On an ordinary day Germanwings flight 9525 has an outcome beyond belief in March 2015 on the French Alps.
Germanwings Flight 9525 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Barcelona–El Prat Airport in Spain to Düsseldorf Airport in Germany. The flight was operated by Germanwings, a low-cost carrier owned by the German airline Lufthansa. On 24 March 2015, the aircraft, an Airbus A320-211, crashed 100 km (62 mi; 54 nmi) north-west of Nice in the French Alps. All 144 passengers and all six crew members were killed. It was the only fatal crash involving a Germanwings aircraft during the company's 18 years in operation.
The crash was deliberately caused by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, who had previously been treated for suicidal tendencies and declared "unfit to work" by his doctor. Lubitz kept this information from his employer and instead reported for duty. Shortly after reaching cruise altitude and while the captain was out of the cockpit, he locked the cockpit door and initiated a controlled descent that continued until the aircraft collided with a mountainside.
Aviation authorities swiftly implemented new recommendations from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency that required two authorised personnel in the cockpit at all times,[4] but by 2017, Germanwings and other German airlines had dropped the rule.
The Lubitz family held a press conference in March 2017 at which Lubitz's father said that they did not accept the official investigative findings that his son deliberately caused the crash. As of February 2017, Lufthansa had paid €75,000 to the family of every victim, as well as €10,000 in pain and suffering compensation to every close relative of a victim.
Aircraft
The aircraft involved was a 24-year-old Airbus A320-211,[b] serial number 147, registered as D-AIPX. It made its first flight on 29 November 1990 and was delivered to Lufthansa on 5 February 1991.The aircraft was leased to Germanwings from 1 June 2003 until mid-2004, then returned to Lufthansa on 22 July 2004 and remained with the airline until it was transferred to Germanwings again on 31 January 2014.The aircraft had accumulated about 58,300 flight hours on 46,700 flights.
Investigation
The French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) opened an investigation into the crash; it was joined by its German counterpart, the Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU). The BEA investigation was led by Arnaud Desjardin and was assisted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation.Hours after the crash, the BEA sent seven investigators to the crash site; these were accompanied by representatives from Airbus and CFM International. The cockpit voice recorder, which was damaged but still usable, was recovered by rescue workers and was examined by the investigation team.The following week, Brice Robin, the government prosecutor based in Marseille, announced that the flight data recorder, which was blackened by fire but still usable, had also been found. Investigators isolated 150 sets of DNA, which were compared with the DNA of the victims' families.
Cause of crash
According to French and German prosecutors, the crash was deliberately caused by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz. Brice Robin said Lubitz was initially courteous to Captain Sondenheimer during the first part of the flight, then became "curt" when the captain began the midflight briefing on the planned landing.Robin said that when the captain left the cockpit, possibly to use the toilet, Lubitz locked the door, preventing anyone from entering. The captain had a code to unlock the door, but the lock's code panel could be disabled from the cockpit controls.The captain requested re-entry using the intercom; he knocked and then banged on the door, but received no response. The captain then tried to break down the door, but like most cockpit doors made after the September 11 attacks, it had been reinforced to prevent intrusion. During the descent, the co-pilot did not respond to questions from Marseille air traffic control, nor did he transmit a distress call. Robin said contact from the air traffic control tower, the captain's attempts to break in, and Lubitz's steady breathing were audible on the cockpit voice recording.The screams of passengers in the last moments before impact were also heard on the recording.
After their initial analysis of the aircraft's flight data recorder, the BEA concluded that Lubitz had made flight control inputs that led to the accident. He had set the autopilot to descend to 100 ft (30 m) and accelerated the speed of the descending aircraft several times thereafter.The BEA preliminary report into the crash was published on 6 May 2015, six weeks later. It confirmed the initial analysis of the aircraft's flight data recorder and revealed that during the earlier outbound Flight 9524 from Düsseldorf to Barcelona, Lubitz had practised setting the autopilot altitude dial to 100 ft several times while the captain was out of the cockpit.
The BEA final report into the crash was published on 13 March 2016. The report confirmed the findings made in the preliminary report and concluded that Lubitz had deliberately crashed the aircraft as a suicide, which stated
The collision with the ground was due to the deliberate and planned action of the co-pilot, who decided to commit suicide while alone in the cockpit. The process for medical certification of pilots, in particular self-reporting in case of a decrease in medical fitness between two periodic medical evaluations, did not succeed in preventing the co-pilot, who was experiencing mental disorder with psychotic symptoms, from exercising the privilege of his license.
— Causes, BEA Final Report
Investigation of Lubitz
Three days after the crash, German detectives searched Lubitz's Montabaur properties and removed a computer and other items for testing. They did not find a suicide note nor any evidence his actions had been motivated by "a political or religious background".During their search of Lubitz's apartment, detectives found a letter in a waste bin indicating he had been declared unfit to work by a doctor. Germanwings stated it had not received a sick note from Lubitz for the day of the flight. News accounts said Lubitz was "hiding an illness from his employers". Under German law, employers do not have access to employees' medical records, and sick notes excusing people from work do not give information about medical conditions,so employers must rely on employees to declare their lack of work fitness.
The following day, authorities again searched Lubitz's home, where they found evidence he was taking prescription drugs and suffered from a psychosomatic illness. Criminal investigators said Lubitz's web searches on his tablet computer in the days leading up to the crash included "ways to commit suicide" and "cockpit doors and their security provisions".Prosecutor Brice Robin said doctors had told him Lubitz should not have been flying, but medical secrecy requirements prevented his physician from making this information available to Germanwings.Such secrecy should consider public safety, said BEA investigator Arnaud Desjardin.
The investigation into Lubitz found he had been treated for suicidal tendencies prior to his training as a commercial pilot and had been temporarily denied a US pilot's license because of these treatments for psychotic depression.For years, Lubitz had frequently been unable to sleep because of what he believed were vision problems; he consulted over 40 doctors and feared he was going blind.Motivated by the fear that blindness would cause him to lose his pilot's licence, he began conducting online research about methods of committing suicide before deciding to crash Flight 9525.
Dramatisation
The crash was dramatised in season 16 of the Canadian TV series Mayday in an episode entitled "Murder in the Skies". The episode aired on 24 January 2017.
Download Timer
Tags:
mayday air diaster season 16
air disasters season 17 release date
air disasters season 16 episode 4
air disasters season 16 episode 1
air disasters season 16 episode 9
air disasters season 16 episode 5
season 16 air disasters
is mayday and air disasters the same
is mayday air disasters on hulu
mayday season 16 episode 6
mayday air disasters season 1
season 17 air disasters
mayday air disaster season 21
air disasters season 16 episode 3
air disasters season 16 episode 7
how many seasons of air disaster are there
is mayday an acronym
air disasters season 16 episode 10
what channel is mayday air disaster on
mayday air disaster where to watch
where can i watch mayday air crash investigation
why mayday is called mayday
why mayday distress call
why mayday is used
why mayday for emergency
why is air disasters season 1 unavailable
mayday air disaster season 2
wonder mayday series
wonder mayday air disaster
mayday air diaster season 16
mayday air disaster season 21
mayday air disaster season 1
mayday season 16 episode 6
air disasters season 16 episode 4
air disasters season 16 episode 10
air disasters season 16 episode 7
air disasters season 16 episode 9
air disasters season 16 episode 2
mayday air disasters season 1
season 16 air disasters
air disasters season 16 episode 5
air disasters season 16 episode 3
mayday air crash investigation season 16
what channel is mayday air disaster on
dal airport delays today
air disasters season 17 release date
watch air disasters season 16
air disasters season 16 episode 1
mayday air disaster season 2
mayday season 1 episode 3
should i turn on ac when air quality is bad
mayday season 18 episode 7
air crash investigation season 16
mayday air crash investigation season 16
air crash investigation season 16 episode 3
air crash investigation season 16 episode 7
air crash investigation season 16 episode 8
air crash investigation season 16 episode 1
air crash investigation season 16 watch online
air crash investigation season 16 episode 5
best episodes of air crash investigation
air crash investigation list of episodes
air crash investigation season 16 bilibili
best air crash investigation
csi crime scene investigation season 16 episode 1
csi crime scene investigation season 16 episode 2
air crash investigation season 16 episode 4
air crash investigation season 16 download
list of mayday air crash investigation episodes
air crash investigation season 16 episode 10
air crash investigation season 16 episode 9
air crash investigation season 16 episode 6
air crash investigation season 16 episode 2