by Peter Capella
GENEVA - A Swiss court on Tuesday convicted four Swiss air traffic control managers of negligence in a 2002 mid-air collision over Germany that killed more than 70 people, mostly Russian schoolchildren.
Three of the guilty, all executives of the air traffic control company Skyguide, were given one-year suspended jail sentences for negligent manslaughter.
The fourth, who was in charge of work being carried out on traffic control equipment at the time of the disaster, was fined a total of 13,500 Swiss francs (8,200 euros, 11,180 dollars), equivalent to 90 days in jail under the Swiss system.
Four other Skyguide employees were acquitted of negligent manslaughter by the district court in Buelach, near Zurich, the Swiss news agency ATS reported.
They included one of the two controllers on duty on the night of the accident on July 1, 2002, who was taking an authorised rest when the collision occurred.
The other duty controller, who was actually directing traffic at the time, was stabbed to death near Zurich in February 2004 by a distraught Russian man who lost his wife and two children in the disaster.
The collision in Swiss-controlled airspace between a Russian Bashkirian airlines jet and a DHL cargo plane killed 71 people, most of them Russian schoolchildren on their way to a holiday in Spain.
The presiding judge in Buelach said that the Skyguide executives had failed to exercise sufficient care by leaving just one controller in charge of southern German and eastern Swiss airspace at the time.
"If two air traffic controllers had been present, the accident could have been prevented," he said while delivering the verdict.
The trial in Buelach -- which followed an air accident inquiry and court cases in Germany -- had focused on shortcomings in the Zurich air traffic control room on the night of the disaster over the German town of Ueberlingen.
District prosecutor Bernhard Hecht had called for jail sentences of six to 15 months, accusing the eight defendants of being responsible for dangerous organisational failings.
However, defence lawyers had sought to lay the blame on the late air traffic controller, a 36 year-old Dane.
During the trial it emerged that he had been dealing with 15 flights in as many minutes across two different workstations and made 118 radio calls during that period.
Meanwhile a radar collision warning system for controllers in Zurich was out of action because it was being repaired and a key phone line was down.
"Skyguide has learnt the lessons from this tragic event, and has done everything to ensure that an accident of this kind cannot happen again," the company`s interim chief executive Franz Schubert said in a statement after the verdict.
In 2004, Skyguide accepted responsibility for mistakes in the run-up to the crash.
But it was only during the trial that Schubert, who took over running the company last December, approached relatives outside the courtroom to apologise in person and acknowledge "systemic failures" in the company.
Skyguide said it would hold individual discussions with the convicted staff about their future.
"There are a number of issues that we need to consider here," Schubert said. "But I would like to emphasise that we continue to have total confidence in the skills and abilities of our personnel."
A German air accident inquiry concluded in 2005 that a catastrophic chain of human error, systems failures and technical problems involving air traffic control and the aircraft had led to the collision.
Last year a court in Constance, Germany, ruled that Germany must compensate Bashkirian Airlines because the German state had asked Skyguide to guide traffic over its territory and bore some responsibility for the disaster.
pac/wtf/gh
09/04/2007 15:55 GMT