Airbus A-320 down in French Alps

[Special Ed]

Certainly. Will let the official investigators give their report. So much leaked/speculation on the news.

The flight data black box was found, but the memory module wasn't in it. The impact knocked it out or destroyed it.

Was reading they could hear someone trying to break the cockpit door down. Seems that the copilot may have suicided. Which is horrible thing to do to others and explains the extensive damage in the crash. Very sad if you want to suicide don't bring others down with you.

[Jaimito]

Was reading they could hear someone trying to break the cockpit door down. Seems that the copilot may have suicided. Which is horrible thing to do to others and explains the extensive damage in the crash. Very sad if you want to suicide don't bring others down with you.

Maybe a closet jihadist. Who knows.

[Hugor Hill]

Rapid decompression seems to be the leading theory so far:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germanwings-plane-crash-in-the-french-alps-what-went-wrong-on-doomed-flight-9525-10133039.html

[Tortorella's Rant]

CNN speculation going off the rails again. That or they honestly think word of mouth is more than enough to devote prime air time to/taking it as fact.

[Special Ed]

Rapid decompression seems to be the leading theory so far:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germanwings-plane-crash-in-the-french-alps-what-went-wrong-on-doomed-flight-9525-10133039.html

Yup seems close. They suggest a parallel with Helios flight 522.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522

[DonLever]

Rapid decompression seems to be the leading theory so far:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germanwings-plane-crash-in-the-french-alps-what-went-wrong-on-doomed-flight-9525-10133039.html

If that was the case, how come the pilot that was locked out of the cockpit was trying to break down the door? That meant he was still conscious. Decompression resulting in unconsciousness would mean EVERYONE would be unconscious.

So it must be either pilot suicide or medical emergency of pilot in control.

[Special Ed]

If that was the case, how come the pilot that was locked out of the cockpit was trying to break down the door? That meant he was still conscious. Decompression resulting in unconsciousness would mean EVERYONE would be unconscious.

So it must be either pilot suicide or medical emergency of pilot in control.

Door locked after precaution for pilot leaving cockpit, co-pilot passes out, but pilot has a mask on? Enough air to try to kick the door.

[DonLever]

Door locked after precaution for pilot leaving cockpit, co-pilot passes out, but pilot has a mask on? Enough air to try to kick the door.

I thought of that too but wouldn't the pilot have a key to the door, assuming it is a key locked door. If it was a latched door, then the co-pilot would have to get up out of his seat to latch it. That meant he was still conscious.

[Special Ed]

I thought of that too but wouldn't the pilot have a key to the door, assuming it is a key locked door. If it was a latched door, then the co-pilot would have to get up out of his seat to latch it. That meant he was still conscious.

I'm not sure. The pilot might not carry a key for security. Perhaps he was to knock and identify himself. Then the co-pilot opens it.

[soda]

From reading there is a 'toilet break' code which lets you in after 30secs, then a more secure code which lets in after 30mins.

[Jaimito]

There's a two man rule that the cockpit must have two people at all times. Looks like a break from protocol.

[soda]

Only some airlines, maybe a U.S. rule

[nucklehead]

Press conference reveals plane crashed deliberately by copilot.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/mar/26/germanwings-plane-crash-investigation-press-conference-live-updates-4u9525

Here are the main points of the press conference held by the Marseille public prosecutor, Brice Robin.

• The co-pilot of the Germanwings jet that crashed in the French Alps deliberately forced the plane into the descent that led to the disaster, the prosecutor said. He pressed a button that accelerated the Airbus A320’s descent when alone in the cockpit. “It was a voluntary action,” Robin said.
• The co-pilot – named by the prosecutor as Andreas Lubitz, 28, a German citizen – was alone because the pilot had gone to the toilet. When he returned, the co-pilot refused to open the door. “The intention was to destroy this plane,” he said.
• Lubitz was breathing normally at the point of impact, the prosecutor reveals. He said nothing during the final descent, which lasted about 10 minutes. “Absolute silence inside the cockpit. Nothing, no word during the last 10 minutes.”
• There was no indication that Lubitz’s actions amounted to terrorism, Robin said. But he stopped short of declaring it suicide, saying only that was a “legitimate” question to ask.
• Cries could be heard just before the impact, the prosecutor said. “The death would have been sudden, immediate.”
• Air traffic controllers attempted to contact the plane in the last few minutes before the crash but received no reply from the cockpit.

[Bombastik der Teutone]

Was reading they could hear someone trying to break the cockpit door down. Seems that the copilot may have suicided. Which is horrible thing to do to others and explains the extensive damage in the crash. Very sad if you want to suicide don't bring others down with you.

It really seems the co - Pilot commited suicide. Horrible. Why kill 150 innocent People and destroy 100 families just for your own dead? I ll never get such People.

[Hugor Hill]

I wonder if the was mentally ill.

[Bombastik der Teutone]

I wonder if the was mentally ill.

1st profiles of the pilot around the german media says he had no obvious mental issues.

[Hugor Hill]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/mar/26/germanwings-plane-crash-investigation-press-conference-live-updates-4u9525

A Spiegel reporter, Matthias Gebauer, is tweeting that friends of Lubitz said he had burnout or depression in 2009 and had to take time out from his pilot training. During the Lufthansa press conference there were questions as to why Lubitz interrupted his training, but there were no definitive answers.

[Ghostsof1915]

[DonLever]

PARIS Ignoring the captain's frantic pounding on the door, the co-pilot of the Germanwings jet barricaded himself inside the cockpit and deliberately rammed the plane full speed into the French Alps as passengers screamed in terror, a prosecutor said Thursday.

