Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev Tu-154, and DHL Flight 611, a Boeing 757, collide in mid-air over Überlingen, southern Germany, killing all 71 on board both planes.

The Tupolev Tu-154 is a three-engined, medium-range, narrow-body airliner designed in the mid-1960s and manufactured by Tupolev. A workhorse of Soviet and (subsequently) Russian airlines for several decades, it carried half of all passengers flown by Aeroflot and its subsidiaries, remaining the standard domestic-route airliner of Russia and former Soviet states until the mid-2000s. It was exported to 17 non-Russian airlines and used as a head-of-state transport by the air forces of several countries.

The Boeing 757 is an American narrow-body airliner designed and built by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The then-named 7N7, a twinjet successor for the trijet 727, received its first orders in August 1978. The prototype completed its maiden flight on February 19, 1982, and it was FAA certified on December 21, 1982. Eastern Air Lines placed the initial 757-200 variant in commercial service on January 1, 1983. A package freighter (PF) variant entered service in September 1987 and a combi model in September 1988. The stretched 757-300 was launched in September 1996 and began service in March 1999. After 1,050 had been built for 54 customers, production ended in October 2004, while Boeing offered the largest 737 Next Generation variants as a successor to the -200.

On 1 July 2002, BAL Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev Tu-154M passenger jet, and DHL International Aviation ME Flight 611, a Boeing 757-200 cargo jet, collided in mid-air over Überlingen, a southern German town on Lake Constance, near the German-Swiss border. All of the passengers and crew aboard both planes were killed, resulting in a total death toll of 71.

Überlingen is a German city on the northern shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee) in Baden-Württemberg near the border with Switzerland. After the city of Friedrichshafen, it is the second-largest city in the Bodenseekreis (district), and a central point for the outlying communities. Since 1 January 1993, Überlingen has been categorized as a large district city.