Germanwings Flight 9525 Crashed Deliberately by Co-Pilot

[Lys]

The co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps deliberately worked to destroy the plane while passengers shrieked in terror and the pilot pounded on the cockpit door, a French prosecutor said at a news conference Thursday in Marseille.

"This was voluntary, this was deliberate," Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said. "He refused to open the cabin door in order to let the pilot back in. I repeat. He refused to let the pilot back in. He is the one who pressed the button that allowed the plane to begin descending and lose altitude."

The information was obtained from the cockpit voice recorder of doomed Flight 9525, which suddenly began an eight-minute descent before smashing into a rugged ravine in the French Alps on Tuesday. The data recorder for the flight from Barcelona bound for Düsseldorf, Germany, has not yet been found.

Robin said the co-pilot, identified as German national Andreas Lubitz, 27, was not on a terror watch list. A federal law enforcement official told USA TODAY the FBI has been running the flight manifests through its databases but so far has found no connection to terrorism.

Lubitz said nothing during the descent, but could be heard breathing until the crash, Robin said.

"The co-pilot is the only one in the cockpit,' Robin said. "While he is alone he somehow manipulated the buttons on the flight monitoring system. He was alone at the helm of this Airbus."

Robin stressed the actions were deliberate. He said passengers could be heard screaming in fear.

"We start hearing banging, someone actually trying to break the door down," Robin said. "That's why the alarms were let off — because these were protocols that were put in place in case of any terror attack."

Robin said the plane apparently glided until it crashed into the ravine, a sound heard on the voice recorder.

"Again, no distress signal, zero, no 'help me' or SOS," he said. "Nothing of this sort was received by air-traffic control."

Robin said the voice recorder indicated dialogue between the pilot and co-pilot was normal. Robin said informed the families of the developments and that they were in shock.

German, French and Spanish authorities are investigating the crash. The FBI issued a statement saying it was offering to help French officials leading the investigation.

German carrier Lufthansa, which owns the low-cost airline, offered special flights from Barcelona and Düsseldorf to Marseille, so that those close to the victims can be near the scene of the search and recovery efforts in the French Alps.

"We are shaken by the upsetting statements of the French authorities. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the families and friends of the victims," Lufthansa tweeted.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said he was left "speechless" by Robin's horrifying description of events, but said evidence thus far supports them.

"This action on the altitude controls can only be deliberate," Spohr said. "The most plausible interpretation is that the co-pilot, through a voluntary act, refused to open the cabin door to let the captain in. He pushed the button to trigger the aircraft to lose altitude.

"He operated this button for a reason we don't know yet, but it appears that the reason was to destroy this plane."

U.S. cockpit regulations don't allow a pilot to be left alone in a cockpit. The Air Line Pilots Association issued a statement saying U.S. airline procedures are "designed to ensure that there is never a situation where a pilot is left alone in the cockpit."

Lufthansa said Lubitz joined Germanwings in September 2013, directly after training, and had flown 630 hours. Spohr said the co-pilot began training in Bremen, Germany, in 2008 and later trained in Arizona.

Spohr said there was a brief interruption in training in 2009 but that he had completed qualifications for the job. German media outlets quoted classmates as saying Lubitz interrupted his training due to "burnout" and "depression."

Lubitz was included in the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's database of certified pilots.

"He passed all medical tests, he passed all aviation tests, he passed all checks," Spohr said. "He was 100% able to fly without any limitations, without any reservations. His accomplishments were excellent. Nothing was noticed that wasn't proper."

Spohr said there were no indications that the co-pilot was dealing with a terrorist incident in the cockpit.

"We are speechless at Lufthansa and Germanwings," Spohr said. "We are shocked."

