Tag: Lufthansa

Germanwings investigation is hardly conclusive

Christine Negroni is an aviation journalist and safety specialist who is writing a book on aviation mysteries to be published by Penguin in 2016.

Negroni says the evidence so far shows first officer Andreas Lubitz deliberately flew the plane to a lower altitude.

We know also that the plane wound up crashing into a mountain. The question French prosecutor Brice Robin has not answered is how he knows the co-pilot had that end in mind.

We know the plane was commanded down to a lower altitude after reaching 38,000 feet. We do not yet know why.

We know the Captain, identified in web postings as Patrick Sonderheimer, left the cockpit and was unable to get back in. We do not know that he tried to enter using the door passcode or that the door was blocked beyond the normal locking function. All we know is that the cockpit voice recorder shows he tried to enter by knocking.

There may be reasons for trying to enter by knocking, including confusion or distraction due to alarm.

We know that the first officer Lubitz failed to heed the knocks on the door. We do not know if this was deliberate. We know Lubitz was breathing. Both his inappropriate action in not heeding the knocking on the door and his breathing is consistent with deliberate action OR incapacitation.

We know the plane descended. We do not know if this was via programming the plane to descend or flight by hand by the first officer. A conscious and lucid pilot does not fly a plane into a mountain unless it is deliberate. An addled or unconscious pilot does not see or recognize the threat of a mountain and does. Either one of those options is possible, but the evidence presented so far does not allow conclusions.

Finally, unlike in the United States and other countries, the French judicial authorities are in charge of cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders, which then makes them available to the air safety agency the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses. There’s a reason for this increased oversight: In the crash of an Airbus A-320 in 1988, BEA was suspected of tampering with FDR data.

As a consequence, air accidents in France are seen through the prism of criminality. In other countries seasoned air safety investigators understand there is a multitude of factors that contribute to a disaster and will wait to have all the evidence before drawing conclusions.

This is the only way I can understand how the Marseilles French prosecutor made the tremendous leap of logic in concluding that the first officer “wanted” to crash the plane killing all 150 onboard.

The evidence so far shows Lubitz deliberately flew ​the plane to a lower altitude and a crash resulted. The question not answered in anything I’ve heard or seen is whether he intended for that to happen. This is not a subtle quibble. It makes a monumental difference in what really happened to Germanwings Flight 9295.

French president declares contents of second black box missing

French President François Hollande said the contents of a second black box found on Wednesday were missing as investigators managed to extract audio recordings from the first flight recorder recovered from Germanwings flight 4U9525.

French investigators say they have succeeded in extracting “usable data”, including sound and voices, from the first black box recovered from the Airbus A320 that crashed in the French Alps.

After revelations emerged that one of the pilots was locked out of the cockpit as Germanwings flight 4U9525 crashed and killed 150 on board, speculation has swirled as to what exactly happened in the moments before the disaster.

A senior military official involved in the investigation has told the New York Times that the audio from the “black box” flight recorder reveals that one of the pilots left his seat and then exited the cockpit.

He can then be heard knocking lightly on the door in an attempt to get back in. Soon after, he can reportedly be heard trying to break the door down.

No conversation is heard. Minutes later the plane hit a mountain in the French Alps, killing all 150 on board.

It remains unknown which pilot was in the cockpit and which was locked out.

The information remains unconfirmed by authorities.

The co-pilot had been on the job since September 2013 and had 630 hours of flying experience. He “was First Officer at Germanwings since September 2013,” a Lufthansa spokeswoman told AFP.

By comparison the plane’s pilot had more than ten years experience and 6,000 hours of experience flying the Airbus A320 model.

Neither of the pilots have been named.

French aviation safety expert Christophe Naudin told The Local that it remains unclear whether someone else may have gained entry to the cockpit.

“We don’t know whether the pilot left and was locked out or someone else entered the cockpit and locked him out,” he said.

“What’s troubling is that apparently we don’t hear voices anymore once the door is locked.”

Once the cockpit door is locked it is impossible to gain access, even with the code, explained Naudin.

Reinforced cockpit doors were installed on all planes at the behest of the US in the aftermath of 9/11.

“This case could show that having reinforced doors does not necessarily increase security and safety on airplanes,” Naudin said.

The is the biggest mystery is what happened with pilot inside. No distress signal was sent from the plane and the crew failed to respond to ground control’s desperate attempts to make contact.

Authorities have said the plane was still flying at the moment of the crash, meaning it did not explode mid-air.

Aviation experts have suggested several theories.

“If the pilots did not stop the airplane from flying into the mountains, it is because they were unconscious or dead, or they had decided to die, or they were forced to die,” one expert told the AFP news agency.

Authorities hope to find the second black box to reveal more.

Unlikely. The head of France’s Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses (BEA) crash investigation agency, Remi Jouty, told reporters he still had “not the slightest explanation” for the tragedy at this stage.

“It is inexplicable. The plane was in perfect condition and the two pilots were experienced,” Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr said in Frankfurt.

Weather did not appear to be a factor in the crash, with conditions calm at the time, and Germanwings had an unblemished safety record.