BlueBee Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 A passenger plane for the airline Germanwings flying from Barcelona to Dusseldorf has crashed in southern France, officials have confirmed. The Airbus A320 making the flight for Lufthansa’s lowcost arm, Germanwings, crashed near the small mountain village of Barcelonette in the southern Alps. It had made a distress call at 10.47am then disappeared off the radar at around 11.20am, Le Figaro reported. The French TV station iTele said there had been at least 142 passengers and six crew-members on board. The French president, François Hollande, said it was likely there were no survivors. Airbus said it is aware of the reports of a crash but could not confirm. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/24/german-a320-airbus-plane-crashes-french-alps All feared dead. :((
BlueBee Posted March 24, 2015 Author Posted March 24, 2015 "@germanwings: INFO: We have recently become aware of media reports speculating on an incident though we still do not have any own confirmed information..." "@germanwings: ... As soon as definite information is available, we shall inform the media immediately ..."
coffee_rules Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 RIP. I am scared to fly in these small planes, express flights..Once, the plane had 2 columns of seats , one in each column..Aisle and window seat one and the same.
diga Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 RIP. I am scared to fly in these small planes' date=' express flights..Once, the plane had 2 columns of seats , one in each column..Aisle and window seat one and the same.[/quote'] have flown in those Russian era Antonov planes in the Alps.. was really scared with the propeller sounds
Raghav_12 Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 RIP. I am scared to fly in these small planes' date=' express flights..Once, the plane had 2 columns of seats , one in each column..Aisle and window seat one and the same.[/quote'] This was Airbus A 320, not a small plane. Pretty much standard plane that you'll fly on all domestic and some of international flights.
Sachin=GOD Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 RIP Way too many air crashes in the last few months.
putrevus Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 "The airline has an excellent safety record with no previously reported accidents. The average age of its Airbus fleet is just over nine years old, though flight 4U 9525 was a 24-year-old A320." 24 year old plane, these airlines in order to make money are flying these unsafe planes???
Donal Cozzie Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 "The airline has an excellent safety record with no previously reported accidents. The average age of its Airbus fleet is just over nine years old' date=' though flight [b']4U 9525 was a 24-year-old A320." 24 year old plane, these airlines in order to make money are flying these unsafe planes??? Some planes have been in use for around 30 years, at which point they're retired. Nothing wrong with a 24 year old plane as odds are they have been subjected to several stringent and thorough safety tests throughout their life cycle. Source: A childhood spent watching Air Crash Investigation
Texy Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 From the pics, the plane has been completely OBLITERATED ...the trajectory shows plane lost altitude rather quickly...the engine must've stalled....the plane must've nose dived directly into those rocks.
Donal Cozzie Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 16 kids from one German primary school on board the flight. Damn thats tragic
Texy Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 The force of impact was so high that everything has been pulverized. No bodies will ever be found, just parts of it. The plane apparently broke apart in mid air. Black box has been found. So tragic. Dropped 31,000 ft in 8 mins.
Raghav_12 Posted March 25, 2015 Posted March 25, 2015 The force of impact was so high that everything has been pulverized. No bodies will ever be found' date=' just parts of it.[b'] The plane apparently broke apart in mid air. Dropped 31,000 ft in 8 mins. I don't think craft getting broken apart in mid-air is a possibility. Plane took aroud 8 mins in total descent which is defintely not a free fall that would have happened in case of mid-air explosion. 8 mins descent was more like a sharp descend but a controlled one. It seems to be the case where plane came down in auto-pilot mode withing permissible range of vertical speed and than crashed into Alps having come down enough. Most likely cause in incapacitation of pilots for sudden loss of pressure in the cabin. Look up the case of crash on one Greek airline in 2005.