Officials have not identified the pilot, but multiple media outlets have identified him as Patrick Sonderheimer. He had more than 6,000 hours of flying time and had been Germanwings pilot since May 2014, having previously flown for Lufthansa and Condor. Robin said Sonderheimer's family is in France and would be interviewed by investigators.All 150 passengers and crew aboard the flight killed, including three Americans. Two were identified as Yvonne Selke, a contract worker for Booz Allen Hamilton, and her daughter, Emily Selke, a 2013 graduate of Drexel University, both from Nokesville, Va. The third victim was identified as Robert Calvo, a father of two who worked for a Barcelona-based clothing company.

Among victims confirmed by the airline were 72 Germans and 35 Spaniards. There were two victims each from Australia, Argentina, Iran and Venezuela. One each came from Britain, the Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Denmark, Belgium and Israel.

A moment of silence was held Thursday at Joseph-Koenig High School in Haltern Am See in west Germany, which lost 16 10th-graders and two teachers in the crash.

So, reinforced cockpit doors have officially killed more people than they have saved. In fact, they have given that reinforced cockpit doors have saved zero people, since all attempted airliner bombings and hijackings since September 11, 2001 have ended with the passengers ganging up on the perpetrator and beating him senseless, it can be said that reinforced cockpit doors have now killed infinity percent more people than they've saved. That's not to say i oppose them as a concept, mind, just that there's a reason why the FAA regulation requires a flight attendant to step into the cockpit if either the pilot or co-pilot step out, so that at no point in time is someone alone inside of it. Such procedure may have avoided this massacre.

[General Havoc]

To turn those numbers around, however, having re-enforced cockpit doors has still killed far fewer people than NOT having them has. Several dozen more comparable-sized airlines would have to go down purely because someone locked the cockpit door before they could come close to equaling that score.

I do not understand how the immediate reaction here is "stop locking the cockpit". A pilot who chooses to kill everyone on his plane is almost assuredly going to succeed in doing so, whether the door is locked behind him or not. The co-pilot of EgyptAir 990 did just that, in fact, despite an open, unlocked cockpit door and the captain of the airplane sitting right next to him. Twenty years before that, the pilot of Japan Airlines 350 did the same damn thing despite two other people inside the cockpit when he did it. Saying that an armored cockpit door killed these people is consequently highly disingenuous. One might as well claim that Airbus did it by providing an airplane with which the copilot killed everyone. Or perhaps the Wright Brothers.

Mandating multiple people in the cockpit certainly couldn't hurt, but as the examples above show, it is hardly some kind of panacea for these things. Pilots have the lives of their passengers entirely in their hands, and if they choose to put an end to them all, then that is quite simply what is going to happen, no matter what you build the cockpit doors out of.

[Batman]

I'm with Havoc. The only surefire way to keep a pilot who is determined to crash the plane from doing so is keeping him off the airplane. There's tons of situations where making the crash unavoidable is a matter of seconds if you're at the controls so I don't see how removing the reinforced doors would help in preventing that.

[Lys]

To turn those numbers around, however, having re-enforced cockpit doors has still killed far fewer people than NOT having them has. Several dozen more comparable-sized airlines would have to go down purely because someone locked the cockpit door before they could come close to equaling that score.

To the best of my knowledge no-one has died since September 11, 2001 due to the absence of a reinforced cockpit door. Instances prior to then are not a valid point of comparison because there has been a paradigm shift with respect to how passengers and crew react to hijackers. You have to get past everyone else in the airplane before the cockpit door even comes into play, and these days people don't feel inclined to be cooperative.

Saying that an armored cockpit door killed these people is consequently highly disingenuous.

The copilot chose a method of killing everyone aboard that was slow enough that had the door been forced open perhaps the aircraft could have been saved.

I do not understand how the immediate reaction here is "stop locking the cockpit".

Probably because that isn't the reaction. The actual reaction is "Isn't funny how useless those things are?" followed by "It might be a good idea to adopt the FAA regulations." At no point did i say i'm opposed to the reinforced cockpit door, let alone advocate that they be removed. What i said was to not allow someone to be alone on the other side. It might not have saved EgyptAir 990 or Japan Airlines 350, but perhaps it might have saved Flight 9525. Even it turns out just as useless a measure as the door, it couldn't hurt.

