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Crossair Flight LX 3597 was a scheduled flight from Berlin Tegel Airport, in Germany, to Zurich Airport, in Switzerland. @cooperlund @tinybaby Crossair Flight 3597, Captain Hans Ulrich Lutz crashed his plane into a marked hill by the airport killing most of germany's spice girls. Among the victims were both Captain Lutz and First Officer Lhrer, along with American pop singer Melanie Thornton and two of the three members of the Eurodance group Passion Fruit, who had been on their way to a gig in Zrich. The AAIB would conclude 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. What actually happened was much worse than that. 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. The captain (Hans Ulrich Lutz) has a list of incidents prior to flight 3597: 1990 - Accidentally retracts landing gear and writes off Saab 340 (HB-AHA), 1995 - Came within 300 ft of a lake while conducting a night approach to Lugano Airport, Switzerland, 1999 - Flew 50 miles the wrong way on a sightseeing flight (HB-AKI, CRX4718). Lutz might not have realized that: in fact, the hill with which the airplane collided was not marked on his approach chart. It was into this hill that Flight 3597 eventually crashed. Hans Ulrich Lutz, Swiss aviator with the Crossair airline, worked as a pilot-in-command and a training pilot, even though his competences were somewhat slim: flying a Saab 340, he failed an upgrade exam to MD-80 eight consecutive times; he crashed an aircraft while sitting on the tarmac (he tried to retract the gear to show the student . Peter Hogenkamp, founder and CEO of Swiss commercial blog service company Blogwerk AG, and his wife Jacqueline Badran survived the accident. Crossair had no full-time flight safety officer; this position was held part-time by one of its pilots. WebHans Ulrich Lutz has been listed as a noteworthy biochemist, researcher by Marquis Who's Who. Loehrer, in contrast, was inexperienced with just 490 total flight hours. Hans Ulrich Lutz, Swiss aviator with the Crossair airline, worked as a pilot-in-command and a training pilot, even though his competences were somewhat slim: flying a Saab 340, he failed an upgrade exam to MD-80 eight consecutive times; he crashed an aircraft while sitting on the tarmac (he tried to retract the gear to show the student . 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. I also flew with him when I started and I can judge that," he said during a news conference at the airline's headquarters in Basel.The co-pilot of Lutz, who worked for Crossair for 22 years, was the 25-year-old Stefan Loehrer, who had only finished his training with Crossair in Januar this year.Although both flight recorders, known as the "black boxes", have been recovered and are under examination in Paris, it is still unclear who was at the controls when the 97-seat airliner went down.Results of the examinations are not expected before Wednesday.swissinfo with agencies. In contrast to the ILS approach, which displays lateral and vertical position, the VOR/DME approach only shows the lateral position of the aircraft and its range to the runway. Since the overhaul, Swiss International Airlines hasnt had another major accident. This was a violation of the most basic rule of flying any approach: dont descend below the MDA if you cant see the runway. More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative. The AAIB would conclude 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. It was the specific incidents during his career that truly raised eyebrows at the AAIB. Crossair Flight 3597 was a 410-mile-long flight from Berlin Tegel Airport (TXL) in Germany to Zurich Airport (ZRH) in Switzerland. A password reset e-mail has been sent to your address. The crash also could have been prevented with a Minimum Safe Altitude Warning System, or MSAW. [2]:23 The report also documented Lutz's role in causing the total loss of a Crossair Saab 340 by retracting its landing gear while it was still on the apron,[2]:25 which led to Crossair relieving him of his flight instructing duties in 1991. Moments before the crash, Lutz's running commentary indicated to investigators that he thought he was at or near 2.2 nautical miles (4.1km; 2.5mi) from runway 28 because he said, "Someone said he saw the runway late here". Connections Married Ivanka Pistek, July 5, 1942. Prior to its takeover of Swissair to form Swiss International Airlines in 2002, it operated a large and sometimes eclectic fleet of small to midsized airliners, including the Saab 340, the Avro RJ85 and RJ100, two types of Embraer E-jets, and the McDonnell-Douglas MD-83 (some of which it painted in garish McDonalds livery to advertise the restaurant chain, probably because the airline was perpetually short of cash). Following this incident, he was removed from his