The world's worst mid-air collision occurred over the Zagreb beacon on September 10th, 1976. In the aftermath, eight air traffic controllers were arraigned on charges of criminal neglect. All but one were acquitted: that individual was sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment. This book deals with those events, with the effect of that judgement on the safety of international aviation and with the moral and practical challenges which society faces as a result. In these pages the reader is asked to make his or her own judgement: first, as to the nature and extent of the alleged crimes, and secondly, as to what ends have been usefully served by the institution of criminal proceedings and the legal destruction of a single person. In making these evaluations the reader will follow the development of the disaster from three sources: the respective flight decks of the British Trident and the Yugoslav DC9 aircraft and the controller's consoles of the Zagreb Regional Flight Control Centre. In each of these situations men performed their tasks and responded to external pressures in accordance with their own personalities, and some of these happenings coalesced at length to determine the fatal outcome. Yet this book is not only the story of that crash. It is a statement about an imperfect system devised by and for human beings, and for the case that its improvement should rest on the honest admission of deficiency rather than on the ritual sacrifice of whoever stands in the glare of a massive technological failure .