New report on air disaster

Press, 26 October 1982, Page 18

New report on air disaster

NZPA-Reuter Belgrade An official inquiry into the world’s worst mid-air disaster, when two airliners collided over Yugoslavia, killing 176 people, blames both aircrews and the local flight control. The crash, on September 10, 1976, between a British Airways Trident and a Yugoslav DC9 charter flight, occurred at 33,000 ft over a village near the western city of Zagreb. There were no survivors. A committee of inquiry has annulled a previous official report which said that a flight controller at Zagreb Airport had been responsible for the disaster when he failed to follow correct procedure for

separating different flights. The latest report said that the collision had been a result of irregularities in communication between Zagreb flight control and the crews of the two aircraft. It said that the Yugoslav crew had failed to establish contact on the correct flight control radio frequency after signing off on a previous frequency, and the British Airways crew had not been following communication on the Zagreb control frequency. A Zagreb air traffic controller was jailed for seven years in 1977 on a charge of criminal negligence concerning the disaster. He was eventually pardoned and freed in 1978.