Doomed to Fail - Ep 170: Another reason to fear flying - the Überlingen disaster

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Photos from wikipedia and - https://plane-crashes.fandom.com/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collision Welp. Farz likes to jostle our nerves, and today is no exception! We're going to talk about a mid-air collision - not the most recent one, but the one that happened in 2002. A DHL plane and a smaller jet collided mid-air; the smaller jet was full of Russian Children on a trip to the beach (and to make it worse, they missed their first fight; this was a second chartered one).   Next comes a story of justice and revenge. Father and husband to two of the victims, Russian citizen Vitaly Kaloyev made it his mission to punish the air traffic controller he deemed responsible. You can also see this story in a little-known Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, "Aftermath." Sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode!  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. And boom, we are recording. Taylor, hi, how are you? Good. How are you? You see how I'm in a good mood because it's like rather than early? That was very kind of you to be like, I'm happy to do it late, but I'll be grumpy.

And I was like, well, I can do it earlier. I just have to time this around. I have to do a Girl Scout cookie pickup because we've almost sold all the thinments we have in our possession so we need to get more between five and seven so that's my only thing I was actually

going to text you I deleted the text I was going to send you what I was going to send was like hey I'm fine like recording whenever because I don't have to navigate a bunch of like kid schedules but I was like does that sound kind of like bitchy if I say that and I was like maybe I shouldn't say that sounds rude no that's fine

I'm well let me introduce us then we tell you why I'm exhausted because I have a family um welcome to doomed to fail where the podcast it brings you history is most notorious disasters epic failures and interesting stories twice a week and I'm Taylor joined by Fars. I'm Fars. No I didn't mean like like intended in a wrong bad way I meant more like is you to hear that and be like oh is he flexing because he like has free time and I have less of it like you know I hear you I remember when I had free time and I was like I'm busy like give me a break person with no children um busy what going to

brunch but not that my family doesn't let me sleep in because they do no but yesterday i did softball tryouts all morning which was fun and then it came home and then we did girls got cookies and like i live on the top of a really steep hill so i like dragged freaking wagon of girls got cookies for a while and my legs hurt oh wow you get a little workout in then i did i did it was definitely the most activity i've done in a long time because i was doing sports sweet um cool so should we go ahead and kick off a fun, intriguing, enticing, enthralling tale? Yes. Are I kicking us off with the tail?

Yes. I will kick the tail. Okay. So, we do like to keep this story Evergreen, but I will say I was inspired. Sounds bad to say. The accident that happened over the Potomac this past week is like the reason why I did this story. Oh, my God.

I'm really inching towards not being able to fly again. And I only laugh because there's nothing else I can do. I'm literally flying into Reagan. Into Reagan. I know. But also, I was thinking that if you died, we'd get a ton of downloads. You would do so good. If I died, you will crush.

I'm going to be so proud of you. Oh, my God, thank you. I probably would stop recording and do something on my own, but I would leave this in the archives or people to revisit to remember you. I'm crying. I'm just sorry. Hopefully, I'll make it okay.

Fingers crossed. Okay, you will. You will, but Christ, tell me, tell me a terrible story about flying. Okay, so that's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about a mid-air collision that occurred in 2002 that was, it was like multiple tragedies in one, and there was like a weird reasoning behind why it happened.

and there's a big thing that changed as a result of this happening that was great that we're all really happy for you know what i always think of do you remember in fight club when there's a mid mid air collision yes that's what i think of all the time on i'm on a plane it's super healthy yeah i actually sometimes have watched plane crash like mayday like air disaster shows while i'm on a plane and was like given what i look like i probably need to stop doing that and so i haven't done that in a few years that's fair that's fair um so we're going to be discussing a thing called the Uberlingan

mid-air collision very, very German. So, like I said, this is interesting because it's a case where people kind of like did what they were supposed to do. Nobody was like messing up entirely and then a horrible horrible tragedy hits, but then another tragedy hits like years after that's related to this. It was like unexpected and like very true crimey.