[General Havoc]

To the best of my knowledge no-one has died since September 11, 2001 due to the absence of a reinforced cockpit door. Instances prior to then are not a valid point of comparison because there has been a paradigm shift with respect to how passengers and crew react to hijackers. You have to get past everyone else in the airplane before the cockpit door even comes into play, and these days people don't feel inclined to be cooperative.

And to the best of my knowledge, if you extend that deadline back one day to September 10th, 2001, then the death toll from a lack of armored cockpit doors is 2,996, and whatever you want to say about valid points of comparison, you can't simultaneously claim that an armored door DID kill all these people despite the uncertainty of other factors but that the lack of them on 9/11 DIDN'T kill people because of the same uncertainty. A great deal of things have changed since 9/11 in terms of how we deal with terrorism, and one of them is that people don't have ready-access to the cockpits of airplanes anymore, a fact that might have something to do with why there have been no attempts to break into them by knife-wielding psychopaths in the last fourteen years or so. This is akin to claiming that bank vault doors have prevented zero robberies because guards exist. There are a number of reasons why nobody has hijacked a plane 9/11 style since 9/11 and locked doors on the cockpits is certainly a candidate to be one of them. You can't prove anything one way or another about why attempts were NOT made.

The copilot chose a method of killing everyone aboard that was slow enough that had the door been forced open perhaps the aircraft could have been saved.

So did the Japan Airlines pilot, whose plane took twenty minutes to finally crash. And even though EgyptAir did not, I'll remind you that the co-pilot performed the actions which crashed the plane while the pilot was sitting next to him. Yes, maybe if the door had been forced open, the pilot could somehow have righted the plane. Or maybe the co-pilot, having now been interrupted, would have done any one of the hundred things that a pilot can do to send the plane into an irretrievable dive for the ground. The co-pilot of EgyptAir990 needed less than ten seconds to send the plane into a dive that resulted in it shedding 15,000 feet of altitude in 36 seconds and crashing into the Atlantic Ocean at the speed of sound, and that was with the captain actively trying to save the plane right next to him. The co-pilot of this plane didn't take his sweet time smashing the aircraft into the ground because it was the only option available to him. He did it for inscrutable reasons that go through the head of someone intent on committing 150 counts of murder-suicide. And he could very well have done it with the cockpit full of people.

Either way, to claim that armored cockpit doors now have a body count on them infinitely bigger than the lack thereof requires two enormous and simultaneous assumptions in opposite directions, both of them in the face of highly sketchy evidence. It is disingenuous in the extreme.

Probably because that isn't the reaction. The actual reaction is "Isn't funny how useless those things are?" followed by "It might be a good idea to adopt the FAA regulations." At no point did i say i'm opposed to the reinforced cockpit door, let alone advocate that they be removed. What i said was to not allow someone to be alone on the other side. It might not have saved EgyptAir 990 or Japan Airlines 350, but perhaps it might have saved Flight 9525. Even it turns out just as useless a measure as the door, it couldn't hurt.

No, all you said, and I quote, was that "reinforced cockpit doors have officially killed more people than they have saved", which in addition to being nonsense (as I have demonstrated), is also quite a damning statement, so you will, please, forgive me if I made the assumption that when you declared that these things were utterly useless adornments that have murdered hundreds of people, that you might be declaring yourself in opposition to them. I forgot how often it is that we accuse things of being categorical deadly hazards to life and limb, complicit in the murder of hundreds and entirely without redeeming features or use, with the intention of remarking on irony.

Yes, I concede that it is possible that an unlocked door might have permitted the pilot and crew of the plane to save it, though all of the evidence I could turn up is that even with crew in the cockpit, planes under the command of one of their pilots will crash if that pilot wants them to. Still, yes, it is possible, albeit barely. I just think there's a whole lot more likely candidates to point fingers at than the doors on the cockpit.

Like, say, the mental state of the guy who was on the other side of them.