Raghav_12 Posted March 25, 2015 Posted March 25, 2015 Good analysis on possible causes of crash. This also clearly rules out possibility of mid-air explosion. Terrorism Unlikely in Germanwings Crash, French Officials Say http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/world/europe/germanwings-airbus-crash.html?_r=0 PARIS — Rescuers on Wednesday resumed the difficult task of searching for the 150 victims of a deadly plane crash in the French Alps, as France’s interior minister said that terrorism was not at the top of the list of potential causes. The plane, an Airbus A320 operated by the budget carrier Germanwings, was en route to Düsseldorf, Germany, from Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday morning when it lost altitude rapidly and slammed into the French Alps, killing all 144 passengers and six crew members on board. Footage of the site showed a remote and craggy landscape dominated by imposing mountains. The French newspaper Le Monde noted that the impact of the crash was so severe that the plane had been reduced to pieces of “confetti,” creating a serious challenge for search teams and investigators. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage Details Emerging of Passengers Aboard Crashed Germanwings JetMARCH 25, 2015 Challenges Weigh Heavily on Recovery Efforts in Germanwings CrashMARCH 25, 2015 Germanwings Crash in French Alps Kills 150; Cockpit Voice Recorder Is FoundMARCH 24, 2015 In German Town, a School-Year Highlight That Ended in DisasterMARCH 24, 2015 Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, has characterized the crash as an accident. But as investigators reviewed one of the plane’s so-called black boxes, unanswered questions remained, including why the aircraft had descended for eight minutes before crashing, and why an aircraft with a good safety record had crashed in largely clear weather. Continue reading the main story What We Know The pilots did not issue a distress call or initiate any communication with air traffic controllers as the plane began its eight-minute descent. The plane’s cockpit voice recorder was damaged, but officials are confident that its contents can be successfully examined. The aircraft, an Airbus A320, was 24 years old but had no history of serious maintenance problems. What We Don’t Know Whether the plane was flying on autopilot or under the manual control of crew members. Why the plane descended after reaching its cruising altitude. Whether the plane suffered any kind of technical failure. Speaking on the French radio station RTL, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Wednesday that terrorism was “not a privileged hypothesis at the moment” but that no theories had been definitively excluded. Mr. Cazeneuve said the size of the area over which debris was scattered suggested that the aircraft had not exploded in the air but rather had disintegrated on impact. He said that the plane’s cockpit voice recorder, the black box that had been recovered, was damaged but that investigators expected to be able to recover the conversations stored on its memory chip “in the coming hours.” Those conversations were the main piece of hard evidence that investigators had to work with as they tried to shed light on the circumstances surrounding the crash. One of the main outstanding questions is why the pilots did not communicate with air traffic controllers as the plane began its unusual descent, suggesting that either the pilots or the plane’s automated systems may have been trying to maintain control of the aircraft as it lost altitude. Photo French emergency services resumed work on Wednesday. Credit Alberto Estevez/European Pressphoto Agency Among the theories that have been put forward by air safety analysts not involved in the investigation is the possibility that the pilots could have been incapacitated by a sudden event such as a fire or a drop in cabin pressure. A senior French military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing, said that the lack of communication from the pilots during the plane’s descent was disturbing, and that the possibility that their silence was deliberate could not be ruled out. France’s air accident investigation bureau was expected to hold a briefing at its offices in Le Bourget, near Paris, on Wednesday afternoon. The agency, which is leading the technical inquiry into the crash, sent seven investigators to the crash site on Tuesday. They have been joined by their counterparts from Germany as well as by technical advisers from Airbus and CFM International, the manufacturer of the plane’s engines. Continue reading the main story Speaking on Europe 1 radio, Jean-Paul Troadec, a former director of the French air accident investigation bureau, said that the analysis of the cockpit voice recorder would “help us to understand what happened in the final minutes of the flight.” “Nonetheless,” he added, “just having these recordings is not going to be sufficient” to make any definitive conclusions about the cause of the crash — a process that could take weeks, if not months. Continue reading the main story Map Where the Germanwings Plane Crashed The Germanwings plane crashed in a remote part of the French Alps. OPEN Map A preliminary transcript of cockpit voice recordings was expected to be available to investigators by Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Troadec said the voice recordings would need to be synchronized with the contents of the second black box, the flight data recorder, which tracks roughly 1,300 statistics, including the plane’s position, speed, altitude and direction. Locating that recorder remained a priority for search teams. With more than 600 police officers and other emergency workers at the scene, Mr. Troadec said one of the big challenges for investigators would be to protect the debris at the crash site from any inadvertent damage. “We need to ensure that all the evidence is well preserved,” Mr. Troadec said, referring both to the pieces of the plane littered across the steep slopes as well as to the remains of the victims. The identification of the victims will most likely require matching DNA from the remains with samples from relatives. A team of 30 mountain rescue officers were to try to reach the remote crash site by helicopter early Wednesday, and 65 police officers were trying to get to it on foot, Lt. Col. Jean-Marc Menichini was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying. He told the news agency that the search would last at least a week, and that it would take several days to recover the bodies. Continue reading the main story Video Play Video|2:17Details Offered in Germanwings CrashDetails Offered in Germanwings CrashThe managing director of Germanwings, Thomas Winkelmann, said the Airbus A320 rapidly lost altitude for more than eight minutes before crashing