GermanWings a320

[Peter Lang]

A320 and especially Germanwings seem to have serious problems with contaminated cabin air.

Reports all in german

http://www.airportzentrale.de/luftpost-89-kabinenluft/38277/

http://www.austrianwings.info/2015/02/giftige-kabinenluft-fluggesellschaft-und-luftaufsichtsbehoerde-muessen-handeln/

http://www.austrianwings.info/2015/02/geruchsvorfall-auf-germanwings-flug-sicherheitslandung/

http://www.austrianwings.info/2012/09/germanwings-vorfall-interner-bericht-widerspricht-darstellung-der-airline/

Peter

[falconeye]

Here is a link to a video which explains the door lock system in detail.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixEHV7c3VXs
It seems the inner pilot can lock/block the door for at least five minutes.
But it also seems that he can lock the door for further five minutes, if he brings the switch in the lock position again.

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

@%#$@%$#%@

About the only thing remaining to give us some hope is that a really confused pilot about to pass out may attempt to open the door but instead locks it.


H

[falconeye]

Is it possible that the positon of the lock/unlock switch  is saved somewhere in the datarecorder?

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Those things nowadays record thousands of parameters and this one seems logical to be there as well.  Now first find the SD card.


H

[falconeye]

Now official. The copilot has made the crash with full intention. :x
No tecnical or human problem.

[HercMighty]

8:06 a.m.: The name of the co-pilot was Andreas Lubitz, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said.

• 7:55 a.m.: The co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings flight "accelerated the descent" of the plane when he was alone in the cockpit, Robin said Thursday. That can only be done deliberately, he said.

• 7:55 a.m: The co-pilot was alive until impact, Robin said, citing the sound of steady breathing in the cockpit.

• 7:55 a.m: There was a "deliberate attempt to destroy the aircraft," Robin said.

[jtsjc1]

Cockpit door locks were to prevent unauthorized access to the cockpit.  Its a real problem when a pilot is the one who should be denied access.  It started to sound bad last night when the Times report came out. Unfortunately it seems to be confirmed.  What a shame.

[Hardy Heinlin]

"deliberately" -- So it was true indeed. Sad.


Here's another example of a pilot being locked out:
https://youtu.be/YIVFQY0doYg
https://youtu.be/VPEHyN57IXE

[United744]

Refer to my post on page 1 where I talk about "private thoughts".

I'm shocked even though the indications already pointed to it.

[United744]

BBC News article confirming intentional pilot actions to crash the aircraft:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-32070570

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32063587

[OmniAtlas]

Sad news, one of the content creators of FS2Crew was also on the flight.
RIP.

[martin]

The copilot has made the crash with full intention.

"deliberately" -- So it was true indeed.

We don't know that at all.
(Or did not at the time when I wrote this)

From what I read, the French ?Attorney General? (don't know his correct title) did not always  know what he was talking about and/or was mis-reported and/or was mis-translated and/or was in part severely out of line .

For background, one ought to recall that for various, in part unsavoury, reasons "pilot error" (or in this case "intention") is always a favourite; often the first, sometimes the only cause under discussion. Also the easiest one when the accused cannot defend themselves any more.

So, there was a press conference given by the Attorney General in Marseille*, mainly based on the results from the evaluation (so far) of the CVR.
* [size=8]i.e. not the one by Germanwings which seems to be in progress right now.[/size]

Some excerpts (see footnote for source)
[size=8][My translations from German to English. The German quotes (from the French or possibly English) are all in indirect speech mode (subjunctive), which I don't know how to translate properly, therefore rendered here in the indicative mode. The quotes refer all to statements of the ?Attorney General? in Marseille, M Brice Robin.]
[/size]
Initial summary:
When alone in the cockpit, the co-pilot intentionally initiated the descent:
¤ [quoted verbatim in source]: "It looks as if he apparently made the aircraft crash intentionally and destroyed it."
Note the (correct) use of "looks as if", and "apparently" in this statement.

¤ One heard [CVR recording] a seat being pushed back and the clapping of a door. After that, the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit.
From this alone, it can of course not be concluded that it was the FO.
It can however (probably) be concluded from the later events (when the Captain, outside the cockpit, tried to call the FO via Interphone.)
So, perhaps not wrong, but sloppy logic.

¤ After that, the FO apparently "played around" [verbatim quote in source] with the FMS in order to initiate the descent.
As evidenced by the CVR?

¤ "That can only have been done intentionally" (verbatim in source).
But for what reasons? There are scenarios for initiating a descent other than the wish to crash the plane.
Besides, I don't think "intentionally" is absolutely proven at this point.

Then came the attempt of the captain to call the FO from outside the cockpit via Interphone, in order to get him to open the cockpit door, but he did not get any reply.
It's probably safe to assume that this establishes at least that the FO was in the cockpit, and the Captain outside.

¤ At this time, only a "normal regular human" breathing could be heard in the cockpit.
A glaring omission: Either the Attorney or the press report completely fails to mention the scenario where the FO is alive but unconscious.
In fact, "normal regular" breathing is not what I should expect from someone conscious and thus fully aware that his own death, intentionally or not, is imminent in the next few minutes...

Finally, the "out of line" part:
The families of the victims are severely affected by the information that this is a case of intentional action.
(Die Familien seien schwer betroffen von der Information, dass hier Vorsatz vorliege.)

