), Lutz declared that he had "ground contact" and would continue on, then deliberately descended the plane below the MDA without having the required visual contact with either the approach lights or the runway,[2] a major piloting error that ultimately led to the crash. A lack of oversight from the federal government allowed Crossair to develop this unsafe culture. However, by 2001 the next generation of ground proximity warning technology known as the Terrain Awareness and Warning System, or TAWS was already available. That would be no easy task: the weather that night was poor, with a low cloud ceiling and visibility of 3,500 meters in mixed snow and rain. After having been told of the change of runway Captain Lutz became frustrated, but out loud, he said, "OK, that's fine.". Following this incident, he was removed from his position as flight instructor for the Saab 340 but continued flying for Crossair. In order to accomplish this maneuver, Lutz had gone so far as to deactivate the ground proximity warning system and the overspeed warning to prevent them from going off during his insane plunge toward the lake. In another case in 1995, a Crossair first officer reported that while on approach to Lugano in nighttime instrument conditions, Lutz initiated a blistering descent of 4,000 feet per minute, which he maintained clear through the MDA before leveling off when he caught sight of Lake Lugano at a height of 300 feet above the ground. Before the approach they did not agree on a set of circumstances which would trigger a go-around, making it harder for Lhrer to judge whether Lutz was pushing things too far. WebCaptain Lutz had originally been scheduled to land on runway 14, the main landing runway at Zurich, a runway equipped with an Instrument Landing System (ILS) that handles virtually all tasks associated with landing an airplane, including using the plane's auto-pilot to control the angle and speed of descent; all the pilot is required to do in an Zurich air traffic control informed the plane that they would be landing on Runway 28. WebIt carries 28 passengers and 5 crew members, which include Hans Ulrich Lutz, a 57 year old Captain, and Stefan Loehrer, a 25 year old First Officer. These included a near-miss incident on final approach to Lugano Airport where Lutz came within 300 feet (91m) of colliding with the shore of a lake during his final descent and a navigational error during a sightseeing tour over the Alps that took the flight far off its course to Sion, Switzerland. Lutz immediately pushed the throttles to go-around power and pulled up to abandon the approach. Joining them that night were three flight attendants and 28 passengers, well short of what they were expecting: a group of 21 tourists who had been booked on the flight never showed up, leaving the 97-seat plane more than two thirds empty. Unbeknownst to the pilots, Germany and Switzerland had recently agreed to a noise abatement policy that prohibited flights from landing on Runway 14 after 22:00. Zrich ATC, in order to comply with a new Swiss law designed to reduce airport noise from approaching aircraft over southern Germany in the late evening hours, redirected all flights on final approach to switch from the ILS-equipped runway 14 to the less-accurate VOR/DME-equipped runway 28. The final report of the AAIB states that other factors also contributed to the accident: The hourlong Discovery Channel Canada / National Geographic TV series Mayday featured the crash in a Season 10 episode titled Cockpit Failure.[6]. WebHans-Ulrich Hanitsch Oberleutnant zur See (Crew XII/39) No ships sunk or damaged. This was a violation of the most basic rule of flying any approach: dont descend below the MDA if you cant see the runway. But a number of obstacles prevented him from doing so, not least among them Lutzs vastly superior experience. As the runway failed to come into view, Captain Lutz became increasingly frustrated. This report would play a critical role in the events to follow. Despite not being able to see the runway, Captain Lutz continued his descent below the glide path, crashing into a hillside near the village of Bassersdorf, two and a half miles short of the airport. The basic sequence of events which led to the crash began when the pilots of flight 3597 were asked to approach runway 28 instead of runway 14. It was the specific incidents during his career that truly raised eyebrows at the AAIB. Ranks. Membership Member of European Complement Network (board member 2001-2006), European Association for Red Cell Research. The fact that Lhrer made no attempt to prevent the continuation of the flight below the MDA also contributed to the crash. Fixated on finding the runway, they lost track of what their plane was doing until just second before the crash. After passing a point 6 nautical miles (11 kilometers) from the VOR, they would descend to their minimum descent altitude (MDA) of 2,390 feet, which they were required to maintain until they spotted the runway. For people who are interested in the Canadian TV series, Air Crash Investigation(Everywhere else)/Mayday(Canada)/Air Disasters(US), similar shows, and aviation incidents/accidents in general. This airport was not Sion, but Aosta, across the border in Italy. WebCaptain Hans Ulrich Lutz and First Officer Stefan Loehrer were the cockpit crew of Crossair Flight 3597 that night on 24thNovember 2001. WebHans Ulrich Lutz has been listed as a noteworthy biochemist, researcher by Marquis Who's Who. While Captain Lutz was an experienced pilot, his competency would come under close scrutiny during the course of the investigation, which concluded that the accident was a controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) caused by a series of pilot errors and navigation mistakes that led the plane off-course. While briefly circling in a holding pattern, the pilots went over the approach to runway 28. This was a VOR/DME approach, meaning that the navigational aids would help them align with the runway, but they would be personally responsible for ensuring that they were at certain altitudes at certain distances from the airport. However, Flight 3597 was behind schedule and would not reach Zrich until after 22:00 CET, necessitating a change to its landing plan. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. 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