Passenger plane crashes in French Alps (Airbus A320 - 148 Onboard?)

The Local - Fr ^ | 03/24/2015 | Oliver Gee

[Rome2000]

Sounds like Airbus really really really sucks.

How many more people have to die before they retrofit these things with manually controllable flight surfaces?

[maggief]

[brothers4thID]

An excellent synopsis.

[Toespi]

Definitely for someone smart and may be just random.......there is an obvious pattern in this picture. The larger pieces at the top are from debris fields which appear to be one long line, then debris creates a “y”, the large pieces of the airplan are both located on the left side of each y.

[AngelesCrestHighway]

Your welcome...

[Eva]

I read that there was an alert from an air traffic controller who saw the plane veer off course in his screen. Others said that the normal route should have been over the Pyrhanees, not the Alps.

[McGruff]

There are some larger pieces than I thought.

[American Constitutionalist]

The difference between Airbus and Boeing’s philosophy is even though both have fly by wire, Boeing still gives the final say and control to the pilots.

Fly by wire actulators are not much different tan numatic or hydraulic actulators, the only difference is that fly by wire actulators are actulated by electricity and computer control.

By the way this A 320 was in A check mantinance just yesterday.

[Gideon7]

Oops, I misread the altitude graph. It was a 30,000 foot descent in about 9 minutes (not 18 minutes).

Over on the other thread the speculation is that there was a sudden loss of cabin pressure so the pilot immediately dialed the autopilot for a rapid descent (which is SOP), but then passed out before getting their O2 masks on.

[maggief]

Guardian:

15m ago
18:46
Among those killed was opera singer Oleg Bryjak, Deutsche Oper Am Rhein director Christoph Meyer has told the Associated Press. Meyer said Bryjak was returning to Germany from a performance: “we have lost a great performer and a great person in Oleg Bryjak. We are stunned.”

The US State Department has said it cannot confirm whether there were any Americans on board the flight, and Lufthansa has said it is still working to verify passengers’ nationalities.

[CedarDave]

From another thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3271488/posts?page=59#59

Nationalities per BBC (take with grain of salt given early reports are often wrong):

Germany 67
Spain 45
Turkey 39
Belgium 1
Netherlands 1
Total 150

[RayChuang88]

A mid-air explosion would show significant deceleration and rapid descent. We don’t see that here. That, plus the lack of communication with the flight crew, makes it more likely that the flight crew was somehow physically incapacitated. The autopilot tripped off, and then the plane slowly descended into the mountain.

It makes you wonder this: was there a possible cabin depressurization that incapacitated the flight crew, similar to what happened the private jet that carried Payne Stewart in 1999 and a 737-300 belonging to Helios Airways in 2005? And the depressurization happened so fast the crew had no time to react?

[huldah1776]

Anyone else got their tin foil hat on thinking about the pilot of missing Malaysia flight mh370? Its a bit after the anniversary, but because there was no communication it came to mind.

[CivilWarBrewing]

Sort of, but loss of communication could be a result of pilots incapacitated by Hypoxia resulting from loss of cabin pressure. The effects of hypoxia can overtake you before you are even able to place an oxygen mask on. This might have been a 'ghost aircraft' of all passengers, crew and pilots.

Anything that seems like a slight course correction or alteration might just be inputs by the aircraft itself, all the while the pilots are either unconscious or already dead.

A small bomb could breach the aircraft structure and trigger depressurization. The loss of cabin pressure is either a technical failure or a terrorist attack.

I'm LEANING towards technical failure, because a sudden bang or bomb detonation would get immediately reported by the pilots. Here there was NO communication whatsoever after decent.

[McGruff]

For reference.

[CivilWarBrewing]

Would be interesting to find out if Boeings and Airbuses share any commonality with regards to pressurization systems. Or have terrorists figured out an easy way to depressurize the aircraft, other than a small device or bomb?

[McGruff]

9:00 p.m. (2000 GMT, 4:00 p.m. EDT)

French authorities have called off the search for the remains of a Germanwings airplane that crashed into the French Alps with 150 people aboard, after night fell on the hard-to-reach area.

Lt. Col. Simon-Pierre Delannoy of the regional police rescue service said on BFM television that the conditions for the search had become too difficult.

Helicopters stopped flying over the area at nightfall.

The complex search operation was expected to resume Wednesday morning.

[amorphous]

Seems to me, from the photos, the aircraft was mostly intact when it hit the mountain and it likely wasn't a pitot tube freezing over since it was flying well above weather at the time. Likewise, doesn't seem like a shouldered, ground launched missile could bring it down at that altitude either.

Whatever it was that brought it down must somehow be related to neither pilot able to send a distress signal; something that only requires seconds unless an equipment malfunction occurred or an explosion in or near the cockpit.

So then why wasn't any of the passengers able to use their cell phones to call love ones during the long (8 min) decent. This is also strange, unless the passengers were unconscious. An explosion in/near the cockpit and the resulting depressurization might might answer that question as well.

All pure speculation here, as you say. The black box should reveal many more clues. Not too sure how much will ever be revealed to the public though, depending upon the cause.

I found it interesting that this occured very near CERN while they're testing at much higher power and that the aircraft is fly-by-wire.

[nascarnation]

I don’t think it suddenly plummeted.

On CNBC they showed radar derived traces that indicated a fairly linear 4000 feet/min descent rate. One of their “expert pilots” said in a sudden depressurization, he’d typically want to do 6000 ft/min descent.

[cherokee1]

I’m reminded of the old Israeli video when they were testing a mockup of their nuclear power plant containment. They flew an old fighter jet into it at 400 mph. The plane and everything in it just turned to powder as it contacted the concrete which held up just fine. Anyone on the ground hearing this would wonder if the tinkling noises were ever going to stop?