Moscow, July 04: A Russian report today said the Tupolev jet crew had to wait an agonising 40 seconds before receiving instructions from Swiss ground control after first reporting that it was on a collision course with a Boeing cargo plane. The late Monday crash killed 71 people, most of them Russian children, and has since sparked a bitter series of recriminations as to who was at fault for the worst mid-air collision since 1996.

In the latest salvo, a Russian aviation official put the blame squarely on the privatised Swiss ground control company Skyguide which was monitoring the flights of both the Boeing and the TU-154 with 69 people on board.

Russia's state news agency Ria Novosti cited a senior investigator who is deciphering the plane's black box in Germany as saying that the Russian crew notified Skyguide about the problem some 90 seconds before the fatal disaster. But it received no response from ground control -- which was staffed by just one Swiss operator -- until just 50 seconds before it was to collide with the Boeing, leaving it with limited time to perform a safety maneuver, the aviation source said.
Bureau Report