GERMANY: Swiss air traffic Skyguide have said an automatic warning system that might have averted the two-plane collision over Lake Constance was out of service on Monday night.
A spokesman also admitted one of two air traffic controllers on duty was on a break at the time of the crash, which he said was a breach of company regulations.
But Mr Patrick Herr, another spokesman for Skyguide denied that failure of the automatic system lead to the crash.
"Many signs point to an exceptionally unlucky combination of circumstances," he said, adding it was "theoretical" if a working warning system would have altered the outcome. He said that breaks are permitted at night when there is less air traffic, as are repairs on collision warning systems.
But Bashkirian Airlines (BAL), owner of the Russian plane, accused Skyguide of trying to smear the reputation of its company and threatened to sue if it emerges that the Swiss controllers made a mistake.
Meanwhile, a team of 80 federal investigators at the crash scene in Überlingen have managed to recover just 38 of the 71 killed when a Russian plane bound for Barcelona collided with a DHL cargo jet on Monday night.
The planes fell 36,000 feet to earth, scattering wreckage and bodies over a wide radius. The bodies of the two DHL pilots have been recovered and identified but search teams have found many dismembered limbs a distance from the crashed Russian plane.
Mr Thomas Schaüble, interior minister of southern state of Baden-Württemberg, said many bodies from the Russian plane will have to be identified using DNA tests.
"Our most important task now is to recover and identify the bodies, but we are in no way sure that we will be able to identify them all," he told The Irish Times.
"We are asking families to provide photos of victims and information about what they had were wearing and what they had with them," said a police spokesman. "We are also asking for identifying marks and dental records."
Pathologists began work yesterday identifying the bodies already recovered. Once identified, the bodies will be moved to hospitals in the nearby towns of Singen and Friedrichshafen for post-mortem examinations and then released to relatives.
A Russian delegation, arrived in Überlingen late on Tuesday evening and German officials said they hoped to have recovered the majority of the bodies of the Russian children, who were on their way to a holiday in Spain, by the time their parents arrive today.
"We promise relatives the minimum of bureaucracy . . . and will do everything to ensure the bodies are treated with respect and dignity," said Mr Erwin Hetger, the state police chief in Baden-Württemberg.
Yesterday, the wrecks of both planes were brought to a hangar at Friedrichshafen airport for preliminary examinations by a team from Germany's Federal Authority for Aircrashes.
"We would appeal to people who find pieces of either planes not to hold onto them for souvenirs but to inform the authorities," a police spokesman said yesterday.
That the crash happened at all has puzzled German air safety officials. Both planes were equipped with TCAS anti-collision systems.
"This has industry watchers puzzled. If both had anti-collision computers on board, this shouldn't have happened," a spokeswoman for the German Flight Safety Organisation.
Police declined to comment on reports that the Russian plane's TCAS system was out of order or switched off.
Mr Kurt Bodewig, the German transport minister, said Monday's crash demonstrated the need to push forward with "Single Sky", the EU plan for a single European air traffic authority.
The German government has been in dispute with Switzerland for two years about southern German air space, control of which it ceded to the Swiss 40 years ago.
