German airliner crashes in French Alps

Information as it comes in:

http://news.sky.com/story/1451555/live-passenger-plane-crashes-in-french-alps

Oh, that is so sad.  

Oh Lord! It seems some passengers' family members were tracking the flight to see when it would land, and 'saw' it go down.

Look how remote the site is.  Poor souls........

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-24/airbus-a320-carrying-148-crashes-french-alps?page=2

Look at all the data that has been released already. And compare it to a couple of Malaysian flights which came to sad ends....

bb1 wrote:Oh Lord! It seems some passengers' family members were tracking the flight to see when it would land, and 'saw' it go down.

Oh dear Lord......words are not enough.

I was told that a descent of 7,000 feet a minute is about normal.  That's all I know......

Yes, that is a really good point isn't it?  How come so little, allegedly,  was known about those two missing flights?

Well, the fact that Kiev security services siezed the ATC tapes within minutes didn't help with that one. Sources say they still haven't finished sticking them back together, minus the bit that says, Why is that Ukrainian jet shooting at us, cut out.

I don't hold out much hope of hearing the truth about that, unless Langley, Washington and Kiev find a way of putting the entire blame on Komoloyski - who probably is to blame, anyway.

And I don't think we are EVER going to hear the truth about MH370, unless Diego Garcia is handed back to the islanders that actually own it.

I'm not second-guessing anything about this one, Lily, anything I know comes from Air Crash Investigation. It does seem to be an 'accident', though - though they are never actually accidents, someone has always forgotten to maintain, check or fuel something.

There was an almost entire class of girls on it, Lily, coming home from an exchange trip.

You know, I usually track flights, just for fun, if one of my rellies is in the air. I can't imagine how the families felt when the flight disappeared. Awful.

I often track flights too, for the same reason as you, Bonny.  It is beyond sobering to read that family members were doing the same.......

Hopefully the passengers were unaware of what was happening until impact....G*d rest their souls.  

And you just don't expect German airliners to crash, somehow, Germany has such a fine record for engineering, and safety generally. They aren't a nation that makes careless mistakes.

Like you, I hope the passengers didn't know what was happening, that the plane had depressurized, or something. The thought of knowing you were heading for a mountain for so long is unbearable.

I have received news from an expert that he believes that there was insufficient power to maintain altitude and there are many causes for that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/world/europe/germanwings-airbus-crash.html?smid=tw-bna&_r=1

How desperately sad is that?  One pilot left, possibly to use the loo and might have realized that something dreadful had happened to the other one.  

The inability for the pilots to get back into the cockpit is something that is going to have to be somehow solved?

I hope that's not the case, Lily, because it suggests murder-suicide by pilot, frankly. There are an awful lot of rumours flying around just now, including stories that a military jet was seen in the vicinity.

I hope - if hope is the right word in such terrible circumstances - that it was a freak accident, a shattered cockpit windscreen or something.

Looking more like deliberate on the part of the co-pilot, according to the press briefing.  The plane was in a controlled descent, and apparently he pushed a button to do that, at some point after the captain couldn't get into the cockpit.

Here in the US, there must be 2 people in the cockpit at all times, even if it is a flight attendant, while a pilot goes to the loo.  

Don't know what else to say because it is so tragic.

Update...the co-pilot only had a mere 630 flying hours experience........

Oh my God.

http://news.sky.com/story/1453092/alps-co-pilot-crashed-deliberately-prosecutor

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The co-pilot of a plane which crashed in the Alps activated the descent button and refused to open the cockpit door to the pilot.

Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin says the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, was alone at the controls of the Germanwings flight and "intentionally" sent the plane into the doomed descent.

He said that the crew member wanted to "destroy the plane".

He said: "We assume the (captain) went to the loo or something. The co-pilot is on his own in charge of the plane, and it is while he is alone that he uses the flight monitoring system which starts the descent of the plane."

The flight monitoring system cannot be accidentally triggered, he added.

"I think the victims only realised at the last moment because on the recording you only hear the screams literally on the last moments of the recording."

Mr Robin said Mr Lubitz was a German national but does not know his ethnicity or religion.

He is understood to have joined the airline in 2013 straight after training.

Breathing could be heard from the cockpit and was normal, which has led investigators to believe he was conscious at the time.

Some 500 people are not working on the investigation, which is hampered by the remote location of the crash.

Each body must be removed by helicopter as the mountainside is very steep.

More follows...

lily wrote:Update...the co-pilot only had a mere 630 flying hours experience........

Someone pointed out - where are the pieces of the plane?   It's in tiny fragments, almost like confetti which give me some unquiet thoughts.   Even Lockerbie - there were some large chunks.   LL

I think....if it hit the mountain at speed, broke up, and broke up even more as the pieces kept hitting the mountain as they fell, it would look like that, LL. They aren't very sturdy things, when the frame is damaged.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-26/germanwings-co-pilot-deliberately-destroyed-airplane-identified-28-year-old-german-c


In one of the most chilling segments of this morning's press conference describing what was found on the cockpit voice recorder, screams were heard from passengers and crew as the realisation of what was about to happen struck them all. Prosecutor Robin's findings state that when the German Captain left the cockpit - following what appeared to be - the 28-year-old German co-pilot (who was alive to the end) refused to re-open the door and began an "intentional", "controlled", and "steady" descent as he "seems to have sought to destroy the plane." Nothing indicates that this was a terrorist incident.

Oh God, those poor, poor people.

Yes......it's chilling isn't it?