So we're going to talk about the we're going to to talk about the accident why it happened how it happened and the after effects so several things we're going to go over here first things first i need you to focus on is there's two planes involved we're going to talk about them as plane one and plane two okay so plane one is a commercial jet it's carrying pastures it has 60 passengers nine crew and this what's say again it feels like a lot of crew keep going. Yeah. Well, this is, I mean, so the plane itself was what's called a Tupilov. It's like a Russian plane. And so I think this is one of those ones that has like a flight engineer and

then like a whatever like people like working behind you. It's basically the equivalent of like their version of a 737. This flight unfortunately was privately chartered to carry 46 children in their chaperones on a trip to Spain from Moscow. Not good. Not a good. Not a good start. Then we have plane two, which is a freight plane that is operated by DHL. That's a Boeing 757. And that's going from Italy to Brussels to Belgium. Sorry, Belgium is in Brussels. It's going from Italy to Belgium. Okay. And that's not very far. Not very far. This plane only contains two people, the pilot and the co-pilot. That's it. Oh. So we have plane one, pastures, tons of kids, tons of parents,

plane two, two guys flying a DHL plane. Got it? Mm-hmm. Okay, here's the visualization part. So, plane one is going from Moscow and it's flying mostly east, but somewhat south, to get down to sunny Spain.

Got it? West. East. Sorry, you're sorry, West. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm envisioning the world map for you. I think Moscow's here

I think Spain is here Yes It's going west I'm going to update down My outline later When we're done It's a tiny little detail That's entirely consequential

Given location is the most important Part of the story Could have been going all the way around I don't know And then like you said Plain 2 It's pretty close It's going from Italy to Belgium

It is flying mostly north Okay There is a lot of of international boundaries that crisscross the intersect around here. So you have Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium. I think Austria kind of makes an appearance of the mix there as well. So there's a lot kind of happening, a lot going on. And what we're going to focus on is an air traffic control station that is in charge of this flight in particular that is based out of Zurich, Switzerland. So that's the location. Okay. This air traffic control station manages southern German and Swiss

air traffic. And so on this night, which is July 1st of 2002, there are two air traffic controllers that are managing the traffic, and they're doing so on individual monitors containing their radar systems about several feet away from each other. This is all important. It's all relevant. At some point this night, one of the ATC controllers decided to go for an extended break. And that wasn't a part of company policy, but it was common operating practice. Like managers know that people do this. Some guy would just leave and go do his own thing for hours and come back and return to duty. Around the same time this was happening, maintenance workers enter the station to inform the one working controller that they had to do maintenance work on

the radar. And so the monitor that he was observing were going to be updating very, very slowly at this point. So, at this point, I might as well tell you his name because we're going to actually get into him quite a bit. His name is Peter Nielsen. Okay. Okay. So at this point, Peter is managing plane one, the pasture plane. He is also aware of plane two, the freight plane, we're both flying at 32,000 feet and on an intersecting path, which he does not realize at this time. And I'll explain why in here in a minute. There's also another factor, which is he'd actually ordered plane one to fly 20,000.

They had requested to ascend the 32,000 feet. And so I think maybe he just confused, like, are they 26, 30, whatever. He just confused him, essentially. He had been assigned a new plane of track, which he tries to radio contact, try to maintain radio contact with, but fails. He keeps trying. He can't do it, but he's on a different station when he's doing this. He's going back and forth between his monitor and his buddy's monitor that he's

covering and looking at the plane one, then going back and going to plane. two then looking at this other plane that he has to monitor at one point in particular he was basically had four planes contacting him simultaneously he was just like couldn't handle it was sensory overload one thing the radar systems have built into them is a collision avoidance alert system where if it detects a potential collision it'll take priority in alerting air traffic control about the imminent collision so this is like a warning warning like everything's going off. My car does that. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Like if I like get too close to something, because one time we're at the airport and everyone started yelling because I thought I was getting too close to hitting a, um, a light pole. And then I like went a little further just to piss everybody off. And then my car broke on its own. Like the brake went down by itself and it beep like crazy because I was about to hit the light pole. Oh my car is not that fancy. I didn't hit it. But that is what it did. So I did have a car that did that once Taylor and he scared the shit. I mean, I actually thought I like, I like, broke some i thought the transmission broke because he broke it went so hard on the brakes we had we rented

