Germanwings plane 4U 9525 crashes in French Alps - no survivors

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Germanwings plane 4U 9525 crashes in French Alps - no survivors

A Germanwings plane carrying 150 people has crashed in the French Alps on its way from Barcelona to Duesseldorf.

The Airbus A320 - flight 4U 9525 - went down between Digne and Barcelonnette. There are no survivors, officials say.

The "black box" flight recorder has been found, France's interior minister says. The cause of the crash is not known and the plane sent no distress signal during an eight-minute descent.

Among the passengers were 16 German pupils returning from an exchange trip.

Germanwings, a low-cost airline owned by Germany's main carrier Lufthansa, has an excellent safety record. French, Spanish and German leaders have expressed shock.

A recovery team reached the site, in a remote mountain ravine, earlier on Tuesday. Their work was called off in the evening and will resume at first light on Wednesday, the French interior ministry said.

Bruce Robin, a prosecutor from Marseille, told the Reuters news agency that he had seen the wreckage of the aircraft from a helicopter. "The body of the plane is in a state of destruction, there is not one intact piece of wing or fuselage," he said.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was also flown over the crash site and described it as "a picture of horror", the Associated Press news agency says.

Officials believe 67 of those aboard the plane were German citizens. Forty-five of the passengers had Spanish names, Spain's deputy prime minister said.

The passengers included a German school class on its way back from an exchange trip as well as two opera singers, Maria Radner and Oleg Bryjak. Ms Radner was travelling with her husband and baby.

The flight was also carrying citizens of Australia, Turkey, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium. UK^▸ (United Kingdom) Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said it was "sadly likely" that some British nationals were on board.

The plane began descending one minute after it reached its cruising height and continued to lose altitude for eight minutes, Germanwings managing director Thomas Winkelmann told reporters. He said the aircraft lost contact with French air traffic controllers at 10:53 at an altitude of about 6,000 feet.

The plane did not send out a distress signal, officials said. Earlier reports of a distress call, quoting the French interior ministry, referred to a message from controllers on the ground.

The White House has said there is no evidence so far of a terror attack. A Lufthansa official said they were assuming for the time being that the crash had been caused by an accident.

The Airbus A320 is a single-aisle passenger jet popular for short- and medium-haul flights.

[JayMac]

The latest developments, if true, are shocking. A deliberate act on the part of the First Officer.

[Timmer]

The latest developments, if true, are shocking. A deliberate act on the part of the First Officer.

They are which I believe will lead to a change in the law when either the senior Pilot or First Officer leave the cockpit, a member of cabin crew will need to enter the cockpit as a 'minder' whilst the other person is away. They will make this public to restore any lost confidence. I've heard some airlines already do this?

[JayMac]

Many airlines do indeed have a 'rule of two' for the cockpit.

[chuffed]

Easyjet have just announced that they are introducing this rule, as from tomorrow.

[Phil]

This was a German plane in the French Alps making its way from Spain to Germany.

Unless I'm missing something glaringly obvious, which quite frankly wouldn't be the first time, what possible relevance has "The White House" to this particular tragedy?

[ChrisB]

Plane into office blocks/plane into mountain.

Both deliberate....there's a commonslity I think

[JayMac]

A what?

[JayMac]

I do hope that judicial investigations aren't getting ahead of the technical investigations by the relevant air accident boards. Just two days after the crash, we are being definitively told the cause. Not by the air accident investigators but by the criminal investigators.

It may be cut and dried as to the cause, but not the why and how.

[Thatcham Crossing]

I suspect the CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) evidence must be pretty clear for the amount of detail that has been released already to have been made so. It would not be done lightly, whoever by.

It's not the first time for pilot suicide (as I believe the first Malaysian 777 loss will prove to be), but ironically the closed and locked cockpit door policy since 9/11 has actually made it easier for someone determined to destroy so many lives in this way to do so.

For me, the fact that a human in a position of trust could do this makes it even more shocking than if it had been some kind of mechanical or operational incident.

[stuving]

I suspect the CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) evidence must be pretty clear for the amount of detail that has been released already to have been made so. It would not be done lightly, whoever by. 