position as flight instructor for the Saab 340 but continued flying for Crossair. On 24 November 2001, the Crossair Avro RJ100 operating the route, registration HB-IXM, crashed into a wooded range of hills near Bassersdorf and exploded, killing 24 of the 33 people on board. As the flight entered Zurich airspace about an hour after taking off from Berlin, Captain Lutz prepared to land on Zurich's runway 14. The RJ100 was merely an updated version of the otherwise identical British Aerospace BAe 146, which was designed for short takeoffs and landings and was marketed as being exceptionally quiet. Prior to this change, runway 28 was only used by airliners when there was a significant westerly wind, and it was not equipped with an instrument landing system pilots had to use a VOR/DME approach instead. Indeed, the FOCA had never once audited Crossair to ensure it was complying with regulations! The AAIB would conclude 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. 1 Dec 1939 : Offiziersanwrter: 1 Nov 1940 : Connections Married Ivanka Pistek, July 5, 1942. Timenote.info, Biedrba, Abinfoserviss 2011-2020, Terms, Phone: +371 67 842135, E-mail: [emailprotected]. Zurich Air Traffic Control Tower, 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, must redirect all flights on final approach to switch from the ILS-equipped runway 14 to the less-accurate VHF Omnidirectional Range (VOR)/Distance Measuring Equipment (DME)-equipped runway 28. The cockpit voice recording begins some 35 minutes later, just in time to catch Captain Lutz giving First Officer Lhrer a long (and totally unnecessary) lecture about how to interpret a runway report. 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. [2] At 22:07 CET, Flight 3597 crashed into a wooded range of hills near the small town of Bassersdorf, around 4 kilometres (2.5mi) short of the runway, where it broke apart and burst into flames. But over the next couple minutes, as the crew configured the airplane for landing, their speed began to decrease. TIL that Captain Lutz, the pilot mainly responsible for the Crossair 3597 crash, piloted a sightseeing tour to the Alps in Switzerland. Investigators concluded that the answer was yes. 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 minimum descent altitude (MDA) without having the required visual contact with either the approach lights or the runway, a major piloting error that ultimately led directly to the crash. An inexperienced air traffic controller was alone in the control tower. In command of the flight was 57-year-old Captain Hans Ulrich Lutz, a veteran pilot with nearly 20,000 flight hours and a 22-year career at Crossair. But it was the revelation about how Crossair pilots flew the approach to Lugano which did the most to explain the crash of flight 3597. Upon hearing of the change, Captain Lutz clearly became frustrated. [2] Lutz made an additional error by not monitoring the DME as he made his approach; the CVR recorded Lutz's running narrative on nearly every move he made in the cockpit, but did not record any readout of the DME after a check, verified by Lhrer, at 6 nautical miles (11km; 6.9mi) from runway 28. instead, Lutz was over 4 nautical miles (7.4km; 4.6mi) from the runway, and could not possibly have seen the runway due to the presence of a hill, below the MDA of 2,400 feet (730m), that would have obscured his view. Little did he know it was already too late. During final approach, passengers noticed road signs in Italian outside the plane, at which point the pilots performed a go-around and proceeded to the correct airport. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. A few moments later, the first officer got his own back by telling Lutz that he had let his speed get too high, forcing the captain to ease back on the throttle. This runway change forced Captain Lutz to abandon his planned ILS approach and required First Officer Loehrer to consult the Jeppesen charts for runway 28. But the minimum descent altitude, especially on a non-precision approach, is not one of those rules. You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Upon approaching Zurich at 20:58:50 UTC, Crossair Flight 3597 received clearance from air traffic controller to land on runway 28 in poor visibility conditions due to low clouds instead of runway 14. Although both pilots were based in Zurich and the CVR picks up Lutz's query to Loehrer about Loehrer's familiarity with "the 28 approach", which Loehrer confirmed he had, Lutz put the plane into an overly-steep descent that brought flight 3597 to MDA far too soon. 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]. Your data is used to pre-fill some form fields. We cannot record everything. Assisting the captain was 25-year-old First Officer Stefan Lhrer, who was fresh out of training with just 500 hours under his belt.