In a split second, all 150 people aboard were dead.

Andreas Lubitz's "intention (was) to destroy this plane," Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said, laying out the horrifying conclusions French investigators reached after listening to the final minutes of Tuesday's Flight 9525 from the plane's black box voice data recorder.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the conclusions brought the tragedy to a "new, simply incomprehensible dimension."

The prosecutor said there was no indication of terrorism, though he did not say why investigators do not suspect a political motive. The inquiry is instead focusing on the co-pilot's "personal, family and professional environment" to try to determine why he did it, Robin said.

The Airbus A320 was flying from Barcelona to Duesseldorf when it lost radio contact with air traffic controllers and began dropping from its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet. The prosecutor said Lubitz did not say a word as he manually set the plane on an eight-minute descent into the craggy French mountainside that pulverized the plane.

He said the German co-pilot's responses, initially courteous in the first part of the trip, became "curt" when the captain began the mid-flight briefing on the planned landing.

Robin said the pilot, who has not been identified, left the cockpit when the plane reached cruising altitude, presumably to go to the lavatory. Then the 27-year-old co-pilot took control of the jet as requested.

"When he was alone, the co-pilot manipulated the buttons of the flight monitoring system to initiate the aircraft's descent," Robin said.

The pilot knocked several times "without response," the prosecutor said, adding that the cockpit door can only be blocked manually from the inside.

The co-pilot said nothing from the moment the captain left, Robin said. "It was absolute silence in the cockpit."

The A320 is designed with safeguards to allow emergency entry into the cockpit if a pilot inside is unresponsive. But the override code known to the crew does not go into effect and indeed goes into a lockdown if the person inside the cockpit specifically denies entry.

During the flight's final minutes, pounding could be heard on the cockpit door as the plane's instrument alarms sounded. But the co-pilot's breathing was calm, Robin said.

"You don't get the impression that there was any particular panic, because the breathing is always the same. The breathing is not panting. It's a classic, human breathing," Robin said.

No distress call ever went out from the cockpit, and the control tower's pleas for a response went unanswered.

Air traffic control cleared the area to allow the plane to make an emergency landing if needed, and asked other planes to try to make contact. The French air force scrambled a fighter jet to try to head off the crash.

Continue reading the main story

Just before the plane hit the mountain, passengers' cries of terror could be heard on the voice recorder.

"The victims realized just at the last moment," Robin said. "We can hear them screaming."

The victims' families "are having a hard time believing it," he added.

Many families visited an Alpine clearing Thursday where French authorities had set up a viewing tent for victims' relatives to look toward the site of the crash, so steep and treacherous that it can only be reached by a long journey on foot or rappelling from a helicopter.

Lubitz's family was in France but was being kept separate from the other families, Robin said.

Helicopters shuttled back and forth form the crash site Thursday, as investigators continued retrieving remains and pieces of the plane, shattered from the high-speed impact of the crash.

The prosecutor's account prompted calls for stricter cockpit rules. Airlines in Europe are not required to have two people in the cockpit at all times, unlike the standard U.S. operating procedure, which was changed after the 9/11 attacks to require a flight attendant to take the spot of a briefly departing pilot.

European budget airlines Norwegian Air Shuttle and EasyJet, as well as Air Canada, announced Thursday that they were adopting new rules requiring two crew members to always be present in the cockpit.

French prosecutors' assertion that this week's air crash was a deliberate act of the co-pilot, points to the possible need for a third pilot in airline cockpits, several aviation safety experts said.

"The flight deck is capable of accommodating three pilots and there shouldn't ever be a situation where there is only one person in the cockpit," said James Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, referring to the "jump seats" all airliners are equipped with.

Neither the prosecutor nor Lufthansa indicated there was anything the pilot could have done to avoid the crash.

Robin would not give details on the co-pilot's religion or his ethnic background. German authorities were taking charge of the investigation into him.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said that before Thursday's shocking revelations, the airline was already "appalled" by what had happened in its low-cost subsidiary.

"I could not have imagined that becoming even worse," he said in Cologne. "We choose our cockpit staff very, very carefully."

Lubitz joined Germanwings in September 2013, directly out of flight school, and had flown 630 hours. Spohr said the airline had no indication why he would have crashed the plane.

Lubitz underwent a regular security check on Jan. 27 and it found nothing untoward, and previous security checks in 2008 and 2010 also showed no issues, the local government in Duesseldorf said.

Lufthansa's chief said Lubitz started training in 2008 and there was a "several-month" gap in his training six years ago. Spohr said he couldn't say what the reason was, but after the break "he not only passed all medical tests but also his flight training, all flying tests and checks."

Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

Robin avoided describing the crash as a suicide.

"Usually, when someone commits suicide, he is alone," he said. "When you are responsible for 150 people at the back, I don't necessarily call that a suicide."

In the German town of Montabaur, acquaintances told The Associated Press that Lubitz appeared normal and happy when they saw him last fall as he renewed his glider pilot's license.

"He was happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well," said a member of the glider club, Peter Ruecker, who watched Lubitz learn to fly. "He gave off a good feeling."

Lubitz had obtained his glider pilot's license as a teenager, and was accepted as a Lufthansa pilot trainee after finishing a tough German college preparatory school, Ruecker said. He described Lubitz as "rather quiet" but friendly.

Lubitz's Facebook page, deleted sometime in the past two days, showed a smiling man in a dark brown jacket posing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The Facebook page was restored after the French prosecutor's news conference.

[DonLever]

So does incident make people fearful of flying? Your life is in the hand of someone who may want to kill themselves or others on the plane.

More importantly, how do you prevent further incidents like this from happening?