Crossair LX Flight 3597

Crossair Flight LX 3597 was an Avro RJ100 regional airliner, registration HB-IXM, on a scheduled flight from Berlin, Germany to Zurich, Switzerland that crashed during its approach to land at Zurich Airport on 24 November 2001. Twenty-four of the thirty-three people on board were killed.

Accident
The flight departed Berlin Tegel Airport at 21:01 CET with 28 passengers, 3 flight attendants, and a two-man cockpit crew consisting of Captain Hans Ulrich Lutz and First Officer Stefan Loehrer. Upon arrival in Zurich about an hour later, it was cleared to approach runway 28 in poor visibility conditions due to low clouds; the cockpit voice recorder captured the transmission of a previously-landing Crossair flight informing the tower that they could not see the runway until 1.3 miles (2.1 km) away. At 22:07 CET, the plane crashed into a wooded range of hills near the small town of Bassersdorf, around 4 km (2.5 miles) short of the runway, where it broke apart and went up in flames. Of the 33 people on board (28 passengers and 5 crew), 24 died (among them the cockpit crew and one flight attendant), while nine (seven passengers and two flight attendants) survived.

Notable passengers

 * The lead singer of the Eurodance group La Bouche, Melanie Thornton, was one of those killed in the crash.
 * The German pop group Passion Fruit was aboard flight 3597; singers Nathaly(ie) van het Ende and Maria Serrano Serrano were killed, while singer Debby St. Maarten and the band's manager survived with injuries. St. Maarten's injuries were classified as "severe".
 * Peter Hogenkamp, founder and CEO of Swiss commercial blog service company Blogwerk AG, and his wife Jacqueline Badran were originally seated one row behind the pair of rows taken up by the trio of Passion Fruit and their manager, but moved to the rear of the plane in-flight in order to rest in a more quiet area in the sparsely-populated cabin. One of the portions of the fuselage that broke open as a result of the crash did so almost directly in front of them, and they were able to escape the plane largely unharmed. During an interview for the Canadian Discovery Channel show Mayday (known as Air Emergency in the US, Mayday in Ireland and Air Crash Investigation in the UK and the rest of the world) entitled "Cockpit Failure", Hogenkamp admits that his and his wife's survival were largely due to "good luck", but also hypothesized that their original desire for rest drove them to change seats and sides of the plane to get away from the rambunctious behavior of the members of Passion Fruit, "so the Passion Fruits may have saved our lives."

Investigation
The investigation concluded that the accident was a Controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) caused by a series of pilot errors and navigation mistakes that led the plane off-course. This course deviation caused the plane to crash into a hilltop, 4.05 kilometres (2.52 mi) short of and 150 metres (490 ft) north of its assigned landing strip, runway 28.

Captain Lutz had originally been scheduled to land on runway 14, the main landing runway at Zurich, a runway equipped with an Instrument Landing System (ILS) that handles virtually all tasks associated with landing an airplane, including using the plane's auto-pilot to control the angle and speed of descent; all the pilot is required to do in an ILS landing is to ensure that the Minimum Descent Altitude (MDA) allows the non-flying pilot to determine if the runway is in sight before completing the landing. The CVR records Lutz and Loehrer discussing "the 14 approach" as well as Lutz's request that Loehrer call out the height when the plane reaches 100 feet above MDA. However, Flight 3597 was behind schedule and would not reach Zurich until after 2200 CET. This delay forced Flight 3597 to change its landing plan. Zurich Air Traffic Control Tower, in order to comply with a new Swiss law designed to reduce airport noise from approaching aircraft over southern Germany in the late evening hours, must redirect all flights on final approach to switch from the ILS-equipped runway 14 to the less-accurate VHF Omnidirectional Range (VOR)/Distance Measuring Equipment (DME)-equipped runway 28. This runway change forced Captain Lutz to abandon his planned ILS approach and required First Officer Loehrer to consult the Jeppesen charts for runway 28. The charts included a new set of approach parameters, of which the higher MDA was the most crucial piece of information. Sometimes referred to as "Minimum Safe Altitude" (MSA) or "Decision Height", the MDA, which was 2,400 feet (730 m) for runway 28, is not only the height that defines the point at which a pilot or flight crew must determine whether or not they can see the runway, it defines the minimum height required to safely fly above any obstructions or terrain in the final approach flight-path. The chart also gives directions on the speed and slope needed to ensure that the approach will bring the plane to MDA after the plane has successfully cleared all terrain and obstructions, at which point the pilot is required to maintain MDA until the non-flying pilot reports that the runway is in sight, allowing the pilot to safely complete the landing visually. In contrast to the ILS approach which displays lateral and vertical position, the VOR/DME approach only shows the lateral position of the aircraft. The MDA is therefore higher, as the instruments are less accurate and there is a lack of automated warning systems such as a glide-slope warning with the ILS.