[Lys]

And to the best of my knowledge, if you extend that deadline back one day to September 10th, 2001, then the death toll from a lack of armored cockpit doors is 2,996, and whatever you want to say about valid points of comparison, you can't simultaneously claim that an armored door DID kill all these people despite the uncertainty of other factors but that the lack of them on 9/11 DIDN'T kill people because of the same uncertainty. A great deal of things have changed since 9/11 in terms of how we deal with terrorism, and one of them is that people don't have ready-access to the cockpits of airplanes anymore, a fact that might have something to do with why there have been no attempts to break into them by knife-wielding psychopaths in the last fourteen years or so. This is akin to claiming that bank vault doors have prevented zero robberies because guards exist. There are a number of reasons why nobody has hijacked a plane 9/11 style since 9/11 and locked doors on the cockpits is certainly a candidate to be one of them. You can't prove anything one way or another about why attempts were NOT made.

Man, i stared at that bit for 15 minutes and i can't even nitpick the phraseology. You even successfully pre-empted the obvious counter-arguments by linking the very uncertainties and could have beens of 9/11 with the ones i'm discounting here. It's not possible to keep one set of uncertainties while discarding the other, and by pointing it out so adroitly it's not even possible to try to obscure that fact via equivocation. Very well done.

So did the Japan Airlines pilot, whose plane took twenty minutes to finally crash.

Yes, during which time the pilot and co-pilot restrained the pilot, attempted to regain control of the aircraft, and while they could not completely arrest its descent, they were able to set her down in shallow water only 300 metres short of an airport runway, putting the passengers and crew within easy reach of emergency services. Only 24 out of 172 passengers and crew died, the rest survived as a direct result of the other two cockpit crew being present. This in sharp contrast to the Germanwings flight which is now so much metallic confetti smeared across the French Alps.

Either way, to claim that armored cockpit doors now have a body count on them infinitely bigger than the lack thereof requires two enormous and simultaneous assumptions in opposite directions, both of them in the face of highly sketchy evidence. It is disingenuous in the extreme.

It might perhaps be strain the bounds of the reasonable flow of logic, just a bit. To be frank, i was more concerned with the irony of something meant to save lives backfiring spectacularly, it might have distracted me from rigidly examining whether it was actually the case. Still in the overall balance of probability, a door that could have been forced open would have pushed the scales more toward the aircraft being saved, even if perhaps not enough to actually save it. More importantly though, so would have a flight attendant being present, which means one can get that push of the scales and keep the newfangled doors! Huzzah!

No, all you said, and I quote, was that "reinforced cockpit doors have officially killed more people than they have saved", which in addition to being nonsense (as I have demonstrated), is also quite a damning statement, so you will, please, forgive me if I made the assumption that when you declared that these things were utterly useless adornments that have murdered hundreds of people, that you might be declaring yourself in opposition to them.

No that is bloody not all i said! There was a subsequent statement, "That's not to say i oppose them as a concept, mind, just that there's a reason why the FAA regulation requires a flight attendant to step into the cockpit if either the pilot or co-pilot step out, so that at no point in time is someone alone inside of it." It means i do not oppose reinforced cockpit doors in and of themselves, just the notion of leaving the pilot or co-pilot alone behind them.

I forgot how often it is that we accuse things of being categorical deadly hazards to life and limb, complicit in the murder of hundreds and entirely without redeeming features or use, with the intention of remarking on irony.

If it's not often, it's because the chances to do so are rare. Also, for future reference, i'm not likely to use the phrase "infinity percent" while being completely serious. Just writing it out makes me giggle.

[LadyTevar]

BBCnews states that the co-pilot had had treatment for "suicidal tendencies" as late a 2009, but nothing recent. He was seeing a medical doctor for reasons yet to be revealed, due to Doctor/Patient priviledge. Whatever the doctor was treating, he'd given the co-pilot several sick notes, which the co-pilot had torn up, including one for that very day's work. He never took the sick days the doctor recommended.