Fifth Avenue Forum

Disturbing stuff

PARIS — As officials struggled Wednesday to explain why a jet with 150 people on board crashed in relatively clear skies, an investigator said evidence from a cockpit voice recorder indicated one pilot left the cockpit before the plane’s descent and was unable to get back in. A senior military official involved in the investigation described “very smooth, very cool” conversation between the pilots during the early part of the flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf. Then the audio indicated that one of the pilots left the cockpit and could not re-enter. “The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door and there is no answer,” the investigator said. “And then he hits the door stronger and no answer. There is never an answer.”

He said, “You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”

While the audio seemed to give some insight into the circumstances leading up to the Germanwings crash, it also left many questions unanswered.

Link

So what does all that mean? Door locked which left the plane unattended?

Wow, that's nuts. And no, I would assume the copilot or pilot left the cockpit, ostensibly to go the bathroom or something? That's weird though, I thought protocol was that cockpit doors are never opened during a flight now?

A320 is a two-person flight crew. If one pilot left the cockpit and was not able to reenter, that means the other one was unable (or unwilling) to unlock the door to let him reenter. The linear sink rate (near constant 3,000 fpm) indicates a controlled decent.

This was a pretty short flight as things go, maybe two hours. It would be unusual for a pilot to leave the cockpit at all. I suppose the pilot who stayed could have had a heart attack or something, but this also greatly increases the likelihood that this was an elaborate suicide.

A320 is a two-person flight crew. If one pilot left the cockpit and was not able to reenter, that means the other one was unable (or unwilling) to unlock the door to let him reenter. The linear sink rate (near constant 3,000 fpm) indicates a controlled decent.

Sooo.. the pilot or copilot went batsh** crazy?

It's possible. Look up SilkAir Flight 185 and EgyptAir Flight 990 on Wikipedia. The circumstances of both of those crashes are disputed, but for both of them the NTSB (which was investigating jointly with officials from the other countries involved) concluded that the most likely cause of each crash was an intentional act of suicide by one of the pilots. In addition, FedEx Flight 705 was a flight where a FedEx employee who was hitching a ride on a cargo plane suddenly attacked the pilots and flight engineer with a hammer. The crew managed to fight him off, and the captain managed to land the DC-10 as the other two crew held the attacker down. Turns out the employee was having money problems, so he took out a huge insurance policy on himself. His plan was to shut off the voice recorder, kill the crew with the hammer (so their injuries would look like blunt-force injuries from the crash), and then crash the plane so it all looked like an accident and his family would get the life insurance.

Wouldn't driving your car into a pole be easier?

Wouldn't driving your car into a pole be easier?

Not as dramatic. The pilot wanted to make a scene. And did.

It is odd the other pilot left the cockpit on such a short flight. Wonder what else was on the voice recorder, that wasn't released to the media.

That's just horrible.

Update:

DÜSSELDORF, Germany — A French prosecutor said Thursday that the co-pilot of the doomed Germanwing flight appeared to want to “destroy the plane,” in a stunning twist to the investigation that shifted attention to a possible suicide dive that killed all 150 people aboard.

The statement came after reports that the recovered cockpit voice recorder indicated the pilot was locked out of the cockpit before the A320 slammed into the French Alps on Tuesday.

The French prosecutor said flight recorder showed the co-pilot — identified in media reports as Andreas Lubitz — did not say a word once the captain left the cockpit, the Associated Press reported.

“It was absolute silence in the cockpit,” the prosecutor was quoted as saying.

The New York Times quoted an unidentified investigator Thursday as saying the audio depicts someone knocking with increasing urgency — and force — on the cockpit door. The Times quoted the source as saying: “And then he hits the door stronger and no answer. There is never an answer.”

BBC news saying the copilot had normal breathing all the way to the end. So cold and disturbing.

BBC news saying the copilot had normal breathing all the way to the end. So cold and disturbing.

This is so incredibly messed up. How in the world can you watch all of those people and families board the plane without a concern in the world, knowing full well you are going to murder every last one of them. And you can only assume he worked with that pilot and crew for some length of time. Just sickening.

Was he trying to crash land?

BBC news saying the copilot had normal breathing all the way to the end. So cold and disturbing.

CNN had an psychologist on, who stated that when someone commits suicide, they usually are calm prior to the act. The normal breathing wasn't unusual.

And when committing suicide, it's a selfish act. You no longer have concern for others. So he didn't care he was killing a plane full of people.

How do they know of his calm breathing? Cockpit recorders?

Fox seems disappointed.

How do they know of his calm breathing? Cockpit recorders?

They can hear it on the voice recorders

Was he trying to crash land?

Definitely not. For starters, there was no indication of any mechanical issues. Secondly, a plane like that is designed to be able to glide a considerable distance in the event of catastrophic engine failure. He definitely would have time to turn around and head back to a flatter part of southern France, as opposed to continuing course into the French Alps.

I heard the breathing part of it this morning. Cold, calculated madness. My guess is that something will turn up in his personal life that will shed more light on the motive.

Wouldn't driving your car into a pole be easier?

Not as dramatic. The pilot wanted to make a scene. And did.

Read up on some of the writings of former FBI psych profiler John Douglas. Fascinating stuff. He spent his career learning about serial killers and spree/mass murderers and arsonists, but a lot of what he studied is translatable.

For example, if this was in fact a suicide, then we may likely learn that the co-pilot had written letters to someone in a position of authority complaining about something. Maybe management of the airline, maybe his local councilmen, whatever. There will be a history of some sort of griping in the guy's background. The complaints will be about some slight, real or perceived, for which the writer feels unjustly accused of wrongdoing. It will have escalated up the food chain (sometimes rapidly) to the point where he was writing letters to people in very high levels of authority; iirc, the guy who shot up the school in Scotland many years ago eventually posted letters to the Queen. When those avenues of redress fail to elicit the 'correct' response, the person will embark on an effort to show the people to whom the complaints were directed the error of their ways. This can culminate in a variety of expressions, from graffiti on cars in the council parking lot, to throwing fireworks into the royal grounds, to shooting up a school full of children, to deliberately crashing an Airbus jet into the Swiss Alps.

There's no guarantee of that being the case here, of course. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's the story that emerges.

is technology available that you can take control of the plane from somewhere else in situations like this?

One of the things I have been reading is that the need for the "black box" is not really there anymore. They should be able to remotely digitally record all of these things.

It was a suicide, apparently. Look, if you want to kill yourself, be my guest, but this is just horrible. What a bastard.

Wow. This is just sick. Why take 149 other lives with you. I didn't hear about this until now.