Hoher Nistler aviation accident

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

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 crew 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 to be about promotional coach trips for the super-rich and was planned as a satire on new air wars, which were just then being rehearsed in the Persian Gulf. Shooting on the ground had not been enough for the filmmakers, as they were of the opinion that faces look different when flying.

The aircraft took off in the morning from Egelsbach Airfield south of Frankfurt am Main. The flight was actually supposed to follow the Rhine through the Upper Rhine Plain. At the confluence of the Neckar with 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 less than altitude; the captain was not in the cockpit at this time. Because of poor visibility that then set in on the Bergstraße as well as further errors by the co-pilot, the aircraft clipped some trees and struck the summit of the Hoher Nistler at 11:37.

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

Cause of the accident

According to the investigation report of the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt, the main cause of the accident was the confusion of the rivers; the DC-3 had also taken off overloaded. Because of the deteriorating visibility, the pilots should actually have turned back, which they did not do.

A contributing factor was the fact that the pilots were distracted by the film crew and that the cockpit windows had been covered by it with dark film to prevent reflections.