Former Swissair HR chief recalls SR111 crash and its aftermath

A former personnel chief at Swissair has described the days after the crash of Flight SR111, which went down off the Canadian coast on 2 September 1998. All 229 people on board died when the McDonnell Douglas MD-11, flying from New York to Geneva, struck the Atlantic.

Matthias Mölleney had been Swissair's head of human resources for 95 days when the aircraft was reported missing. He was driving near Uster early on 3 September 1998, thinking about what to do for his hundredth day in the job, when he heard a radio report of a missing plane, according to an interview published by the outlet. He said his first thought was that it could not be true.

At the time Swissair was regarded as one of the world's most prestigious carriers, and Mölleney, who had spent 20 years at Lufthansa before joining, recalled the admiration the Swiss company attracted. He said the airline set the standard in customer experience. The idea that one of its aircraft could crash did not fit how the company saw itself.

Mölleney's task in the aftermath was twofold: supporting the families of those killed and the airline's own employees, while keeping flight operations running. He describes those days as the hardest of his career. He also draws lessons from them for the grounding that Swissair later faced, though the source does not set out what those lessons were.

He recalls the shock and the difficulty of looking after relatives in the hours and days after the accident, and the wider question of how an airline continues to operate after such a loss. The account is a personal remembrance rather than new information about the crash itself.