a minivan in porto rico when we were there and my father-in-law had loved riding his bike so we had his bike on like a bike rack on the back of it but then whenever we backed up it thought that something was there because the bike was there and it was like the loudest most annoying sound in the whole entire world it was so annoying so it's basically that imagine it's that except it's the entire thing is kind of lit up that's what is supposed to happen when this this type of a situation arises but in this case on Peter's system, it didn't happen because things were down at the moment. It was all under maintenance. Like that's the name of the game here apparently, apparently. But what happened was, there was another station that this did happen on because they can see each other's planes. It's just

radar. It's going to pick up, whatever's going to pick up. And on that station, it started sounding an alarm in Germany. And then that guy called the Zurich station and alert him, but the phone wasn't working or was occupied at the time. And Peter didn't get the message. And also I learned that apparently he could have in theory called the pilots to tell them they're on a collision course but he didn't because that was against ATC rules like you're not supposed to interfere

if you're not the ATC control or in charge even if it's an emergency I guess weird yeah so playing one and two are on a collision course when a nifty little in plain feature switched on called

TCAS which is an acronym that stands for traffic collision avoidance system them. So these are little transponders that are installed in planes and basically they're constantly sitting on a message into the open air waiting to hit another plane with a transponder that is basically saying, hey, give me your altitude, give me your direction of travel, let's figure out if we're on the same flight path or not. And if the two transponders identify that there's a potential for collision amongst them, they issued to the pilot what is called an RA or a resolution advisory and the other plane gets the opposite R.A.

So, for example, one plane gets to ascend, the other one gets to descend, you know, like that kind of thing. Right, because you're like, there's an extra dimension. Exactly. Again, why flying cars were never going to happen? That was the stupidest thing we ever thought we were going to achieve.

That in the Segway, the fact that we thought Segways were going to be a thing or flying cars were going to be a thing. Shame on us. Segways are fun, but they're not a transportation. They're not a necessity in life. No.

And nothing will make you look more dorky. I went on one segue to our Chicago with me at Louan. It was so fun. I'm sure it's fun. I'm sure it's fun. I only think of Paul Blart. Fair. I think of in Rested Development when Job is at it.

And they're trying to rush. And he's like, this is really for one person. Because him and Michael are both on it and they can't go very fast. That's what I think of. I need to restart watching that show again. So in this case, on Plain One, the T-Cats. told its pilot to climb an altitude and in the TCAS and plane two told them to descend in altitude. The problem here is that Peter, once he realized what was about to happen, he contacted

plane one, the commercial plane, the pasture plane, and told them to descend and fly under plane two. With basically seconds left before colliding, plane one finally sees plane two and then he starts listen to who is TCAS. So basically one of the plane one was told by his TCAS to ascend while the other one is told to descend. Then the ATC operator tells them both tells one of them to descend and the other one was already descending because our TCAS was telling them to descend. So they're getting those from different people? No. So the TCAS is automated. So in any situation where TCAS is alerting by another TCAS, they will always give the opposite advisory. One, One go up, one go down.

Right. So in this case, that's what happened. But the controller contacted the plane because he didn't know the T-Cast was engaged. Yeah. So he just contacted one. He just rolled the dice and contacted one and told them to just descend. He's like, whatever, just go down. You'll avoid it.

Because like whenever you hear about these or like a near miss mid-air collision, you're like, oh, they were a mile apart in the air. And I'm like, a mile's pretty far. but when you're going like, I don't know how fast planes go, but you're going that fast, a mile is not very far. No, it's not far at all. No, they were, uh, there was like a slight difference in like how they clipped each other.

