Air accident at the Hoher Nistler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Air accident at the Hoher Nistler
Memorial stone Hoher Nistler.jpg

Memorial stone on the Hoher Nistler
Accident summary
Accident type Controlled flight into terrain
place High Nistler near Heidelberg-Handschuhsheim
date December 22, 1991
Fatalities 28
Survivors 4th
Injured 4th
Aircraft
Aircraft type Douglas DC-3A
operator Classic wings
Mark D-CCCC
Departure airport Egelsbach airfield
Destination airport Egelsbach airfield
Passengers 29
crew 3
Lists of aviation accidents

In the aircraft accident at Hohen Nistler on December 22, 1991, a DC-3A collided with the Hohen Nistler on the western slope of the Odenwald near Heidelberg in poor visibility .

plane

The Douglas DC-3A operated by Classic Wings , the airline specializing in historic aircraft, was built in 1942 and was 49 years old at the time of the crash.

Purpose and course of the flight

The purpose of the flight was filming on board: the director Martin Kirchberger , who was on board with a film team as well as relatives and friends, wanted to shoot the satire Bunkerlow . Kirchberger was a graduate of the HfG Offenbach , from which some of the passengers also came.

The film was supposed to be about coffee trips for the super-rich and was planned as a satire on new air wars that were just being rehearsed in the Persian Gulf . One shoot on the ground was not enough for the filmmakers because they believed that faces look different when flying.

The plane took off at Frankfurt Airport in the morning . Actually, the flight should lead along the Rhine through the Upper Rhine Plain . At the confluence of the Neckar into the Rhine in Mannheim , the co-pilot, distracted by interviews, confused the two rivers and now followed the course of the Neckar eastwards towards the Odenwald at a height of less than 500  m ; the master was not in the cockpit at this time. Due to poor visibility on the mountain road and other mistakes made by the co-pilot, the machine brushed against some trees and hit the summit of the Hohe Nistler at 11:37 a.m.

Of the 32 people on board, 28, including Kirchberger, were killed, three slightly and one seriously injured. One of the survivors was a sound engineer who had set up his equipment in the uninsured place in the toilet and did not even really notice the crash.

Cause of accident

According to the investigation report by the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt, the main cause of the accident was the mix-up of the rivers, and the DC-3 was also overloaded. Because of the deteriorating visibility, the pilots should actually have turned back, but they didn't.

One of the causes was the fact that the pilots were distracted by the film team and that the cockpit windows were covered with dark foil to prevent reflections.

consequences

In memory of Kirchberger and his team, the Cinema Concetta Filmförderung was founded in October of the following year. It has been organizing the Rüsselsheim Film Festival with satirical short films since 1994 . Karin Malwitz, the sister of the dead cameraman Ralf Malwitz, completed Bunkerlow in 1992 as a 19-minute short film. In addition, a memorial stone was erected on the Hoher Nistler in memory of the victims; the inscription reads among other things: "In memory of the victims of the flight accident" .

In 2017, the filmmaker and journalist Thomas Frickel published the documentary Miracle of Reality, a portrait of his friend Martin Kirchberger, who also addresses the plane crash.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Rebhandl, Bert: Film "Miracles of Reality": The Day the Rüsselsheim Avantgarde Died . In: faz.net, May 27, 2018 (accessed May 30, 2018).
  2. ↑ Deadly confusion on the Hohen Nistler , from December 17, 2016, accessed on December 17, 2016, on rnz.de.
  3. ↑ Tagesschau of December 22, 1991 , report on the plane crash at the beginning of the broadcast, on origin.tagesschau.de
  4. ^ The catastrophe in the middle of the forest , Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung , December 22, 2011, accessed on December 1, 2015, at rnz.de
  5. ↑ These pictures have made a deep impression , Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, December 22, 2011, accessed on December 1, 2015, at rnz.de
  6. ↑ About the Cinema Concetta film funding , abstract, accessed on December 22, 2011, on ruesselsheimer-filmtage.com
  7. ↑ Michael Abschlag, Maren Wagner: Das Vermächtnis Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, December 16, 32016, accessed on May 30, 2018.
  8. ↑ Hoher Nistler: Memorial stone commemorates the plane crash in 1991 , February 3, 2014, accessed on December 1, 2015, on heidelberg.de

Coordinates: 49 ° 26 '44.3 "  N , 8 ° 42' 28.1"  E