Talk:TABSO Flight 101

Untitled

An eyewitness.

I worked as an air traffic controller at the Area Control Office in Bratislave between 1961 and 1968. I also taught flying on powered airplanes at the aeroclub Vajnory. In my spare time I was designing air traffic control radar station to be located at a nearby hill called Maly Javornik. Upon request I am able to present copies of my relevant licences.

On the day of the Bulgarian Airlines Il-18 airplane LZ-BEN tragedy I had a morning shift and there were several aircraft flying from southern Europe towards Prague. One of them, a Czechoslovak Airlines jet was flying to Prague itself, another, the Bulgarian turboprop, was flying to Berlin. After crossing the area of my responsibility (between Sturovo and Brno) and while they were under Czech Air Traffic Control somewhere between Brno and Prague they both decided to turn around and land in Bratislava due to fog at both Berlin and Prague. There was a military area on the way. The Czech airliner was allowed to proceed from Brno to Bratislava directly above the area, the Bulgarian one was instructed to make a slight detour (from Brno via Velke Kostolany), in accordance with the existing rules. Our instructions were acknowledged by both aircraft. We were unable to see the two aircraft on our radar. When both of them were about fifty kilometres from Bratislava airport they were instructed to contact the airport’s tower for further instructions. After a few minutes I received telephone call from the tower (who were able to see both aircraft on their short-range radar) informing me that both of the aircraft are approaching the airport from the same direction, across the military area. The Bulgarian crew clearly ignored our instructions and simply followed the Czech airliner. I was finishing my duty a few hours later and on my way out I saw the Bulgarian crew at the Briefing Office. I asked the captain informally why were the instructions ignored. He replied that they could see the Czech airliner clearly some distance in front of them, and there was no problem, was there? Well, knowing that any complaint to my management would be falling on deaf ears I went home (there was at the time the atmosphere of not reporting anything, from “minor” trespasses of aviation law, through malfunctioning equipment right to ATC and associated personnel working under influence of alcohol).

I lived only a few kilometres from the airport, and a few hours later, just as the sun was setting, I heard the jet airplane of the Czech airlines taking off. I was outside my house and saw it climbing at about 1000-1500 metres above ground, above the mountains which are about 600 metres high, heading in the military area direction, and Brno. I went inside and a few minutes later I heard the noise of the turboprop engines, knowing that it belonged to the Bulgarian aircraft. When the noise subsided I assumed the aircraft turned away from the mountains, away from the direction of the military area, towards Velke Kostolany, in accordance with the standard instructions. How wrong I was! A few moments later I heard the children outside screaming that an aircraft had crashed. I ran outside and saw the unmistakable cloud of smoke rising above the clouds covering the mountain tops down to about edge of the forest level (approx. 150 metres vertically above the airport ). I ran to the telephone, rang the airport tower with the news, only to hear from them that the “Bulgarian” is not responding, and could not be seen on their radar…

I ran to the site, about 3 kilometres distant. First snow of the winter was beginning to fall. When I arrived at the site it was almost completely dark. I saw flames everywhere, scattered parts of the airplane, human body parts, scattered luggage, and from the general arrangement of the broken trees, parts, etc. I realised that this was a high speed impact, and that there was nothing for me to do. I ran back to a nearest telephone and appraised the air traffic control of my findings. I realised later that the crew again ignored the instructions to turn away from the military area, and simply followed the Czech airlines aircraft that departed a few minutes earlier; the same way as they arrived a few hours earlier. The height of 300 metres above the airport level was stipulated by the air traffic controller with respect to some other traffic in the airport’s area, under assumption that the Bulgarian aircraft would follow the instructions and turn to the right after take-off (away from the mountains, that at the time of take-off were clearly visible (together with the cap of clouds on their tops), towards Velke Kostolany.

Charles Karol Hatvani email charles794@gmail.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.180.191.23 (talk) 09:02, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Dear Mr Hatvani,

I very much hope you find this reply to the statement above.

I am the overall writer of this Wikipedia article. In writing, I relied on the very scarce firm data which is in the public domain: mainly the book by the late Tsvetan Tsakov The Crashes of Balkan, as well as brief Web references.

The article has been more-or-less unchanged for a couple of years now. I recently made two brief additions and found your most interesting eyewitness account. I thank you very much for it and regret very much not having seen it earlier.

It intrigued me, first because what little is published does not allow clear conclusions about the accident, while you give precisely such conculsions (LZ101 crashed into terrain because its crew ignored ATC instructions and instead set off to follow a jet airliner which had departed on the same route before them) and second because your account is entirely different to that of Tsakov. (Tsvetan Tsakov was not an eyewitness; he was merely permitted to examine rather hastily -- as he writes in the preface to his book -- documents relating to the crash, alongside other crashes, all within one business day, some quarter century after the Bratishlava crash). Tsakov writes about the fateful role of a Czechoslovak IL-14; you write about the fateful role of a Czechoslovak Tupolev.