But it's assumed that the combined speed of impact was like 800 miles per hour. So imagine if you're going to 8,000 miles per hour, like you're probably going to see much. No. So, um, what ended up happening, it was that the DHL plane, the plane two, the rear vertical stabilizer, you know, the part of the back of the plane that like, stands straight up in the air. Mm-hmm. So that sliced straight through the center of plane two's cabin,

like a knife going straight through it. Oh, my God. From below or up from below? From below. Mm-hmm. And so that was split in half. The pasture plane was split in half. And so people, I mean, I don't have to paint you a picture.

You know what happened. Mm-hmm. I would actually argue that what happened. happened to the two captains was probably a worst experience because all they had missing was a rear vertical stabilizer. So the rest of the cabin, the cockpit, the plane was still intact. It just couldn't fly straight in the direction the nose was pointing. It was just like it was without the stabilizer, it can't just go normal. And so what happened was that thing kept flying for a couple more minutes and just started breaking up in the air from like being aimed the wrong

direction in the wind basically and so they were alive until they hit the ground which is like that's got to be free yeah so peter meanwhile he has no idea what has happened he gave his directive the plane one to descend and then he went to check the other monitor that's why i said like there are a few feet away so he wasn't actually looking at what was going on in the real in real time also he wouldn't have seen it in real time because the radar system was down and delayed um eventually he would go back and check the other monitor and he realized that he lost signal to both planes when he shouldn't have and he he realized what had happened right um so both planes so here you have two planes that were both in perfect working order they were in

completely open skies they collided and so obviously you have this person of blame and i think this guy peter blamed himself more or as much as anybody else um i did did watch some videos of other ATC controllers talking about like if you're the one on duty when planes collide like you basically just like die inside it's supposed to be a really horrible experience which I good probably right um and so yeah Peter in this case he was a wreck right after this happened he needed medical attention right away and um and technically it was his fault sort of but also I think that his company kind of screwed him in the way that they kind of um uh stage making maintenance procedures and also didn't keep tabs on people's work schedules and stuff. Eventually, several executives at his company, it's called Sky Guide, that's an ATC operator, they would be convicted of ban slaughter. Peter himself was actually not charged with anything since it was determined to be an accident, but that doesn't mean Peter lived a long and happy life.

So. Yeah, I feel like you wouldn't. We've seen Breaking Bad also. This is probably worse than Breaking Bad. Okay. So here we. turn to the other tragedy in this story by focusing on a guy named

Vitali Kalloyoyov Kalloyov. Kloyov. Kloyov. Whatever you just said that was perfect. That's actually exactly how it's pronounced. Vitali, Taylor, it's called Batali. We're just going to go with Fatali. Perfection. So

at the time of this accident in 2002, Vitale would have been 46 years old. He had a wife named Svetlana and two children, a 10-year-old boy named Constantine and a four-year-old little girl named Diana, and they were pastures on the plane that was in the accident. He was obviously very distraught over what happened, but I think that there's two ways

that people would tend to go when they become distraught. There's like the complete loss of hope version of distraught, like the depression, that you just lose the light in your eye kind of distraught. Then there's like the crow version, and I think this guy went the crow version. There's like the crow slash Bruce Wayne version. I've never seen the crow. I know. That is absolutely shocking.

I thought you based most of your aesthetics when we were like in LA off the crow. Interesting. I'm going to watch it and see how I feel about that. It's a goat. It's a good thing. Yeah, you got to watch it. So Vatali quits his job at this accident. He was working as an architect and he joined the search for bodies.

And he actually is the one who found the body of his daughter himself, which is like, like bad. That is horrible. I mean, oh my God. She's not going to look like a cherub. She fell 36,000 feet. Where was the stuff?

What's it called? Like the wreckage. In Switzerland. It landed in Switzerland. Yeah. He also found a pearl necklace that he gave her, like in the middle of, like this guy sounds like he dedicated his life for this accident. He actually spent a ton of his time at the grave site.

