Comment by direwolf20

17 hours ago

When an overworked air traffic controller in Germany gave a plane an instruction that happened to be the opposite of TCAS automatic collision avoidance system, and one pilot followed TCAS to avoid a collision and one followed the controller, the planes crashed and everybody died. A family member of one of the passengers looked up, hunted down, and murdered in cold blood the air traffic controller.

You left out - was a foreigner, managed to escape, faced zero consequences at home (AFAIK).

  • He didn't escape, he sentence was reduced from 8 to 3 1/2 by a Swiss judge. The reasoning was that his mental state was properly accounted for. Who knows if lobbying from Russia played a part in that. Also, not only did he face no consequences at home, he was celebrated and given a high-level job.

    Maybe it's my American-ness showing, but it's pretty shocking to me that 8 years was considered too harsh for someone who stabbed a man to death in front of his family.

    On the other hand, I suppose one could argue that the perpetrator was highly unlikely to commit a similar act in the future, if only because his motivation was the death of his own family, who would no longer be around to inspire him to violence a second time.

    • Until some other nefarious air traffic controller waits for him to remarry and have another family.