Johann Lenkers (Ken Duken) is doomed by his job: the air traffic controller is on duty alone when, on July 1, 2002, a Russian passenger plane and a cargo plane collide in his surveillance sector and crash near Überlingen on Lake Constance. All 71 occupants are killed. Amongst them, are the wife of Ossetian Yuri Balkayev (Yevgeny Sitokhin) and his two children. More than a year later, Balkayev stabbed the air traffic controller in front of his own family. But hope lives on in little Kolya (Anton Benent), an orphan who lost his mother, a Russian stewardess, in the accident.