The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: flight 4u 9525
Germanwings Co-Pilot’s Medical Records Given To Prosecutors

Germanwings Co-Pilot’s Medical Records Given To Prosecutors

By Jessica Camille Aguirre, dpa (TNS)

BERLIN/PARIS — The German hospital that was treating the Germanwings co-pilot for an undisclosed illness handed his medical records over Monday to prosecutors in the city of Dusseldorf, a clinic spokeswoman said.

Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, 27, who is believed to have locked himself into the plane’s cockpit and intentionally slammed the aircraft into a mountainside in southern France, killing himself and 149 others on board last week, is the focus of the investigation.

The teaching hospital at Dusseldorf University refused to say Friday what his illness was, except that it was not depression. Lubitz was at the hospital on three occasions starting February, the last on March 10, for a diagnostic examination.

Prosecutors said the likelihood Lubitz struggled with psychological issues remains a central theory into his possible motive.

After searching his apartment in Dusseldorf, prosecutors said they found torn doctor’s notes giving him sick leave from work on the day of the flight.

Friday’s revelation that Lubitz concealed an illness from the airline, a Lufthansa subsidiary, prompted a call to amend German laws of doctor-patient privacy.

“Pilots should be obliged to consult doctors nominated by their employer,” Dirk Fischer, the ranking Christian Democrat in the German parliament’s transport committee, said in remarks reported by the newspaper Rheinische Post.

“These doctors should be exempted from doctor’s confidentiality in dealings with the employer and the German aviation safety agency.”

Another legislator for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, Thomas Jarzombek, called for an expert inquiry into wider reporting of medical diagnoses for people in positions of extreme responsibility.

An assistance center for families of Germanwings flight 4U9525 victims established near the crash site would be open for “as long as necessary,” Germanwings CEO Oliver Wagner told local broadcaster France 3 Provence-Alpes.

Crews continued construction on a road that would ease access to the mountainside crash site Monday, as they searched for the contents of a second black box that could give investigators clues into the flight’s last moments.

They were also piecing together DNA evidence of hundreds of humans remains to identify victims, but Marseilles prosecutor Brice Robin told dpa that the DNA of the co-pilot had not yet been identified.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss announced new aviation rules mandating that planes have two crew members present in cockpits at all times under new aviation rules announced Monday.

Truss said the rules apply to aircraft with seating capacity for 50 or more passengers, operated by domestic and international airlines, and will come into effect immediately.

Two Australians were among the victims of the Germanwings crash.

In the wake of the tragedy, airlines worldwide have moved swiftly to implement new rules requiring two crew members in the cockpit at all times.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: Michael Frank Franz via Flickr

Top Reads For News Junkies: ‘Cockpit Confidential’

Top Reads For News Junkies: ‘Cockpit Confidential’

In the wake of the recent tragedy of the Germanwings crash, it is natural and understandable to be apprehensive about air travel. The incident has already caused officials to reassess security protocols; surely another wave of reforms is in store for travelers. The best you can do is stay informed. In his 2013 book Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections, former pilot Patrick Smith pulled back the curtain on the inner workings of air travel, including the misconceptions, practices, and culture of the industry.

You can purchase the book here.

After Germanwings Crash, Airlines Revamp Security, Cockpit Rules

After Germanwings Crash, Airlines Revamp Security, Cockpit Rules

By Ralph Vartabedian and Kim Willsher, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

PARIS — The apparently deliberate act of a German pilot that caused the deaths of 150 people in France is leading to a broad re-examination of international airline security rules, which allowed the pilot to lock his more senior crew member out of the cockpit.

The cockpit door-locking system, which was designed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, was intended to prevent suicidal terrorists from seizing control of jetliners, but may have had the unintended consequence of allowing a single pilot to do the same.

“We are absolutely headed to a re-evaluation of the system,” said Robert Ditchey, an aviation safety expert and former airline executive. “This is now an issue of how we keep mass murderers out of the cockpit.”

In response to the revelations about the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525, the German Aviation Association announced Thursday that all German carriers had agreed to new procedures, similar to those already in effect in the United States, that would require two people in a plane’s cockpit at all times. Several other carriers — including Air Canada, EasyJet, Norwegian Air Shuttle, and Icelandair — announced similar changes in protocol.

French authorities said Andreas Lubitz, the German co-pilot of the flight from Barcelona, Spain, to Duesseldorf, Germany, on Tuesday kept the cockpit door locked after the pilot left, presumably to use the restroom. The pilot could be heard on the cockpit voice recorder pounding on the door after Lubitz purportedly set the aircraft on a deadly descent into the French Alps.

Investigators said Lubitz ignored radio calls and could be heard breathing normally as the aircraft went on a fairly steep descent from its 38,000-foot cruising altitude to about 5,000 feet, while passengers were screaming as they presumably saw the mountains looming and watched the pilot frantically trying to re-enter the cockpit.

European authorities, along with the chief executive of Germanwings parent Lufthansa, said that nothing in Lubitz’s background could explain his behavior. The 27-year-old pilot had no known association with extremist or terrorist groups, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the news had given the tragedy “a new, simply incomprehensible dimension. … Something like this goes beyond anything we can imagine.”

The dead included three Americans, the last of whom was identified by the State Department on Thursday as Robert Oliver. It provided no further details, but he was described in news reports as a Barcelona resident who worked for Spanish clothing company Desigual.

Half of the victims were German, including 16 students and two teachers from a high school in the northern town of Haltern Am See.

“I am asking myself, when is the nightmare going to end?” the town’s mayor, Bodo Klimpel, said Thursday at a news conference that was broadcast live in Germany. “It is even much, much worse than we had thought.”

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the aviation industry and U.S. law enforcement officials decided that cockpit doors would have to be hardened and locked securely to thwart a repeat. At the time, experts knew that the system would have to be tamper-proof or it would not ensure an end to hijackings.

“We discussed the unintended consequences of leaving a single pilot in the cockpit and we did an analysis of the greater risk, a suicidal pilot or a terrorist,” said Michael Barr, a U.S. air safety expert and former accident investigation instructor at the University of Southern California. “The decision was a terrorist was the greater risk. We don’t want to reopen that door now.”

But the Germanwings incident was among more than half a dozen documented instances of a crew or crew member suspected of deliberate acts to crash a passenger plane.

In 1999, in one of the most notorious cases, an EgyptAir Boeing 767 jetliner plunged into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after takeoff from New York. U.S. investigators said the co-pilot had sent the jetliner on a dive after the pilot left the cockpit.

“It’s striking that in both instances it sounds like the pilot left the cabin,” said John Pistole, the agent who investigated the accident.

In another case, a Malaysia Airlines jetliner disappeared over the Indian Ocean in 2014 without a trace, and although the crew may have been incapacitated by a loss of cabin pressure, or some other cause, a deliberate act has not been ruled out. And a 1997 crash involving SilkAir in Indonesia was determined by U.S. investigators to be a deliberate act, although Indonesian officials sharply disputed the finding.

Notably, none of those cases involved U.S. pilots or airlines. Though not perfect, the U.S. has by wide agreement the world’s most experienced pilots and tightest safety regulations. Indeed, the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday emphasized its two-in-the-cockpit rule.

“When one of the pilots exits the cockpit for any reason, another qualified crew member must lock the door and remain on the flight deck until the pilot returns to his or her station,” the FAA said in a written response to questions raised by the French disaster. “A qualified crew member could be a flight attendant or a relief pilot serving as part of the crew.”

Under U.S. security rules, there must be positive visual identification of the person seeking to re-enter the cockpit, including verification that the person is not under duress, a procedure done by looking through a spyhole in the cockpit door, said Brian Schiff, an American Airlines captain. That verification is performed by the other crew member because the lone pilot is not allowed to move from the aircraft controls, he said.

Had a flight attendant been in the cockpit of the Germanwings plane, he or she might have been able to intervene or open the door.

Although the U.S. does not perform mandatory psychological tests on pilots, it has other advantages over foreign carriers, particularly in the experience of its flight crews. Lubitz had logged 630 flight hours, substantially below the U.S. minimum requirement of 1,500 hours for any co-pilot. In practice, the vast majority of U.S. co-pilots have far more than 1,500 hours, Ditchey, the safety expert, said.

And though the cockpit security doors may have assisted Lubitz in taking over the Germanwings flight, an opposite set of circumstances has also occurred. In an unusual March 2012 incident, a JetBlue co-pilot determined that his pilot was acting irrationally and managed to lock him out of the cockpit. While passengers subdued the captain, the co-pilot safely landed the jetliner in Amarillo, Texas.

The pilot, Clayton Osbon, was later found not guilty by reason of insanity of interfering with a flight crew.

