Planes collide in midair

last updated 8 January 2015

Überlingen, Germany

At least 71 people died this week when a Russian passenger jet and a cargo plane smashed into each other over southern Germany. Witnesses said a huge fireball lit up the night, and flaming wreckage rained down over a 20-mile-long swath in the hills surrounding Lake Constance, a popular vacation area on the border of Switzerland. The passenger jet, a Tupolev flown by Russian carrier Bashkirian Air, repeatedly ignored Swiss air traffic controllers’ orders to lower its altitude to avoid hitting a Boeing flown by DHL, an overnight mail service. By the time the Tupolev finally dove down, the Boeing was also trying to dive out of the way, and the two collided at 36,000 feet. Most of the dead were Muslim children from the Russian region of Bashkortostan, flying from Moscow to Barcelona for a UNESCO festival.