A Horrible Ending

A man with a horrible ending

Peter Nielson

He was Peter Nielsen. Pretty good looking gentleman, eh?

He was only 36-year-old when he was killed.

He was stabbed in the stomach and heart many times. That too, right in front of his residence, with his spouse and little kids present.

Now, what was the reason, you ask?

Poor Nielsen was an expert air traffic controller for Skyguide in Zurich.

On the horrible night of the 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision accident, where two planes crashed into each other mid-air, Nielsen was the only air traffic controller dealing with the airspace, two workstations at the same time.

It was past midnight, he was feared out, but most importantly, the radars were being delayed and not working properly.

Because of this, he did not notice how close the two aircraft (Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937 and DHL Flight 611) were before it was too late.

Less than a minute before the tragedy, he understood the problem and contacted Flight 2937, advising the pilot to descend to avoid a crash.

Nielsen believed he had sorted out the problem. But worse was to come.

The plane collided because Flight 2937’s TCAS, Traffic Collision Avoidance System, gave them a different command of what Nielsen had provided them.

And that created lots of difficulties, causing the planes to fatally collision.

A recreation of what had occurred to one of the planes.

All 69 passengers of Flight 2973, most of whom were schoolchildren, were killed.

Peter Nielsen was so traumatized by this accident.

He fully blamed himself for the loss of all the children.

He had a nervous breakdown soon afterward and spent a long time in therapy and on antidepressants and never came back to work.

Two years after this crash, he was killed.

By a Russian father, Vitaly Kaloyev, who had lost his spouse and two little children in the tragedy.

He was adamant it was Peter Nielsen’s mistake.

Grieving Kaloyev spent two years searching for explanations and when he believed he had attempted every option, he discovered Nielsen and stabbed him to end in his back garden.

Kalev was sentenced to eight years in jail but was released only three years later after requesting that his mental condition wasn’t strong and had not been considered.

'Killing him didn't make me feel any better,' he confessed later.

Whatever it was, no one deserves a heart-breaking death like Peter Nielsen. A small error, which wasn’t even his fault, cost him his life.

Source