And if he wasn't in the grave site, he was back at home. where he had constructed a shrine to his family and after about nearly two years after the accident he hired a private investigator to figure out where Peter lived then on February 24th 2004 he would go to Peter's house and he sat in his garden and then Peter would notice that this guy sitting outside of his house he'd go outside to see what was going on and then his two kids would walk follow him follow behind him Peter's two kids and all we know is there was like a shout a scream Peter's wife

runs outside and like the three of them the wife and the two kids watch Vatali stab him to death in front of their house wow intense right

that is that is very very intense so Vatali was arrested obviously in Switzerland and at trial he went to trial for premeditated murder he would say

quote I have been living in the cemetery for almost two years sitting besides our grave he said that his life ended the day the plane crashed and that he wanted Peter to apologize for him when asked why he brought a knife with him they were like he didn't have an answer I don't know he wanted to kill him

yeah I don't know if I'd buy one apology yeah he was sentenced to a surprisingly lax eight years in prison in Switzerland which I'm sure was delightful I mean a Swiss prison do you get chocolates on your bed pillow every morning. I was going to say I was a little worried he's going to go to a gulog

gulag but he didn't he went to switzerland which sounds nice if you ever want to kill him in switzerland yeah kill him in switzerland like they have to give you chocolates right? Oh no it sounds lovely I bet you just get to like read a lot and go on nice go on nice

like hikes Switzerland's so beautiful champagne yeah so he actually only started three and a half years before he was released from this paradise he'd return back home to what was obviously like a hellish Russia but he returned as a hero so he would later say

that anyone who calls him a murderer would betray their motherland betray their own children and that what he did was to honor his children and protect their memories he was a hardcore dude like I kind of like Vitale I know I struggle with this one because like you shouldn't kill people but also like I under I can easily empathize with this man's feelings. He's like that one dad who's always like,

I'm gonna I'll fucking kill you if you touch my. You know, like one of those, but he like legitimately did it. Did it. And also I will say that from what I heard and read, the media made Peter sound awful. Like it was like it was all on him. Because like nobody's gonna blame the faceless corporation

that has a maintenance window of like, we're gonna take the phones down at the same time. We take your radar down at the same time. Yeah. Or like the system itself, like you can't blame like a robot. Or wouldn't you blame the guy that was on break? Yeah. There's plenty of other guys blamed, but this guy got the worst of it.

Yeah. But Tommy would eventually go on to remarry about 10 years later. He'd end up having twin boys. So, you know. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. And he basically lived his life as a hero. He got like the highest honors a citizen can get in his city.

Like he was like the man in his city. He would eventually go on to be portrayed by Arnold Schwarz. Hortzenegger in a 2017 movie called Aftermath. What? Yes. I never knew this existed. I feel like why is all of this, this whole story is blocked out of my consciousness.

Why? Why don't I know any of these things? It should be more famous, right? Oh, I see. Ooh, I feel like I may have seen this picture recently on my streaming services. It's on Prime Video. Aftermath. All he had left was revenge.

Oh my God. I want to watch this. Maybe not the first part where the plane gosh happens, but maybe the second part. I mean, Arnold Schwarzenger's kind of overkill. I mean, I assume you don't need

Arnold Schwarzenger to kill poor little Swiss Peter Nielsen. Like, oh my God, I'm fun. Just feed him like Hershey's chocolate instead of that a good Swiss

stuff and you'll probably die of disappointment. Pretty fun. The story was fun. I'm glad you liked it. Well, I'm thinking like the Arnold Schwarzenger part is fun. The budget, okay, this is why we didn't hear about this movie. The budget for this movie was 10.

million dollars and only made a $674,000 in the box office. Is that real? The Who is in charge of advertising this film because you did a terrible job. We never knew it existed. Wow. That is remarkable.

Scoot McNary played this other guy. He just looked like a Scoot McNary. Wow, that's so sad. Yeah, yeah. And, like, this kind of stuff, like, I mean, it's pretty rare, but it probably should be more rare that planes kind of flying to each other. You know, Taylor, we talked about this forever ago, and then we brought this up before. And, like, I'm going off like an old memory.

