On the night of July 1, 2002, a Boeing 757 collided with a Tupolev-154 at 35,000 feet, resulting in 71 fatalities. Initially, this accident was immediately blamed on two individuals. First, the pilot of the Tupolev aircraft whose command of the English language was questioned when repeated descent instructions from ATC were not immediately responded to. The second individual was the controller on duty, who was accused of not exercising the abilities needed in order to detect the presence of a conflict between aircraft and resolve them. In this paper, we provide an analysis of the event, highlighting fundamental human and system errors that occurred that night: errors that contributed to the worst midair collision in recent history.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.