Nonetheless, the Germanwings accident is likely to lead to a reconsideration of international rules and whether there could be a system to prevent a deranged pilot from crashing a plane. One possibility is a system that would allow ground controllers to seize the operation of an aircraft’s flight control computers if the crew veers from its planned flight path and refuses to explain its actions.

Such a system might have prevented the Germanwings accident, as well as the Sept. 11 attacks. Pilots and aviation experts say the system would be possible to implement with existing technology, though it could be costly to operate and introduce other issues, such as making a jetliner’s computer system vulnerable to a hacker.

“There will be a large examination of the procedures, but hopefully it will not compromise our existing security,” Schiff said. “We don’t have a problem with it in this country. … As long as the person in the cockpit does not want you to enter, you are not going to get in. I think it should stay that way.”

(Times staff writer Vartabedian reported from Los Angeles and special correspondent Willsher from Paris. Times staff writers Matt Pearce and Hugo Martin in Los Angeles and special correspondent Jabeen Bhatti in Berlin contributed to this report.)

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times,Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: An aerial photo shows what appears to be wreckage from the crash of a Germanwings plane in the French Alps, between Barcelonnette and Digne, on Tuesday, March 24, 2015. The plane was carrying 150 people when it crashed Tuesday en route from Spain to Germany, officials said, warning that there are not expected to be any survivors. It is not clear if it sent a distress signal. The dead are believed to include 16 German schoolchildren. (Duclet Stephane/Maxppp/Zuma Press/TNS)

Damaged Black Box Sent For Analysis In Alps Plane Crash

Damaged Black Box Sent For Analysis In Alps Plane Crash

By Jessica Camille Aguirre, dpa (TNS)

SEYNE-LES-ALPES, France — A severely damaged cockpit voice recorder is one of the only leads in the fatal crash of Germanwings flight 4U 9525 in the French Alps, where some 650 searchers started combing a section of mountain face at daybreak on Wednesday.

The black box records sounds in the cockpit and could reveal information about the plane’s last moments. Another black box — the flight data recorder, which records the aircraft’s parameters — has not yet been recovered.

“If there are voices, it will be assessed rapidly,” French Transport Secretary Alain Vidal told broadcaster Europe 1, adding that the first black box had been turned over to the French aviation authority, BEA, in Paris.

“If there are other sounds to be analyzed, if could take weeks — but could also give us an explanation,” he added.

Germanwings flight 4U 9525, carrying 144 passengers and six crew members from Barcelona, Spain to Dusseldorf, Germany, crashed in apparent good weather near the town of Prads-Haute-Bleone after making a rapid eight-minute descent.

The jet’s wreckage was strewn across steep terrain at an altitude of 6,500 feet, in a remote region that proved difficult for searchers to access. Overnight snow in the region complicated Wednesday morning’s efforts.

“We are here in the mountains,” Police Chief David Galtier told reporters. “So we have to proceed with extreme caution. The most important thing is to secure the area and cover the bodies.”

The strength of the impact rendered much of the remnants unrecognizable. Another investigator told local media that, “the largest body parts we have located are not very large.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy were due at the site later Wednesday.

Local authorities have set up sites to receive relatives of victims, as well as emergency medical and psychological care facilities.

Officials said initial counts indicated that there were at least 67 German citizens and 45 Spaniards on board.

Two opera singers who were returning from a performance in Barcelona, two babies and a group of 16 high school students who had gone to the Spanish city for an exchange program were all among the passengers. The Australian government confirmed that an Australian woman and her son were also on board.

Japanese government officials said they were trying to confirm whether two Japanese nationals listed as passengers were indeed aboard the aircraft, and the British government said it was “likely” that Britons were on the flight.

Germanwings parent Lufthansa announced held a minute of silence exactly 24 hours after the plane’s contact with French air traffic control broke off.

Lufthansa cancelled one Germanwings flight on Wednesday morning, after cancelling 24 flights the day before.

In Brussels, flags were flown at half mast in front of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive. The bloc’s parliament was due later Wednesday to begin its plenary session with a minute of silence to remember the victims.

(c)2015 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany), Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: Rescue helicopters and a rescue team from the French Securite Civile fly over the French Alps during a rescue operation after the crash of an Airbus A320 near Seyne-les-Alpes, France, on Tuesday, March 24, 2015. (Julien Tack/Abaca Press/TNS)