And I know you have a pilot friend that listens to us, so I'd love to hear their perspective on this. Please, I mean, don't listen to the whole episode, but, like, just write in about this point. It was something about how when the air traffic controllers strike in the 1980s. Um, Reagan fired everyone and then they rehired a whole new batch of them. And then like now the reason why flying is like getting more dangerous progressively is that they're all retiring in batches again. Yeah. And in the traffic volume between when they had to do this the first time versus now is like

50x more. So it's way more challenging. It's a different job. You know. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think it's not. paid well enough to attract a lot of people, right?

Like, if it was something that was like a coveted job, but it also feels like a job that has so much. I don't know. They're not TSA agents. I mean, they got to be a little better than that, right? But I mean, it's so. Well, I don't know why there are more of them then, you know? I mean, because you could end up being stabbed by the father of the kids that died

because you messed up for a split second. You know how many times? Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm saying. It has a lot of responsibility. It says, okay, the median wage, it's a good job. The median wage is $137,000. That's great. But then I'm also seeing air traffic controller on ZipRecruiter for $15 an hour.

I feel like that's not. I mean, that doesn't sound unusual because, I mean, there's a lot of, like, small airports that are, like, just people will fly in their private planes, like, low stakes. So. But if you are flying. rest assured that now it is mandated what do they do to fix this it is mandated that under any circumstance you can only listen to TCAS if an air traffic controller tells you to do something different ignore listen to TCAS so we had that going for us I think that makes sense oh except in a

situation where where the other plane doesn't comply TCAS won't pick it up that the other plane isn't complying and will continue giving the same order so what do you do? Hold on

hold on that's all you got to do yeah or in this case I mean look at the situation that happened last week like that was a helicopter there was no I assume there was no I mean it's a military helicopter

I assume there's no T-Cat system right again it shouldn't have that I don't know I don't know what that's about anyways that is my story I hope you all enjoyed it and if you are a pilot or know about planes or about flying

or have opinions write in we'd love to hear them oh I do if I felt pod or on the social I do an NFL pod we are I'm busy being nervous

but we are indeed at those places indeed and if I'm not on an episode in a month from now I want y'all to do a little memorial

I edit this out we will don't worry I'll get some of your friends together we'll talk about you you know it's just you and like two people

sitting in a corner sitting on a Zoom me Jay and Rachel and I'll be like cool let me fly now this is it yeah no

scary I don't know I don't know what's going on it doesn't seem great I feel very sad for everybody who has died in the past couple days in plane crashes there also was that like the other one cracked

did you see the video of that I did it looks like a missile strike I know I saw a video of like women in a parking lot of a nearby store screaming and I was like oh my god I would be like this is it the world's over they're coming for us I mean, who the fuck knows who's bombing us these days?

Aliens, I don't know. The Russians, our own government. Who knows? It'd be terrifying. Literally, I have my biggest, I don't know if I was like dreams about it, or I always like imagine seeing a plane explode in the air. You know what, I'm going to tell you why that is Taylor. I'm going to tell you exactly what it is.

It's because we came up on a diet of final destination, and it's like embedded in our brain. Oh, God, the palestation is so good. I feel like sometimes I need to watch Final Destination to be less afraid of playing crashes because... It's a horrible plan. That's the worst idea I've ever heard about it. I know, but then I feel like I'm like exposure therapying myself. Yeah, me, do the, do the air disasters.

They're like pretty much free on YouTube and watch a bunch of those that feel better. Okay, great. Okay, great. I'm not going to do that. Maybe, not today. But I might watch Aftermath. I mean, yeah, it could be good. Sweet.

You got anything to sign us? off with? I don't think so. I think I might have. I got some like ideas from some people on Instagram which was great so I will look into those but yeah that's all. Sweet. If that's it, thanks for listening. Also everyone we're just talking about this before we start recording. Our listenerships

growing pretty consistently. So thank you. So thank you for telling your friends. Thank you. You're doing it. Yeah. The fact that it's growing means that people are telling their friends and people are finding the show and they're telling their friends and that's how you grow things and you know make it work so thank you very much you super awesome sweet we'll go ahead and sign off thank you taylor thank you