MARCH 24, 2015
A Germanwings Airbus A320 airliner has crashed in the French
Alps between Digne and Barcelonnette, aviation officials and police have said.
The plane, flight 4U 9525, had been en route from Barcelona
to Dusseldorf with 144 passengers and six crew. No one is expected to have
survived. However, miracles do
happen. We hope for the best. Otherwise, RIP.
The plane crashed after an eight-minute descent, an official
said. It is not clear if it sent a distress signal.
French and German leaders have spoken of their shock. Although they should not be, as safety concerns have been raised over the high-altitude flying of these old airplanes.
"This is the hour in which we all feel deep
sorrow," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters, adding that she
was planning to travel to the crash site.
A rescue helicopter has reportedly reached the site of the
crash, in a remote mountain area. Gilbert Sauvan, a local council official,
told Les Echos newspaper that the plane had "disintegrated".
"The largest debris is the size of a car," he
said.
Although it began its life as an independent low-cost
carrier, Germanwings is wholly owned by its parent Lufthansa.
It operates increasing numbers of the group's point-to-point
short-haul routes and takes many passengers from German cities to Mediterranean
sunspots.
The airline has an excellent safety record with no
previously reported accidents. The average age of its Airbus fleet is just over
nine years old, though flight 4U 9525 was a 24-year-old A320. Flying at 40,000 miles, certainly placed a
severe stress on the electronics of the plane.
We do know for many years now that ice and high altitudes cause
malfunctions and crashes of the airplanes.
Both the recently crashed Airbus A320 of the AirAsia airline
and Indonesian authorities have said the jetliner was passing through clouds
and rain, and meteorological reports show severe weather reaching well above
40,000 feet. “The weather was not good,” AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes said,
adding that while flying at roughly 32,000 feet the pilots asked air-traffic
controllers for permission to climb due to “storm clouds.”
As a result, questions about weather and possible ice
accumulation are now prominent in the minds of many experts as well as average
fliers. Ice particles embedded in intense, high-altitude storms have caused
airspeed indicators—called pitot tubes—to malfunction and contributed to fatal
jetliner crashes over the years. The best-known example occurred on Air France
Flight 447, an Airbus A330 that crashed in June 2009 en route to France from
Brazil, killing all 228 people aboard.
The plan was to phase out the Germanwings brand and replace
it with Eurowings.
There has been a longstanding dispute with the Vereinigung
Cockpit union over early retirement. Pilots went on strike for three days
around this time last year.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said he had sent Interior
Minister Bernard Cazeneuve to the scene and a ministerial crisis cell had been
set up to co-ordinate the incident.
The interior ministry said debris had been located at an
altitude of 2,000m (6,500ft).
Spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told BFM TV that it would be
"an extremely long and extremely difficult'' search-and-rescue operation
because of the remote location.
Spain's King Felipe, on a state visit to France, thanked the
French government for its help and said he was cancelling the rest of his
visit.
The Airbus A320 is a single-aisle passenger jet popular for
short and medium-haul flights.
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The plane's high speed at low altitude, as evidenced by the wide scattering of small pieces of wreckage, suggested "extreme distress. When you get down the below the levels of the mountains and you're still going over 400 knots, either you're totally incapacitated or you have a horrific on-board emergency, or mechanically the aircraft is just not functioning.
You'd never fly an aircraft at 400 mph-plus anywhere close to those extreme terrain features. This lack of functionality is consistent with the safety concerns regarding flying that old of a plane at such high altitudes and subjecting it to ice and atmospheric storms that may have caused equipment malfunction.
First responders were let down from helicopter cables into the crash zone before the search was ended for the day by darkness.
"We saw an aircraft that had literally been ripped apart. The bodies are in a state of destruction. There is not one intact piece of wing or fuselage," Bruce Robin, prosecutor for the city of Marseille, told Reuters news service after flying over the area.