Although both pilots were based in Zurich and the CVR picks up Lutz's query to Loehrer about Loehrer's familiarity with "the 28 approach", which Loehrer confirmed he had, Lutz put the plane into an overly-steep descent that brought flight 3597 to MDA far too soon. When Loehrer reported the plane reaching 100 feet above MDA, the CVR records Lutz asking Loehrer, "Do we have ground contact?" Loehrer hesitated before replying "Yes". However, flight simulators programmed with the time of day, terrain, and weather Lutz was facing at that time allowed investigators to determine that the only ground Lutz or Loehrer could see was the ground of the hilly terrain over which the plane was flying. Upon reaching MDA of 2,400 feet (730 m), Lutz declared that he had "ground contact" and would continue on, then deliberately descended the plane below the minimum descent altitude (MDA) without having the required visual contact with either the approach lights or the runway, a major piloting error that ultimately led directly to the crash. The fact that Loehrer made no attempt to prevent the continuation of the flight below the minimum descent altitude also directly contributed to the crash. Lutz made an additional error by not monitoring his Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) as he made his approach; the CVR recorded Lutz's running narrative on nearly every move he made in the cockpit, but did not record any readout of the DME after a check, verified by Loehrer, at 6 miles (9.7 km) from runway 28. Moments before the crash, Lutz's running commentary indicated to investigators that Lutz must have thought he was at or near 1.3 miles (2.1 km) from runway 28 because he expressed frustration that the other crew said they could "see the runway at 1.3 miles (2.1 km)"; instead, Lutz was over 4 miles (6.4 km) from the runway, and could not possibly have seen the runway due to the presence of a hill, below the MDA of 2,400 feet (730 m), that would have obscured his view. It was into this hill that flight 3597 eventually crashed. Even though Lutz finally realized that his inability to see the runway meant he needed to initiate a missed approach maneuver (called a "Go-around"), his call for the go-around came too late; the plane's engines were not able to spool up fast enough to generate lift sufficient to climb above the hill that had been obstructing his view, and it crashed into the hilltop at 2206 CET.

The report revealed that the pilot had failed to perform correct navigation and landing procedures on previous occasions, but no action had been taken by the airline to remove him from transporting passengers. A series of accidents and incidents during Lutz's career as a training captain with Crossair, including multiple failures to upgrade his flight certifications to higher-complexity aircraft such as the MD80 due to insufficient comprehension of computerized navigational systems and causing the total loss of a Crossair Saab 340 by retracting its landing gear while it was still on the tarmac, led to Crossair relieving him of his training captain duties in 1991. However, Crossair continued to allow Lutz to fly passengers, despite repeated demonstrations of his overall piloting deficiencies. These included a near-miss incident on final approach to Lugano Airport where Lutz came within 300 feet (91 m) of colliding with the shore of a lake during his final descent and a navigational error during a sightseeing tour over the Alps that took the flight far off its course to Sion, Switzerland. In this particular incident, Lutz missed his approach into Sion, Switzerland and circled over what he thought was Sion's airport for several minutes before passengers spotted road signs in Italian; the navigation error had taken them over the St. Bernhard Pass through the Alps, and the airport they had been circling was in fact located near Aosta, Italy.

The investigation report states that other factors also contributed to the accident:


 * The range of hills the plane crashed into was not marked in the Jeppesen approach chart used by the crew.
 * Despite the hilly terrain surrounding it, the approach to runway 28 was not equipped with a Minimum Safe Altitude Warning (MSAW) system, which triggers an alarm if a minimum safe altitude is violated.
 * The airport's means of determining visibility were inadequate for runway 28.
 * The visual minimums at the time of the accident were actually inappropriate for using the standard approach to runway 28.

Dramatization
The story of the disaster was featured on the tenth season of Canadian Discovery Channel show Mayday (known as Air Emergency in the US, Mayday in Ireland and Air Crash Investigation in the UK and the rest of the world). The episode is entitled "Cockpit Failure".