Once the BEA had listened to the CVR, they had to call the prosecutors. The recording had only one only one obvious interpretation - a deliberate act -  and a criminal investigation would have to be started on less than that. What the prosecutor said - as opposed to what was reported - was just that factual basis, with no speculation.

I can see why the prosecutor gave as much detail as he did. They need to change the status of the 2nd officer from victim to suspect, and to gain prompt German cooperation both official and from the public. For that they need to give a convincing reason.

[ChrisB]

I suspect the CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) evidence must be pretty clear for the amount of detail that has been released already to have been made so. It would not be done lightly, whoever by. 

Once the BEA had listened to the CVR, they had to call the prosecutors. The recording had only one only one obvious interpretation - a deliberate act -  and a criminal investigation would have to be started on less than that. What the prosecutor said - as opposed to what was reported - was just that factual basis, with no speculation.

Hmmm. Not sure. There's no one left alive to refute the claim that the pax knew nothing about what was happening until right at the end when screaming was heard. Likely reported this way to alleviate the relatives suffering, but it could quite possibly be the case that pax worked out quite quickly why the pilot was banging on the door & getting anxious....and they spent the last 20 minutes screaming their heads off. I hope not, of course, but....

It's not the first time for pilot suicide (as I believe the first Malaysian 777 loss will prove to be), but ironically the closed and locked cockpit door policy since 9/11 has actually made it easier for someone determined to destroy so many lives in this way to do so.

Indeed - I saw comment in the press yesterday that said more deaths caused by suicides by pilots since the closed-door policy than killed by terrorists crashing planes. How true, I don't know, but there was a fairly long list of pilot suicides, so deaths are over 1,000 buy this method. I guess they probably exclude the deaths in the towers/outside the aircraft....but still, it's more of a problem now than before.

[chrisr_75]

A what?

Hopefully commonality and a simple typo rather than a general statement about the existence of a commonslity!!

The White House will always have an interest in these things - via the Pentagon they gather a vast amount of intelligence worldwide, so I think it is a right that they have fairly quietly dissociated this from an act of extremist terrorism which would be deeply destabilising to the airline industry - remember how many airlines went bust after 9/11 and the subsequent knock on effects to Boeing/Airbus sales figures?

[stuving]

Hmmm. Not sure. There's no one left alive to refute the claim that the pax knew nothing about what was happening until right at the end when screaming was heard. Likely reported this way to alleviate the relatives suffering, but it could quite possibly be the case that pax worked out quite quickly why the pilot was banging on the door & getting anxious....and they spent the last 20 minutes screaming their heads off. I hope not, of course, but....

Perhaps I could have made it clearer I was really addressing bignosemac's previous point about whether the prosecutors had been premature and prejudicial in their announcement. That just said cries from outside were only heard "at the last moment, before the impact".  Anything else is "journalism".

Was it naive to describe everything they heard, and say what the most likely interpretation was? If so, it's a case of the news media accusing these officials of not doing enough news management to offset their own irresponsible behaviour. (A bit like the affair of Dave's plans for the election after the one we have not had yet?) I think they probably got it about right, and the media should be politely asked to leave the buck on their own desks.

[ChrisB]

Hmmm. Not sure. There's no one left alive to refute the claim that the pax knew nothing about what was happening until right at the end when screaming was heard. Likely reported this way to alleviate the relatives suffering, but it could quite possibly be the case that pax worked out quite quickly why the pilot was banging on the door & getting anxious....and they spent the last 20 minutes screaming their heads off. I hope not, of course, but....

Perhaps I could have made it clearer I was really addressing bignosemac's previous point about whether the prosecutors had been premature and prejudicial in their announcement. That just said cries from outside were only heard "at the last moment, before the impact".  Anything else is "journalism".

That's the way I read your post (And BNMs). My point was that this statement wasn't backed up like the rest was, and as I say, just as easily could be a sop to the relatives' mourning, rather than actual fact. As they all died, I guess it was probably the right thing to say - whether true or not.