Sydney Airport Message Board - Germanwings A320 believed crashed

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- - Germanwings A320 believed crashed (http://www.yssyforum.net/board/showthread.php?t=10433)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex T (Post 93991)

This is not directed to you but I personally think it would be wise not to speculate too much about the accident (there's a thing called Pprune) if people want too.

This subforum description says:

"Airline and airport business, strategy, service and network, inflight product, seasonal schedules, operations, regulatory and government policy, general industry news and happenings, discussion, comments and queries (wholly outside Australia and New Zealand)"

(emphasis is mine)

There is no difference speculating here or on pprune.

French Prosecutor, Bryce Robin, says the Captain was locked out of the cockpit and the Copilot flew the aircraft into terrain.

Quote:

The co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings A320 “voluntarily” put the aircraft into a dive and was alive until the moment of impact, the Marseilles prosecutor said citing a transcript of the last 30 minutes of the cockpit voice recorder.

The first 20 minutes of conversation between the pilot and co-pilot was amicable, then the co-pilot took over when the pilot left to make a “natural call”.

At this point, the co-pilot accelerates the descent using the keys of the monitoring system. The prosecutor described it as a “voluntary” action.

In the remaining 10 minutes there are a number of appeals by the pilot to get access to the cockpit but there was no access, the prosecutor said. The pilot knocks on the door but there is not response. There is the sound of breathing from co-pilot until impact.

Robin says most plausible interpretation is that co-pilot refused to open the door to the pilot and he took the plane down. “The intention was to destroy this plane”.

No more speculation:

Breaking News ABC Radio

From French Prosecutors "Co-pilot crashed the plane"

Barely plausible

It may be plausible but I'd like to understand why that might have been done - there doesn't appear to be any reason to get back at either Germany or Spain, there were no demands made, and if the intent was truly malicious why not fly the plane into the centre of a town - why in such a remote location? In other words, the 'reward' for the suicide mission that is being described is not discernible, making it quite unlikely to me ... Having said that, the French prosecutor is quite adamant that 28 year old German co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately locked the captain out of the cockpit, set the aircraft to descend, switched off TCAS, and ignored all calls from ATC. What an awful scenario if that turns out to be true.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Philip Argy (Post 94001)

Philip - why would there necessarily be demands or malice?

Might just be a guy who decided he had had enough - unfortunately his method took out 149 innocent lives as well. Mental instability can result in actions incomprehensible to those who are not suffering.

EasyJet and Virgin Atlantic have both announced they will implement a "Two crew in the cockpit at all times" policy, following the GermanWings tragedy.

As have Norwegian and Air Berlin.

The question now is, that even if there are two crew in the Cockpit at the same time, does the stand in person have the knowledge to recognise or overcome the nefarious actions of a rogue flight crew member??

Surely if someone needs the loo, they need the loo. If you only have two crew on a 6 hour leg, what happens? Or are they suggesting three members in the cockpit?

They would be suggesting a member of the cabin crew would take the seat of the 'absent' pilot until that pilot returned. I don't know the answer to Stephen B's question but imagine it would be a fairly senior member of the cabin crew who would have to be trained in flightdeck security.

While I take my hat off to the airlines for their quick response, in my opinion there is still a vulnerability in that there's nothing stopping a member of the flightdeck crew and a member of the cabin crew from conspiring with each other.