Yugoslavia's Worst Air Disaster | Zagreb Mid-Air Collision

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The 1976 Zagreb mid-air collision took place on 10 September 1976, when British Airways Flight 476, a Hawker Siddeley Trident en route from London to Istanbul, collided mid-air with Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 550, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 en route from Split, SFR Yugoslavia, to Cologne, West Germany, near Zagreb in modern-day Croatia. The collision was the result of a procedural error on the part of air traffic controllers in Zagreb.

Music: The Only Light Is Gone
Artist: Dalo Vian
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[piotrstrzyzowski]

This one omitted quite a bit. A slight disappointment.
1. Tasić was actually in his third consecutive 12-hour shift as an ATC, which greatly contributed to his errors.
2. The last communication between Adria 550 and ATC was done not in English; due to stress Tasić reverted to Croatian, so even if the BA crew were listening, they had no idea what the two are saying.
3. The controllers at Zagreb were complaining for years about being understaffed and having primitive and faulty equipment, despite Zagreb being a very busy hub connecting the Middle East and Arabia with western Europe.
4. The radar Zagreb ATC was using was messed up and had a margin error of 500 feet. It showed the BA flight at FL335 (33500 ft), while the FDR clearly showed the Trident at FL330, as cleared earlier. This is why Tasić ordered Flight 550 to stay at exactly 33000 ft.
Hope for a remastered and expanded version in the future.

[andrewstackpool]

There was a lot more to this than reported including that Tasic had not had proper sleep because his house was located by a runway and as said he did not have an assistant. He was not supported during this busy shift but was put up as a scapegoat by the authorities. he did his best.

[rjs]

I had genuinely never heard of this tragedy until i watched this, many thanks. RIP to all those affected.

[npxmnpxm]

New York Times, Sept. 11, 1976: “I heard a tremendous noise, ” said Marica Boadjinec, a farmer who lives in the village of Vrbovc, about 15 miles northeast of Zagreb. “I looked up and saw a plane burning and coming apart, and the other plane falling on a cornfield about a kilometer from my courtyard.”

Other witnesses said bodies and luggage rained down over an eight‐mile area, with the wreckage of the planes falling about a mile apart.

A policeman, Garo Tomaevic, was one of the first to arrive at the scene. “I saw parts of the British plane, bodies lying all around, ” he said. “There was a baby still giving feeble signs of life near the plane, but it was in last agony. Even if the ambulances had arrived before me, it would have been too late to save it.”

[Supersean]

Another great video, Allec! One of the watershed accidents in aviation history, and a classic one in which a whole chain of events all had to happen in order for the accident to occur. There was plenty of blame to go around in this one, the ATC folks, the pilots of both aircraft . . . One of the accidents that helped to drive the development of the TCAS systems all airliners fly with today, to provide automated detection of potential collision and guidance to flight crews to prevent them from happening. The technology wasn't available back then, but it's all in place today, and it works.

[NeumsFor]

Unfortunately the 2 initial survivors were an infant and a child. Those poor kids. May none of them perished in vain....

[catherinetester]

I was a flight attendant in the UK and was in the air working on a flight to one of the Greek Islands on that day--it was only my third month flying--I was 21. We were in the vicinity of the collision and when we landed the flight crew informed us of what had happened.

It was a very somber trip back and i don't think that our inbound passengers were aware of what had happened.

RIP to all lost😢

[charlesschneiter]

Thanks for this report, Allec.
You do quote from operations Handbooks of both, British Airways and Inex Adria where they state that it is the pilots responsibility to constantly observe the airspace.
While this rule certainly has it's merits, it's worth to note that in the jet age other airplanes are very, very hard to see, especially when they are at the same flight level, also taking into account the high closure rate at these speeds.
Add to this the mostly white liveries of the aircraft at this time and you will agree that seeing, let alone identifying another aircraft at these flight levels and at these speeds merely is a coincidence. As an ex ATP i've been there and done that.

[StephenLuke]

RIP
To the passengers and crew of British Airways Flight 476 and Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 550

[bruceyung]

Thanks for making these videos. I been your fan for a while now and you seem very dedicated and knowledgeable in these matters and appreciate your hard work. Thanks.

[TwoxRamiroScouts]

This is why ATC is the most stressful job ever.

[escapetheratracenow]

The CVR had not been working on the DC-9 but the collision jolted it into action. It recorded First Officer Ivanus’s last words as his stricken aircraft tumbled towards the ground: “we are finished. Goodbye” he said, “goodbye”
The Trident First Officer seemed more preoccupied by grocery prices than monitoring the airspace around his aircraft.
Total tragedy. RIP to everyone lost in this awful accident.

[louieosumo]

At least this is more appropriate than the Uberlingen accident because the lone controller was only jailed but later released. Unlike the latter, the controller was killed only because an angry father thinks Peter was responsible for the death of his family, but it was Skyguide's negligence that caused the accident.

[jeremypearson]

Terrible tragedy for all involved. Hard to say if one person was solely responsible for the accident. Usually, it’s a confluence of events in the end.

[TorchMagick]

This accident has always interested me;so many things about it weren't made available in the "old days"..
Well done, young Captain!🖖

[mred]

The report that seemed to criticize the ‘scanning’ for nearby aircraft: it may have been a useful action for biplanes, but closure rates and airframe visibility of modern ships at the same altitude is very limited in usefulness.

[milessep]

Hey Allec, great video. You might want to correct the text at 2:41, the Trident was at FL330 and not FL300. A key point I’d like to make is the idea of the pilots keeping a watch out for other traffic is really not a causal factor whatsoever. The pilots were flying IFR, there’s no looking out for other aircraft. I know this was a big point made at the trial, but it was made by people with no aviation experience. The cause was a systemic failure of the ATC system at the time, and you cover much of that.

Thanks for posting.

[robs]

All that empty space in the sky, yet they found each other.

[clarsach]

Thankfully this happened over farmland and not the city of Zagreb itself otherwise the death toll could have been much higher. I think this was the disaster that forced big changes in ATC and aviation in general including use of TCAS

[MightyMezzo]

Saw a dramatization of this incident years and years ago: “Collision Course.”