Germanwings Airbus Crashed in France
 

Not much is known yet but it doesn't look good: (Sorry for that source but it was the only English speaking site I found that had the story so far)
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-n...h-live-5390012

The Beeb is breaking it now:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32030270

Live page:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/32030778

FR24 information on the aircraft:
http://www.flightradar24.com/data/ai...-aipx/#5d42675

There are also reports that the aircraft put out a mayday signal at 09:47GMT and the weather in the area was not unusual, intermittant showers.

Pprune topic:
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...rn-france.html

Terribly tragic :nope:

Very sad news indeed.

Very sad and unfortunate indeed :(

Let's wait and see how the investigation plays out. So far, the most likely explanation is looking like sudden decompression, with crew becoming incapacitated after starting an emergency descent.

An FDR has been recovered so hopefully we should have answers fairly soon.
Tragically it looks as though some German exchange students were on board the flight.

Plus two babies according to live news :nope:

This is at least the third accident that i am aware of wherein an A320 took a plunge of several thousand feet into terrain.

A French airline was conducting a functional check flight of an A320, the AOA vanes had frozen causing a conflict between the pilot and the computer during a check of the stall warning system. despite the best efforts of the pilot to recover, the aircraft plunged several thousand feet into the sea off the coast of France

Air Asia just a couple of months ago... unexplained plunge into the sea

and today, Germanwings, unexplained plunge into mountainous terrain

the question is, could these accidents be related, and more importantly, what is causing the Airbus A320 to pitch down and lawn dart into the earth?

I dont see this as being the culrpit.

when decompression occurs, or the cabin pressurization light comes on, or there really is any indication that there is either a gradual or explosive decompression of the aircraft there are items that the flight crew will accomplish before doing anything else

1. Oxygen mask on (quick donning masks can go over an aviator's head and face in a matter of about 3 seconds)

2. Confirm flow

3. Establish communication with the other pilot

if these three things are done and you still pass out, God just had it in for you.

I must confess, one of the first incidents that came to my mind was the Air France A330 crash and the cause of that. It could well be an occurrence of the autopilot receiving garbage and outputting garbage leading to the aircraft entering an unflyable state.
Still, at least in these incident the FDR was recovered swiftly and that should hopefully mean some more firm ideas of what caused this will come to light.

Well, we don't know what happened in the cockpit. For all we know, they could have been contending with a windshield that blew in.

What doesn't make sense here is that we're not talking about a stall, a mid-air breakup, or a truly sudden plunge, going by the current available data. It does not look like a stall at all. There are no signs of a violent aircraft upset, like those you saw with the accidents that were mentioned. The descent at rates that were within a pretty normal range, so was the speed. On initiating descent, the aircraft apparently turned a few degrees, and then stayed on that heading all the way down. There doesn't with no apparent effort to regain control and according to official reports, no communication with ATC. There was no attempt to divert course either away from mountains, or towards one of the many available fields they could've landed on. So the crew had to be incapacitated, but the aircraft stayed within normal flight parameters.

Granted, I could see this being a case of, say, someone shooting the pilots dead and setting the AP to constant descent - but I do not see evidence of a stall in the ADS-B data (so no faulty sensors at play there).

http://i.imgur.com/34WEokB.jpg

The aircraft was basically turned a few degrees off course, then began descending at a steady 3500fpm average, accelerating only slightly. It's not consistent with stall, not consistent with engine-out, not consistent with loss of control. The only thing it's consistent with is a steady descent at idle throttle and at least some spoiler, with no other control input after it first started losing altitude. Decompression seems like the natural suspect.

The debris seems pretty well scattered, more so than I would expect from an intact aircraft hitting the deck in a semi-controlled dive. Although to be fair, there are a multitude of random variables that could cause that state.
It is rather strange, but then again the first twenty-four hours of most aircraft crashes like this are full of questions and very little answers.
The lack of stall and the steady reduction of altitude is very strange though, pprune seem to be talking a fair bit about rapid de-pressurisation too, so it can't be ruled out, especially if something did not go correctly during the oxygen mask procedure.

Well, actually if it were a stall or out of control/broken up in the air, it likely would've remained more intact after the crash, not less. From the terrain, I gather that it flew straight into the side of a granite mountain. By the indicators, looks like it was at some 380kt of ground speed. A big heavy object hitting a rock head-on is likely to get destroyed more thoroughly than through any other method. In fact, again, all the previous Airbus crashes mentioned produced far more intact pieces. Both Air France 447 and the recent Air Asia flights had largely-intact fuselage sections found on the bottom. Stalled aircraft will hit at far slower speeds, and the impact will often involve a larger surface area of the aircraft, limiting the damage.

(it's also a favourite argument of 9/11 conspiracy theorists, who will often take the thorough disintegration of the planes on head-on impact as evidence that "there was no planes, plane crashes don't look like this" etc.)

oh fer cryin out loud I never saw so much dancing around. Considering past world events it also quite is possible it was done deliberately.

Could be deliberate but to what end?

Suicide?

Terrorism?

If it was terror, and control of the aircraft was taken by a terrorist, why just point it at a mountain? Why not something more high profile.

I saw a few news blurbs: germanwings pilots refusing to fly A320, several flights cancelled.

Another said that the aircraft in question was grounded for more than an hour as mechanics worked to fix a 'minor' issue with the nose gear doors.

Not sure how accurate these reports are though.

I find it hard to believe that a terrorist group wouldn't have taken credit by now. ISIS certainly never seems to be reticent about crowing over it's atrocities.