I reviewed the information at hand in the light of your account. I came up with four issues which would repay discussion and/or clarification:-

- First: from Google Earth (and/or Google Maps), it appears that LZ101 did commence the ATC-mandated right turn, since the accident site is to the right (to the north) of the extended centreline of the departure runway. It is another matter whether this turn was delayed, whether it was sufficiently tight, et cetera. (It is, indeed, yet another matter whether the parameters of the required turn were set by ATC or whether LZ101 was simply instructed to turn right after takeoff to Zemianske Kostolany). This begs the question whether LZ101 did indeed simply pursue directly [in the sense of more-or-less a straight heading] the CSA TU-104A or maybe TU-124V, and if so, whether CSA also turned right or not, and to what extent...

- Second: you mention an initial height limit of 300m/1000ft above ground level. According to Tsakov, this was imposed by ATC in order to clear a Czechoslovak IL-14 (Avia Av-14?) which had departed Bratislava before LZ101. Yet you do not mention this IL-14 or its departure; your account gives the impression that in the immediate span of time when LZ101 departed, only the CSA Tupolev departed. Tsakov, in turn, does not mention a Czechoslovak Tupolev... In your account, the Czechoslovak IL-14 mentioned by Tsakov (and by extension, by the accident investigators, since Tsakov was essentially retelling their findings) becomes "some other traffic in the airport’s area" (if it is, indeed, the same aeroplane: you may have an altogether different machine or circumstance in mind).

- Third: in two places in your account, you insist that visibility in the Bratislava area at the time of the accident was good; that cloud cover over the Male Karpaty was adequately visible. This is entirely possible, especially in view of the circumstance that the sin sets in the west, in the general direction of LZ101's departure heading. Would, however, LZ101's crew have been expected to fly to IFR or to VFR in the first minutes of their flight?

- Fourth. Children in the street outside your house realised that an airliner had crashed. You yourself saw an "unmistakable cloud of smoke" and realised the same. The Bratislava Tower realised the self-same thing when you telephoned it. So far, how much time has elapsed since the crash -- 10 minutes? You then ran three kilometres (half an hour, with occasional rests and spells of fast walking?). You then spent some time on the crash site, gathering hasty impressions (10 minutes?). You then ran again, to find a telephone (another 10 minutes?). An hour (or just under an hour) had elapsed! What were the police and rescue services doing? How could you -- _an_average_citizen_ -- find the site and get to it _on_foot_ faster than _motorised_ specialist services with _trained_personnel_? In your account, you do not mention seeing any other people at the crash site or on their way there. In fact, the investigation states that rescue services arrived at the accident site some hour-and-a-half after the accident. Could the atmosphere of "schlampferei" (to which you refer elsewhere in your account, in another context) be to blame for this delay in responding to the accident? Could anyone just have been alive, despite your stated impression that nobody could have survived the high-speed impact?

I also note your comment on the Czech language Wikipedia article on the same subject in which you state that the reasons for the accident were gross breach of discipline by the crew of LZ101 and the "laissez-faire" atmosphere at Bratislava ATC. I would venture to take issue to some extent on the first count. The dreaded old chestnut of "pilot error" raised its head in this accident investigation, with the dead crew ultimately blamed for practically all of it. The "discourse" in Bulgaria at the time was rather different: that the crew was very experienced and that it was ATC that caused the accident, by issuing a suicidal height clearance, by failing to advise the need for a _steep_ right turn _immediately_ after departure, by clearing a low performance aeroplane (an IL-14) to depart before a high performance one (an IL-18), and by generally failing to monitor the progress of the flight and failing to issue warnings to the crew once they were airborne. At the very least, ATC could have forbidden the use of the runway from which the IL-14 had departed and mandated LZ101 to use a safe alternative. (Indeed, Tsakov writes that ATC gave LZ101 a choice as to whether to use Rwy04 or Rwy31 and -- for reasons we shall never know [straighter routing, possibly...] -- LZ101 elected to use Rwy31).

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle between the official enquiry, your beliefs, and the Bulgarian street-talk. I would be fascinated to find it (the singer Katya Popova who died in the crash was a distant family friend and a colleague of my mother, who still remembers her fondly and tearfully) and welcome your comments in advance!

