Jet Pilot in Near Miss Criticized

The man who killed a Danish air traffic controller after his wife and children died in a midair collision has called for the pilot involved in a near miss near Moscow last month to be stripped of his license.

Two Russian passenger jets carrying 300 passengers nearly collided after taking off from Moscow's Vnukovo and Domodedovo airports on April 24. Investigators say the pilot of one of the planes, a Tu-154, inexplicably descended into the path of the other plane, a Boeing 767, and a crash was only averted by a quick-thinking air traffic controller.

"I believe such pilots should not be allowed near a plane at all," said Vitaly Kaloyev, a North Ossetian architect sentenced to 5 1/2 years in a Swiss prison for the killing but released early for good behavior, RIA-Novosti reported.

Kaloyev's wife and two children died when a Tu-154 and a cargo jet collided over southern Germany in 2002 in a crash blamed on the Danish air trffic controller

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