Terrorism has already been ruled out by a few parties, it's probably the least likely of all the causes.

The director general of aviation of Finnish Transport Safety Agency, Pekka Henttu, has told YLE (finnish BBC) that according to the information he has received, the CVR indicates both pilots were unconscious during the final 8 minutes.

Now, obviously a lot of things could've incapacitated the pilots, so I'm not jumping the gun on anything, BUT - here's something to consider: again, the 9-minute descent where there's no evidence of any control inputs or heading changes, and the aircraft's vertical path is consistent with a fairly normal descent at idle thrust and spoilers out. The most similar suicide-by-pilot incident would be the recent LAM 470 crash, but even there the aircraft was going down at rates in excess of 6,000fpm, not the 3,500fpm that you had here. And that one's still under investigation. PSA 1771, the most famous cockpit invasion/suicide incident, went supersonic before crashing, and all the 9/11 planes were going at substantially more erratic paths and extreme speeds/descent rates than this one.

I think it's just really unlikely that anything other than a decompression and incapacitated pilots would've done all these things to make this accident happen. If someone was trying to crash the plane, they probably wouldn't have been going down with spoilers out and at idle thrust. It's hard to see why that descent would've been initiated that way in the first place except a decompression. If something went wrong with the plane's controls, it's unlikely that the pilots would've kept silent - and unlikely that something would've gone so wrong as to completely prevent the pilots from making any input. Except a sudden loss of consciousness.
But let's wait for the investigation.

Lending credibility to the loss of consciousness due to lack of oxygen theory - is the 8 minutes of silence in the descent. familiar with airline procedures as i am, i find it difficult to believe that the pilots lost consciousness due to oxygen deprivation under normal decompression circumstances.

there are too many safe guards in place preventing it

Cabin altitude alert should have sounded at 10,000 feet cabin pressure altitude (or whatever the A320 preset is but 10K is pretty standard across the board) and unless both pilots were heavy smokers, 10,000 feet shouldnt have been much of a problem, even if they hadn't caught a slow decompression until the alarm went off they wouldnt have been so deprived of oxygen that they couldnt go "Oh crap, the cabin altitude is 10K and rising... better put on this oxygen mask." and then follow through with the action.

a rapid decompression would have been pretty unmistakable and obvious to the crew even without aural indications from the alerting system. so they would have likely acted immediately.

What this leaves is some fault with the oxygen system.

Interestingly enough the aircraft was grounded for a period of time just a few days before the accident in which work was done to the gear doors.

it just so happens that frequently, in large aircraft at least in my experience, that the landing gear bay for the nose gear is a hub of critical systems. I can't speak for the A320, but generally the nose gear bay is a junction of hydraulic and electric lines, home to reservoirs for fluid, houses hydraulic motors, and in some types even is the location where oxygen tanks are kept and or filled and emptied etc.

the reason this is of note, sometimes, maintenance procedures require certain systems to be disabled, removed or otherwise may be temporarily affected by a seemingly unrelated repair. if there are oxygen valves or bottles for example within or near the A320 nose gear bay and a maintenance function required any heated applications or welding or any other option which might prove to be a fire hazard, it would likely be required that systems related to oxygen storage or flow would have been disabled, removed or turned off to reduce the risk of fire or explosion. (if any such systems exist in the nose gear bay as they do in many large aircraft)

If thats the case, were these systems reactivated or otherwise returned to service? If not, perhaps in the event that the mechanics were focused on their task and after an hour of repairs buttoned everything up after forgetting to switch the oxygen back on. If the aircraft never experienced a decompression, this might have gone unnoticed for a very long time. but in the event of a decompression the flight crew would have donned their oxygen masks assuming all to be functioning normally until they simply passed out during the initial phase of their corrective descent.

at a cruise altitude of 38,000 feet, the flight crew would have had about 20 seconds "time of useful consciousness" ie - the time needed to continue taking coherent actions before becoming so loopy and incoherent that you cannot continue to function normally.

as the rule goes, aviate, navigate, communicate - in that order.

the crew would have first donned oxygen masks at the first indication of depressurization, this would have taken about 3-5 seconds assuming no snags. Time of useful consciousness is now about 15 seconds.

second, they would confirm communications established with the other pilot. by switching their microphone selector from boom to mask and saying something along the lines of "can you hear me?" - "yes i can, can you hear me?" this would have taken just a couple of more seconds. Time of useful consciousness now 10-12 seconds

third (actually simultaneously almost with item 2) they would have established the descent, and input any necessary navigational perameters into the FMS or autopilot for it to resume holding the course and descent they established leaving them more hands free to follow established check list procedures. this would have probably taken about 8 - 10 seconds. Time of useful consciousness is now about 1- 2 seconds remaining.

Finally they would have communicated their problem to ATC, cabin crew, run through emergency check lists etc.

at this point, the flight crew would have been so hypoxic that their minds could probably "see" or "imagine" themselves doing these things and taking corrective action - while in reality they would have sat there with their eyes rolling back in their heads before finally, completely losing consciousness which of course leads to the 8 minutes of silence on the CVR leading up to the point of impact.

for an airline crew to lose consciousness during an emergency procedure as basic as cabin depressurization - be it gradual or explosive - is almost unheard of these days unless there is some sort of failure on the part of their equipment.

If i were an accident investigator, i would be very interested in what the systems layout of the A320 are and if any of the maintenance from previous days might have affected or overlapped with the oxygen system.