in the French Alps on Tuesday. Video by AP on Publish Date March 24, 2015. Photo by Patrik Stollarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. President François Hollande of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain were expected to visit the crash site Wednesday afternoon to pay their respects and observe the search efforts. The identities of the victims were expected to be released on Wednesday. The plane’s passengers, many of whom were German or Spanish, included 16 German high school students and two teachers who were returning from an exchange program near Barcelona. The Liceu opera house in Barcelona said on Tuesday that two singers who had been performing in Wagner’s “Siegfried” were also among the victims: the contralto Maria Radner and the baritone Oleg Bryjak. Éric Sapet, a member of a mountain firefighters’ unit who had been at the crash site, was quoted by Le Monde as saying that the plane had been “pulverized” and that it was no longer possible to even tell that the scattered debris had once been an aircraft. Martin Riecken, a spokesman for Lufthansa in Frankfurt, said late Tuesday that a small number of pilots and flight attendants had given notice that they would not fly on Wednesday. “Our employees are very distressed,” he said, adding that Lufthansa crew members would be brought in to replace Germanwings employees as necessary. “People are in a state of shock.” Continue reading the main story Timeline of the Crash 10:01 AM Flight takes off from Barcelona, about 26 minutes late. 10:28 AMReaches cruising altitude of 38,000 feet, on a steady heading of 43 degrees (northeast) and ground speed of 530 to 550 m.p.h., according to FlightAware tracking data. 10:31 AMAlters course to 26 degrees (north-northeast) and begins to descend rapidly. 10:34 AMDescending at nearly 4,000 feet per minute, still on a steady heading and ground speed. 10:53 AMAircraft is at about 6,000 feet when French radar and air traffic controllers lose contact with it, according to Germanair. It crashes moments later. Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story While there were many questions about the crash, investigators said they found the silence from the cockpit deeply disturbing. “I don’t like it,” said the senior French military official, who is involved in the investigation and who cautioned that his initial analysis was based on the very limited information currently available. “To me it seems very weird — this very long descent at normal speed without any communications, though the weather was absolutely clear.” This official said that the lack of communication suggested that the pilots might have been incapacitated as a result of an onboard failure such as a loss of cabin pressure, which could have deprived the crew members of oxygen. While all pilots are equipped with emergency oxygen masks, the pilots would first have to be aware that a depressurization had occurred, the official said. “If for any reason they don’t detect the problem in time, they would black out,” the official said. Continue reading the main story Video Play Video|3:16Leaders on Germanwings Plane CrashLeaders on Germanwings Plane CrashThe French president, the German chancellor and the Spanish prime minister discussed the next steps their countries are taking after a Germanwings plane crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday. Publish Date March 24, 2015. Photo by Ian Langsdon/European Pressphoto Agency. Such a scenario has occurred before, perhaps most famously in the crash of a Cypriot passenger plane in 2005 that killed all 121 people on board as it approached Athens. In that case, Helios Airways Flight 522, a slow loss of pressure rendered both pilots and all the passengers on the Boeing 737 jet unconscious for close to three-quarters of an hour before the aircraft ran out of fuel and slammed into a wooded gorge near the Greek capital. Investigators eventually determined that the primary cause of that crash was a series of human errors, including deficient maintenance checks on the ground and a failure by the pilots to heed emergency warning signals. Apart from pilot incapacitation, the French official also raised the uncomfortable possibility that the lack of communication could have been intentional. “So far, we don’t have any evidence that points clearly to a technical explanation,” the official said. “So we have to consider the possibility of deliberate human responsibility.” If that were the case, this person said, then the cockpit voice recordings might not yield many useful clues. “I hope that we get some good information,” the official said. “But my fear is that we are going to find nothing, or very little. That there was nothing to record.”
zen Posted March 26, 2015 Posted March 26, 2015 One of the pilot was probably locked out of the cabin when the crash happened. The pilot who stepped out for some reason could not get back in. The black box heard knocking (and may be banging) on the cockpit's door. However, there was silence in the cockpit. This fact could lead to following implications - Did something happen to the pilot inside the cockpit? Did he bring the plane down? Was it a suicide? Apart from the lockout scenario, other possibility is that the flight management system got confused because of the sensors (for e.g. ice on sensor could make them to malfunction) resulting in miscalculations that led to the rapid fall
coffee_rules Posted March 26, 2015 Posted March 26, 2015 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/Germanwings-co-pilot-deliberately-crashed-plane-French-officials/articleshow/46703655.cms "At this moment, in light of investigation, the interpretation we can give at this time is that the co-pilot through voluntary abstention refused to open the door of the cockpit to the commander, and activated the button that commands the loss of altitude," the prosecutor, Brice Robin, said. He said it appeared that the co-pilot's intention had been "to destroy the aircraft." He said that the voice recorder showed that the co-pilot had been breathing until before the moment of impact, suggesting that he was conscious and deliberate in killing 144 passengers and five other crew members in the French Alps on Tuesday. The inquiry had shown that the crash was intentional, he said, and he was considering changing his investigation from involuntary manslaughter to voluntary manslaughter. He said there was no indication that this was a terrorist attack. He said that law enforcement officials were investigating the background of the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, who was 28 years old, and came from the German town of Montabaur. These are chilling details , if they are true. Pilots need to be evaluated properly, can't give the keys to loonies.
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