Kindest regards,

Peter Skipp —Preceding unsigned comment added by Skippiebg (talk • contribs) 15:03, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Yesterday Friday 4 June Charles Hatvani kindly sent me this reply to the above letter:

"Dear Peter, Here is my answer to your thoughtful & penetrating questions. In the beginning I must say that I stand by my account as inserted in the Wikipedia Discussion, except for one error: the Zemianske Kostolany should read Velke Kostolany (& I am absolutely sure that on the day I used the correct words, in line with the standard procedure). And the answers. 1.I am attaching a sketch showing standard path followed towards Velke Kostolany after take-off from runway 31, and the (presumed) path followed by LZ-BEN Please note that the general direction of the crash site was about 350 degrees. Also, the swath created by the airplane as it was shearing the tree-tops, then thicker branches & finally trunks down to earth was horizontal. Also, the debris on both sides of the crash site was symmetrical, i. e. both wing tips severed first, then both outer engines, followed by both inner engines, etc. The airplane at the point of impact was NOT in the process of making a turn, see attached sketch! 2.At the time I was not aware of the 300 metres height limit stipulated by the Air Traffic Control Tower. Only later I learned that it was due to the Czechoslovak Airlines IL-14, which took off from runway 04 a few minutes earlier. It being a piston-engined airplane with a lesser rate of climb it used the runway parallel with the mountains in order to gain sufficient height. The 300 metres the Bulgarian airplane was at is approximately the correct height for the given distance from the airport if standard take-off procedures are followed (albeit at the lower end of the possible range). By the way, the current take-off procedures from the same runway seem to be constructed in such a way that similar accident in nearly the same area is a not-too-remote possibility (especially in the case of a reduced ability to gain height, such as an engine failure, combined perhaps with reduced forward visibility)! Having only just discovered it I have yet to decide what to do. 3.The visibility: a few minutes before the Bulgarian airplane I saw the Czechoslovak Airlines Tu-104, having taken off from the same runway 31, climbing up above the mountains. The ‘plane was shining in the last rays of the setting sun; I noticed the cloud cover on the mountains (called foehn in the business), and the Tu-104 was several hundred metres above it. The airliners at the time were always flying IFR, even during 100% VMC conditions. It’s quite possible the Bulgarians were not looking out of their windows at that moment. The cloud tops must have been shining bright in the setting sun, which at the time of the year was from north-western direction, towards them from about 20-30 degrees from the left. 4.At the time I was busy with researching sites for installation of radars in the area, and I was intimately familiar with every little road & path. Those were at the time unsealed muddy tracks. At the time of the crash, when I got to the foggy part of the forest, I saw the first snow of the season. The ground was covered by it to about 5 cm; the next day there was probably 20 cm of it. From what I have seen at the scene, there was not the slightest chance of anybody surviving, or even remaining intact, for a second after the impact, which occurred at some 500kmh. To be brutal, everything looked like having gone through a shredder. After a crash you often see the tail of the airplane in more-or-less one piece – not here; everything, apart from the wings & engines, was compacted in a giant smoking bundle at the end of some 300-400 long gradually narrowing swathe in the forest. And there were spot fires all along the area... As to the search-and-rescue crews getting to the area in, or not in time, I have no opinion. As I mentioned, the accessibility was fairly difficult. The word schlamperei I used was in relation to the Air Traffic Control methods of operation at the time. And assuredly, I haven’t seen a soul, let alone a vehicle, on my way up or down the mountain. As to the “dreaded chestnut” of pilot error.... I was a holder of Private Pilot’s Licence at the time, with all the possible ratings, single-, multi-engine, instructor, joy flights, the lot, with some 600 flying hours between 1958 & 1968. I lectured at courses for new pilots in the aeroclub, later also in courses for air traffic controllers. I know that pilots make errors, regardless of their rank or experience, same as the air traffic controllers (on a few occasions, when I was younger, I was surprised that I myself was still alive). In the final analysis, in my eyes, the causes of this crash were several: the aircrew’s breach of the discipline by not following the instructions during their flight to Bratislava; the Air Traffic Control ignoring this breach of discipline, as it ignored other similar breaches in the past – that was the “culture” at the time; the aircrew, knowing that nothing happened for their breach of discipline on the way in, tried to follow the same route on the way out (that’s why they opted for the runway they did, I guess; runway 04 is far more suitable for the route to Velke Kostolany). As to the 300 metres height, it remains an open question, whether they were happy to be assigned such a low initial altitude, for whatever reason, for it may have assisted in avoiding radar detection. Only God knows on this point... With regards, Charles K Hatvani

Attachments: google map with airways of the time sketched in; Google map with flight paths sketched in Crash site tree silhouette as I saw it a few days after the crash"

Peter Skipp Skippiebg (talk) 08:38, 5 June 2010 (UTC)