Crossair

Crossair Ltd. Co. for Regional European Air Transport (German: Crossair AG für europäischen Regionalluftverkehr) was a regional airline headquartered on the grounds of EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg in Saint-Louis, Haut-Rhin, France, near Basel, Switzerland. It became Swiss International Air Lines after taking over most of the assets of Swissair following that airline's bankruptcy in 2002.

History

Founded as a private company under the name Business Flyers Basel AG by Moritz Suter, it changed to Crossair on 18 November 1978, before the beginning of scheduled services on 2 July 1979 with flights from Zürich to Nuremberg, Innsbruck and Klagenfurt. It was headquartered at Zürich International Airport in Kloten in 1985.

It added charter services for major shareholder Swissair in November 1995. On 31 March 2002, Swissair passed out of existence as most of its assets were taken over by Crossair which then changed names to Swiss International Air Lines.

Fleet

Crossair operated the following aircraft.

Crossair Flight 3597

Crossair Flight LX 3597 was a scheduled flight from Berlin Tegel Airport, in Germany, to Zürich Airport, in Switzerland. On 24 November 2001, the Crossair Avro RJ100 operating the route, registration HB-IXM, crashed into a wooded range of hills near Bassersdorf and exploded, killing 24 of the 33 people on board.

Involved

Aircraft

The accident aircraft, a British made Avro 146-RJ100, registration HB-IXM, was manufactured in 1996 and recorded for a total of over 13,194 hours and 11,518 cycles before the crash. The aircraft was powered by four Lycoming LF507-1F turbofan engines.

Accident

The flight departed Berlin Tegel Airport at 21:01 CET with 28 passengers, three flight attendants, and the cockpit crew of Captain Hans Ulrich Lutz (57) and First Officer Stefan Loehrer (25). Lutz was an extremely experienced pilot with more than 19,500 flight hours – approximately 19,300 of which were as pilot in command. Loehrer, in contrast, was inexperienced with just 490 total flight hours. At that time, Swissair was grounded exactly one month before the crash.