Bassersdorf

Geschichte

Bassersdorf is a municipality in the Swiss canton of Zürich, located in the district of Bülach, and belongs to the Glatt Valley (German: Glattal).HistoryThe name, mentioned in 1155 as Bazzelstorf and maybe yet in the early 11th century as Basselstorff, is a compound consisting of dorf, a widespread constituent in alemannic placenames meaning ‚hamlet, farm, village, estate‘, and the genitive form of an anthroponym, probably OHG *Bazzilo (or its feminine Bacila, documented in the Abbey of St. Gall). The Alemannic settlement dates to the 8th or 9th century. Due to its position halfway between the towns of Zürich and Winterthur, the village gained some importance as a relay during the 18th and 19th centuries.Under the Helvetic Republic (1798–1803), it was the district capital.In 2001, Crossair Flight 3597 crashed into the ground at Bassersdorf while on approach to land at Zürich Airport. Twenty-four of the thirty-three people on board were killed. The investigation concluded that the accident was a controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) caused by a series of pilot errors and navigation mistakes that led the plane off-course. This course deviation caused the plane to crash into a hilltop, 4.05km short of and 150m north of its assigned landing strip, runway 28.