I am unfamiliar with the legal system of France, but very strongly suspect that such a statement (without "apparently" or "looks like") is for a court or jury to make, not for the investigating attorney.
(But again, it is quite possible that he was misquoted.)

I also had a quote saying that a button has to be turned not just pushed in order to initiate descent; and that was given  as further evidence for an intentional descent / crash.
My question was, How about (pre-)dialing in, but not activating a lower flight level in preparation of descent, which I believe is  normal procedure?
But I can't find the quote any more. May be me, or may be the breath-taking dynamics of modern "information" media...

My point is not to assert that the conclusion "intentional crash" is wrong.

My point is that (at the time I read it) it is (was) based on sloppy and unsound logic (which can have the correct result, but is still a bad thing).

Anyhow, it does not really seem to matter any more: while I have been writing this, a flood of more "information" has sprung up: The "Media" seem now throughout to have made up their mind, and to take for granted as solid fact (which is really the same thing) that the FO indeed crashed the plane intentionally.

Never mind diligent legal procedure for establishing guilt (which procedure to achieve took Europe a few hundred years and a lot of sacrifices. By the French Revolution, among other things...).

Martin

Source: Die Zeit.
(in particular, the post marked "12:39"; push the button "Mehr Beiträge laden" to see older posts.)
This is one of the leading (and highly respected) German weeklies.
However, the article in question is a "Live Blog", and was time-stamped at 12:39 CET -- if I got the schedule right, this would have been 9(!) minutes(!!) after the begin(!!!) of the press conference being reported...

[United744]

What can't be argued is the silence of the authorities. They are not denying the reports, nor are they saying anything along the lines of "we haven't reached a conclusion yet".

As rubbish as the media are at reporting these things, sometimes events are straight-forward to investigate, and the cause is obvious.

In this case, they have the CVR, and no doubt they have the world's best experts doing analysis of the recording to establish what happened. You don't always need 6 months to reach a conclusion.

[HercMighty]

This is another tragic event, and unfortunately worst fears about events are playing out.

While nothing is proven conclusively yet, and may never be, the logic of all random accidental events lining up to result in this accident are hard to imagine.

But with the evidence currently known, one has to wonder about the larger picture as a whole. This is possibly the second such event where apparent unexplained crew actions have resulted in the deaths of innocent people. In both cases everything about the flight is as one would expect, and then events lead to unexplained tragedy.

As much as we would like to believe there is an accidental element to this, I am just not seeing it.

[Hardy Heinlin]

The copilot has made the crash with full intention.

"deliberately" -- So it was true indeed.

We don't know that at all.
(Or did not at the time when I wrote this)

But we can assume that the captain or at least a flight attendant remembers the code to be entered so that the door unlocks in 5 minutes. The copilot can deny this request by pushing and turning the deny selector. If he doesn't, the door opens in 5 minutes.


|-|

[falconeye]

The copilot has made the crash with full intention.

"deliberately" -- So it was true indeed.

We don't know that at all.
(Or did not at the time when I wrote this)

But we can assume that the captain or at least a flight attendant remembers the code to be entered so that the door unlocks in 5 minutes. The copilot can deny this request by pushing and turning the deny selector. If he doesn't, the door opens in 5 minutes.


|-|

I really wish the conclusion would be wrong. But at the moment everything points in the direction of the copilot. I don't think the authorities would tell this in an pressconference if they wouldn't be sure. The CEO of Lufthansa also confirmed it in an pressconference. In the german radio I heard, currently the police is searching in the appartments of the pilot in Düsseldorf and Montabaur to find something.
They said during his training for his pilot licence he had a break of nine months. Nobody knows at the moment what was the reason for this. Or at least they are not allowed to say it.

[falconeye]

From the telegraph
"A mother of a schoolmate told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he had told her daughter he had taken a break from his pilot training because he was suffering from depression."
She said her daughter had seen him again just before Christmas and that he had appeared normal. She added he was a "lovely boy". "He had a good family background," she told the paper."

[martin]

But we can assume that the captain or at least a flight attendant remembers the code to be entered so that the door unlocks in 5 minutes.

Yes, you have spotted without fail the weakness in my post; I saw the (now "viral") Youtube video from Airbus only afterwards and began to wonder myself.

Not to "defend" my post by all means, but that video, while published on Youtube in April 2014,  is "Copyright September 2002" (see credits at the end).
Can we assume that the system is still the same (probably yes), and, more importantly, that it is standard (or retro-fitted) on all  machines? And not e.g. a company option?

In any case, I still think (apart from the technical aspects) that the whole media handling surrounding this sad event is highly irregular and undesirable in many respects.
But that is probably par for the course nowadays -- another example of the Red Queen principle; or alternatively, of an increasingly self-referential and self-amplifying "media" system (both features never good news for the stability of any system).

Martin

On a side note:
The crash happened at 09:53Z. At 10:14Z and 10:25Z (i.e. long before any rescuers could even have reached the crash site) you could already see the stocks of Lufthansa (LHA) and Airbus (AIRB), resp., take a dive (stock exchange Frankfurt; I have screenshots).
Such is the rationality of the belief system we let govern our lives (i.e. The Market)...

[farrokh747]

Do we know if the authorities  have any other source of data apart from the CVR? Does the airline subscribe to an acars system, etc?