Collision Warning System Was Out of Service During Crash
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We want to take you to Germany now, where an investigation is going on into that midair collision that killed at least 71 people, most of them Russian teenagers. Authorities hope cockpit voice and flight data recorders yield more clues. CNN's Stephanie Halasz joins us from Ueberlingen, Germany with new details on the probe -- good morning.</s>STEPHANIE HALASZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. The police have come out this morning and said that the early warning collision system of Skyguide, the agency that handles work for the Swiss Aviation Authority, was in service Monday night. It was not at work and therefore it could not have detected any early collisions. That is what we're hearing from police this morning. Of course, we know that only one person worked overnight that night, Monday night. So these new details are emerging. Another new detail that we are learning of this morning is that the second voice recorder has been recovered, that of the Boeing 757 of the DHL cargo plane. They had earlier found the first voice recorder. Now we know that the two voice recorders have been found and the two data recorders. All those four recorders will be shipped to an institute, a federal institute in northern Germany, where they will be analyzed. Now, police is also saying this morning that 37 bodies have been recovered so far. They have seen 10 more bodies and they're working towards them -- Carol.</s>COSTELLO: There have also been reports that the pilot of the Russian jetliner started to drop, but the other plane was dropping, too, and that's why they crashed in midair. Had you heard that?</s>HALASZ: Yes. We had heard of that. Basically what seems to have happened is that five minutes before the collision occurred, the German authorities handed over to the Swiss authorities. So the Swiss picked up. About 50 seconds to one minute before the collision actually did occur, the Skyguide, the Swiss Aviation Authority agent, radioed the Russian for the first time and said change your altitude. Drop. The Russian did initially not respond. So 25 seconds before the collision, a second radio call to the Russian and apparently to that he did respond and dropped. Now, at the same time, the DHL is equipped with a machine that basically changes altitude if it feels that another plane is coming in at the same altitude. Now, that plane dipped its altitude because the machine had alerted it to it. And so both planes changed their altitude, they went lower, and that's when this deadly collision occurred.</s>COSTELLO: Oh, awful. Thank you very much. Stephanie Halasz joining us live from Ueberlingen, Germany this morning.