Super sad story :/ I just hope that another mentally Ill pilot doesn't decide to ditch a plane during take off, into a city.

And what keeps the guy from programming the route or a hacker from purposely killing everyone on board?

Why is his medical condition identified in the note not be divulged to the public given that he murdered 149 innocent people. They must realize it will eventually come out.

I meant that the losers and f-ups stay at the low end of the pay scale. I'll try to be clearer next time.

I started out there too.

I have seen some real losers and f ups work all the way to the top...and some at the top turn into losers or f ups over time.
People are the variable, there is no way currently to get away from that...and people are unpredictable.

To think that a-hole welcomed those passengers on to the flight as he stood in the door.....

This is probably a very stupid question, but since I don't fly a whole lot, I'm not familiar with the cabin doors, anymore. If the Captain really wanted to get back in the cabin, is there a way he and a few of the passengers could have accomplished that, some how? Like using some carry on baggage as a protective shield as you and three or so other people act as a battering ram using your weight and inertia to weaken the frame/door to gain access?

The reinforced doors on the airbus have been tested against a hand grenade. It failed to open the door.

After 9/11 a mandate was issued to upgrade commercial aircraft cockpit doors that was effective pretty much world wide. The modified doors are essentially bullet proof, and are designed to defeat an attempted breach. The frames are hardened and the doors are a composite build up of pretty good strength, the whole intent is to prevent what you describe. With enough time I am sure you could get through, but there was not a lot of time in this case to get it done.

The answer to his question is no.

Now they're going to start profiling white guys. Scheisle.

OK, thanks guys! Thanks for the edumication!

Gogar is right, of course. This type of event is extremely rare. Its a good thing ATC folks aren't flying the planes :)

Computer-navigated Google cars have proven to be far, far safer than human driven cars. Its still early days and they are woking on things. Now Apple has joined the fray with its own project, and Google has too.

I think the best solution may be an automated flight deck, with 2 pilots still present, if needed. They should not have the ability to over-ride the plane's logic systems, unless approved by ATC somewhere, within a few seconds. The planes logic systems would be redundant by various means of streaming: local programming, satellite, etc, which all check against each other.

It isn't far removed from that now other than the ability to over ride everything. Pilots don't just fly like they used to, they manage the aircraft as a system.

I know more than a few pilots that would be hard pressed to fly without their FMS and autopilots...
Scale really is the key as motion points out, this is a very rare occurence and not easily preventable. How far do you revamp the system to prevent an occurence with such a low probability? Psych testing is a great idea for sure, but certainly presents its own host of issues. No easy answers here I don't think.

Well we now know an axe is inneffective.

I've never really understood why the cockpit wasn't larger to include a lavatory within for the pilots. I fly several time a month and have always thought it was a security risk to have the pilots going in and out of the cockpit to use the lav.

Also seems more courteous to me to provide the pilots with a personal restroom. I guess both safety and courtesy have taken a back seat to cramming a few more paying passengers into each aircraft.
I cannot even imagine how horrifying the last few minutes were on this plane. RIP....

angela

This guy still has his civil rights and privacy.

He's dead. I'm assuming it will come out eventually, why not now.

I was on the team that performed systems integration and flight testing for the Airfone system on UA's 747-400, and they had a small room with a couple of bunks and a lav behind the pilots, inside the cockpit, for relief crew on long overseas legs. I'm sure A/C size makes a difference, and they probably ditched that to put more paying seats upstairs. This was pre 9/11, anyway.

What, did he bail out at the last second and save himself? I musta missed that part.

We should remember the murderer's parents are victims here too.
And please, no vitriol about how it must be their fault in part, that just displays ignorance of mental illness.
Flame away guys, but I've seen the anguish good parents of kids with psychiatric illnesses go through....how could anyone cope with this?

More to do with liability than privacy. I feel for the parents but once again we are caught up in the political correctness of the privacy issue and seem to place that at a higher level of importance than the lives of the other 149 helpless people in the plane. Not at all unlike the mass murder school shooting in CT. The girlfriend seemed to know, perhaps the parents and certainly the doctors.

Along the lines of Google/Apple self piloting technologies, at a minimum it seems technology could be implemented that prevents a perfectly functional plane from flying face-first into, well...anything. Essentially, priority control goes to the computer in the event of a calculated disaster. If an over-ride is somehow needed, requires two separate pilots and ATC approval to implement. Think 9-11, possibly the two Malaysian crashes, and now this one.

^^^^^^ Yes, it could be done. We have the auto pilot that is capable and we have terrain and obstacle data already in most large aircraft. They just arent connected. This is the same issue as the Air Malaysia disappearance when everyone wanted tracking devices on all aircraft. Yes it can be done. But any thing aviation costs huge bucks. Who will pay for it? When you do the math, the risk of these type of events happening is extremely low. And industry will quite successfully argue that is simply isnt worth the cost to design and implement these new gee wizz systems.

Now news is saying he had vision issues.

More on this. The co-pilot of Germanwings flight 9525 reportedly told his former girlfriend he wanted everyone to know his name - Business Insider

It's looking like someone who is mentally unstable and who sees his lifelong dream (and identity) coming apart in bits and pieces.

And the GF dumped him the day before so obviously his behavior is justified.

What I dont get is what would have happened if the captain had not left the cockpit? Would it have happened at all? Maybe, maybe not. or maybe just delayed until another later flight? Maybe this wasn't premeditated. It's almost like he made that decision on a whim after the other guy left the cockpit.

Possibly but he had a fair number of minutes to consider what he was going to do and change his mind. Given the outcome, I find it odd that he descended relatively slowly rather than straight down.

My understanding from several comments on the news, is that the computer system would prevent that type of action, or make it extremely difficult and that's why speculation is he set the autopilot into a gradual descent.

Now, not knowing how the system works, I don't know why he couldn't just switch off the autopilot and plunge the plane into the ground. Can someone address this for us?

We all have to keep in mind that if he was dealing with mental health problems, his "logic" and rationality is not the same as ours. As mentioned earlier, this could have been a spur of the moment decision--a crime of opportunity. Yes, he made deliberate moves to crash the plane but to do it on that day and on that flight may not have been planned. When an opportunity arose, however, he used it. I agree with rattlsnak's musing, it may not have happened at all had the pilot not left the flight deck. Sadly, we'll never know.

Couldn't imagine the eight minutes and horrible sinking feeling the capt. had while desperately trying to get back in, axed away at the door.

Not a jihadist after all? Just an ordinary homegrown killer?

So, what religion was he?

German so probably a crazy Lutheran like me.

COST, COST, COST. Scream it from the mountaintops and holler it down the canyons. Nothing happens, and I mean NOTHING HAPPENS if it will incur even a fraction of a penny in cost.

It's so sad. The copilot had been fantasizing about this for a long time. I wish someone would have noticed and said something. People like that guy should get run over by a bus before they can do stuff like this.

Lee Harvey Oswald. Mark David Chapman. John Hinckley. Losers who wanted the world to know who they were.

(The German copilot said to a date that someday the world would know his name.)

The "lone nut" is always, and will always be among us.

Another A320 crashed on landing at Halifax today. No serious injuries, looks like it clipped power lines on the way down and skidded off the end of the runway:

Air Canada AC624 crash: Airline says weather conditions were safe - Nova Scotia - CBC News

The news made some point about how it was the second a320 problem this week. Uh, yeah, I see a pattern here.



On another note, considering how there's nothhing left of the plane in France, maybe this will put to rest some of the conspiracy nuts that said a plane didn't hit the pentagon since they didn't see the wings. :rolleyes: