France plane crash: No survivors expected [Condolences to the families]

[Spendulus]

So now we have to worry about the guys on our side as well as the terrorists.

This is a far fringe concern. People who want to commit suicide generally don't participate in mass murder in the process, and whatever concern this warrants has already been solved with all the airlines announcing no pilot will ever be in the cockpit alone anymore.

...and this is the era of the far fringe....

[btc-facebook]

So sad to hear this and this should not be happen if Germanwings take more attention on pilot health check up procedure.

The second black box recovered from the crash site of a Germanwings airliner confirms that the co-pilot deliberately crashed the plane and even increased its speed before the Airbus A320 slammed into the French Alps, killing 150 people, French investigators said Friday.
Information from the first black box, which captured conversations in the cockpit, had confirmed Lubitz locked out his pilot, who could be heard shouting and banging on the cockpit door as the plane headed toward the mountains for almost 10 minutes.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/04/03/french-investigators-co-pilot-accelerated-plane-on-descent/25230771/

Yes and the worst is some or maybe all passenger knows what happen, their scream and shout captured in the first black box when the pilot try to open the cockpit door.

I'm imagine if I were on the plane, that's is trully scary   

[jaysabi]

So now we have to worry about the guys on our side as well as the terrorists.

This is a far fringe concern. People who want to commit suicide generally don't participate in mass murder in the process, and whatever concern this warrants has already been solved with all the airlines announcing no pilot will ever be in the cockpit alone anymore.

...and this is the era of the far fringe.... in the minds of chicken littles everywhere.

 

[abyrnes81]

The profile that has emerged of Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz has become more troubling by the day.In the hours after Flight 9525 crashed in the French Alps two weeks ago, Lubitz was regarded as one of 150 victims in an unexplained disaster. Two days later he was the prime suspect of an unfathomable act.

By now, French and German prosecutors have little doubt that the 27-year-old intentionally slammed the Airbus A320 into a mountain, killing everyone on board, and there is growing evidence that his actions weren't just a split-second decision but the result of days of planning.
---
The crash has prompted particular soul-searching in Germany. Seventy-two of those killed were German citizens, the worst air disaster in the nation's history since the Concorde crash of 2000, in which 97 Germans died."Germany, a byword for technical perfection where security isn't just a hallmark of quality but an article of faith and a measure of value, has been traumatized," historian Michael Stuermer wrote in an op-ed Saturday for Die Welt newspaper.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/05/andreas-lubitz-germanwing_n_7006496.html

[redsn0w]

Search for bodies at Germanwings plane crash site ends

French investigators have ended their search for bodies in the Alps where a Germanwings passenger jet crashed last month, killing all 150 people on board, a local official said on Saturday.
....
"The search for bodies is over, but the search for the victims' personal belongings is continuing," a spokesman for the local government authority in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region told Reuters. "Lufthansa has also hired a specialist firm to remove the debris of the aircraft, under the authority of the French public prosecutor and an expert in charge of environmental supervision of the operations," he said.

Lufthansa is the parent company of the lowcost Germanwings carrier.The identification of victims will now continue through the analysis of 150 sets of DNA found at site, which could take several weeks. The prosecutor leading the French legal probe has cautioned that the number of DNA sets does not necessarily mean all the victims have been found.

More at: http://www.afr.com/news/world/europe/search-for-bodies-at-germanwings-plane-crash-site-ends-20150404-1mepyc

[abyrnes81]

<< A German woman reportedly flew to the region twice at the expense of the budget airline's parent company, Lufthansa, after falsely claiming to be a cousin of one of the teachers who were killed in the tragedy last month.Lufthansa had organised special flights for victims' relatives following the crash in the French Alps on March 24.

Markus Tewes, a police spokesman in the town of Hoexter in Germany, said officers are investigating possible fraud.He confirmed that the woman will be questioned after Lufthansa took the case to authorities, according to German newspaper Halterner Zeitung.The airline said it is looking into what appears to be a "regrettable isolated case" but gave no further details. >>

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/569447/Germanwings-crash-woman-falsely-claimed-related-victim-receive-free-flights

[Lorenzo]

I don't get it. So analysis of the voice recorder showed that everyone was calm and that it wasn't until the final seconds that the screaming can be heard:

He said: "I think the victims only realized at the last moment because on the recording we only hear the screams on the last moments of the recording."

"We only hear screams at the very end, it’s in the last moment and death was instantaneous, it hit the mountain at 700kpm (435mph) per hour."

Shortly before the sound of the impact, the cockpit voice recorder picked up alarm signals going off, indicating the proximity of the ground, as well as noises of the captain trying to break down the door to the flight deck.

Link: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/566644/Germanwings-A320-plane-crash-last-moments-passengers-scream-terror

And now the official story is that passengers started screaming and panicking for five minutes before the flight crashed? How can both interpretations of the same recording be correct?

And here's a picture of the angle of descent:



It's much more rapid than a typical descent (twice as rapid apparently) but I'm not sure if it was extreme enough for the passengers to have realized that something was wrong. Would be nice if someone who knows more about planes would shed some light into this.

Oh, and someone else posted here that the autopilot wouldn't allow maneuvers that crash the plane. This is not true. What happened in this case was that the autopilot's altitude was changed from 38,000 ft to 100 ft. The altitude at the Alps is 6,000 ft but this isn't programmed into the autopilot so the plane just continued descending and descending until it eventually crashed.

[redsn0w]

The foreign ministers of Spain, France and Germany have attended a wreath-laying ceremony at Barcelona's airport in memory of the 150 victims of the Germanwings plane crash last month.

