- A Skyguide air traffic controller and a Luftwaffe pilot are on trial after a fatal F/A-18 crash at the Susten Pass in 2016.
- The Military Justice Auditor has filed charges against both of them, the Military Justice said.
- In 2016, a Swiss Army F/A-18 fighter jet crashed into the mountain in the Susten Pass region. The pilot died.
The two face charges of negligent homicide, negligent failure to comply with service regulations, negligent disruption of public transit, and negligent misuse and squandering of materials. They are presumed innocent until a final verdict.
Legend:
Parts in the snow: An F/A-18 crashed in the Susten region in 2016.
KEYSTONE/Philipp Schmidli
The accident occurred on August 29, 2016 during combat flight training for a two-person patrol. The patrol started from the military airfield Meiringen BE. The two F/A-18s should have practiced dogfighting against an F-5 Tiger. Because of clouds, the pilots had no visual contact and flew under instrument flight rules.
Altitude given was too low
The later casualty wanted to follow his colleague flying ahead using radar. The activation of the radar failed. The pilot then contacted the air traffic controller in Meiringen for further instructions.
This gave him the instruction to climb and the pilot obeyed. 58 seconds after the last radio communication, he and his machine crashed into the flank of the mountain about eleven meters below the ridge of the Hinter Tierberg. He was killed and the F/A-18 C Hornet was destroyed. The crash site was in the area on the border between the cantons of Bern and Uri.
According to the applicable regulations, the minimum flight altitude for instrument flight procedures in the airspace where the accident occurred is 15,000 feet (4572 meters above sea level). As the military justice interim report of April 7, 2020 further stated, technical factors could also play a role in addition to the flight altitude allegedly being too low.
Pilot and air traffic controller error
Georg Fritz, media spokesman for military justice, goes into more detail on the role of the accused in an interview with SRF. He says: “The two planes were on patrol, i.e. as a team. They started about 15 seconds apart. It is intended that the rear pilot follows the front with his radar. »
Because the pilot in front deviated from the prescribed climb – according to the indictment he climbed too steeply and too slowly – it was no longer possible for the pilot in back to fly as planned. As a result, the rear pilot had to request his own clearance in Meiringen.
The air traffic controller in Meiringen then gave the pilot, who later died, an altitude of 10,000 feet instead of the 15,000 feet specified there. Then disaster struck.