Source: http://www.independent.ie/world-news/ceremony-for-plane-crash-victims-31138090.html

Other information:

German police are looking into an allegation that a woman obtained free flights to the south of France by pretending to be a relative of one of 150 people killed in the Germanwings plane crash last month.
....
The freeloader claimed to be a cousin of a female teacher who died, reported the Halterner Zeitung, a newspaper in Haltern, Germany, quoting the teacher's father. Haltern's high school lost 16 schoolchildren and two teachers in the disaster.


More at: http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/travel-troubles/67692150/germanwings-plane-crash-fake-relative-claims-free-flights-to-french-alps

[Clegg]

It's much more rapid than a typical descent (twice as rapid apparently) but I'm not sure if it was extreme enough for the passengers to have realized that something was wrong. Would be nice if someone who knows more about planes would shed some light into this.

Oh, and someone else posted here that the autopilot wouldn't allow maneuvers that crash the plane. This is not true. What happened in this case was that the autopilot's altitude was changed from 38,000 ft to 100 ft. The altitude at the Alps is 6,000 ft but this isn't programmed into the autopilot so the plane just continued descending and descending until it eventually crashed.

It's interesting for sure. You would have thought they'd have wondered what was going on because even on a normal flight you notice when it slowly starts to descend - you can just feel it and your ears always pop so I can't imagine what the effect of this speedy drop would have done but once they saw the terrain and the pilot banging on the door they would have quickly relaized what was going on. Descending so early in the flight would have been unexpected too.

[Mt. Gox]

<< A German woman reportedly flew to the region twice at the expense of the budget airline's parent company, Lufthansa, after falsely claiming to be a cousin of one of the teachers who were killed in the tragedy last month.Lufthansa had organised special flights for victims' relatives following the crash in the French Alps on March 24.

Markus Tewes, a police spokesman in the town of Hoexter in Germany, said officers are investigating possible fraud.He confirmed that the woman will be questioned after Lufthansa took the case to authorities, according to German newspaper Halterner Zeitung.The airline said it is looking into what appears to be a "regrettable isolated case" but gave no further details. >>

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/569447/Germanwings-crash-woman-falsely-claimed-related-victim-receive-free-flights

Other information:

German police are looking into an allegation that a woman obtained free flights to the south of France by pretending to be a relative of one of 150 people killed in the Germanwings plane crash last month.
....
The freeloader claimed to be a cousin of a female teacher who died, reported the Halterner Zeitung, a newspaper in Haltern, Germany, quoting the teacher's father. Haltern's high school lost 16 schoolchildren and two teachers in the disaster.


More at: http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/travel-troubles/67692150/germanwings-plane-crash-fake-relative-claims-free-flights-to-french-alps

I wonder what her motives were? Perhaps it was done to satisfy some morbid curiosity or the woman had Munchausen Syndrome and wanted to draw attention and sympathy to herself. I don't think seeing wreckage and corpses and being surrounded by mourning families is any normal person's idea of a fun vacation.

[patt0]

One expert thinks the crash could have been because of hackers. : /
But he didn't say how the door was locked from the inside, or why the co-pilot was searching for ways to kill himself.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/04/09/germanwings-crash-could-engineered-hacker-claims-aviation-expert_n_7031748.html
“It could be from any number of causes, including external electronic hacking into the aircraft’s control and navigation systems through malware or electromagnetic interception.”
“This is one reason military and head-of-state aircraft are generally installed with specific shielding and additional active protective measures. Civilian aircraft are not.”

[redsn0w]

One expert thinks the crash could have been because of hackers. : /
But he didn't say how the door was locked from the inside, or why the co-pilot was searching for ways to kill himself.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/04/09/germanwings-crash-could-engineered-hacker-claims-aviation-expert_n_7031748.html
“It could be from any number of causes, including external electronic hacking into the aircraft’s control and navigation systems through malware or electromagnetic interception.”
“This is one reason military and head-of-state aircraft are generally installed with specific shielding and additional active protective measures. Civilian aircraft are not.”

This is really insane, hackers caused the crash  ? Really?

Memorial service held in Cologne:

Emotional tributes have been paid to the victims of last month's Alps plane crash at a memorial service in Germany.
....
Organisers placed 150 candles inside the church, one for every person who died, including Lubitz. Asked about the decision to include the co-pilot, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, Archbishop of Cologne, said: "It's not for us to judge." Lubitz's parents were invited to the memorial but chose not to attend.  Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz told the congregation: "We must try to fill this hole with love and hope".

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32346252

Another article about the memorial in Cologne :
- http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/04/17/406752/German-plane-crash-victims-commemorated

[Lorenzo]

It's much more rapid than a typical descent (twice as rapid apparently) but I'm not sure if it was extreme enough for the passengers to have realized that something was wrong. Would be nice if someone who knows more about planes would shed some light into this.

Oh, and someone else posted here that the autopilot wouldn't allow maneuvers that crash the plane. This is not true. What happened in this case was that the autopilot's altitude was changed from 38,000 ft to 100 ft. The altitude at the Alps is 6,000 ft but this isn't programmed into the autopilot so the plane just continued descending and descending until it eventually crashed.

It's interesting for sure. You would have thought they'd have wondered what was going on because even on a normal flight you notice when it slowly starts to descend - you can just feel it and your ears always pop so I can't imagine what the effect of this speedy drop would have done but once they saw the terrain and the pilot banging on the door they would have quickly relaized what was going on. Descending so early in the flight would have been unexpected too.

Seeing the terrain come slowly closer and closer without some sort of obviously catastrophic plunge probably would have caused confusion among the passengers rather than panic. The A320 is a smaller plane but it's still fairly long (40m & 30 rows of seats). Those who were in the front of the plane probably realized what was going on while those who were closer to the rear were probably oblivious until the final moments before the crash.