Posted on 03/26/2015 6:30:57 AM PDT by COUNTrecount
The German co-pilot who deliberately flew a Germanwings flight into the French Alps has been named as Andreas Lubitz, who was aged 28. Prosecutors said information suggested he was fully conscious as the plane went down.
"The co-pilot is alone at the controls," prosecutor Brice Robin said, drawing on information gathered from the black box recorder. "He voluntarily refused to open the door of the cockpit to the pilot and voluntarily began the descent of the plane."
Details of Lubitz's life are still emerging, with investigators confirming he did not have any known terrorist links. According to the website of the flight club where he was a member, the co-pilot was from Montabaur in Rhineland Palatinate.
German media reports he had 630 flight hours and joined budget airline Germanwings straight out of Lufthansa Flight Training School in Bremen in September 2013. Authorities have not confirmed if he had any experience as a professional pilot prior to that.
In 2013, the Federal Aviation Administration recognized Lubitz for "meeting and exceeding" the "high educational, licensing and medical standards" established by the body, which regulates civil aviation, reports the Aviation Business Gazette.
The FAA said that the certification standards have evolved to "reduce pilot errors that lead to fatal crashes."
"Andreas became a member of the club as a youth to fulfil his dream of flying," the LSC club said in a death notice on its website.
"He fulfilled his dream, the dream he now paid for so dearly with his life," the club said, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Montabaur city mayor Gabriele Wieland, speaking to the DPA press agency, said Lubitz lived with his parents in Montabaur and also had a residence in Dusseldorf, where the Germanwings flight was heading before it crashed.
French authorities said his family had left Marseille, where a press conference was held earlier on 26 March. His Facebook page lists his interests as aviation and music.
Information from the black box recorder of the flight, which crashed on 24 March and killed 150 people, indicated Lubitz was alone in the cockpit, and intentionally started a descent while the other co-pilot was locked out.
The Airbus 320 from Barcelona to Dusseldorf hit a mountain near Barcelonette in the French Alps, after an eight-minute descent.
There wouldn’t be any audible alarms. The flight computer thought it was doing the right thing, just like the one that overrode the pilots and flew into the ground in the Habersheim airshow, and the Air France flight that flew into the Atlantic after the pitot tube iced up and the other crashes that have been blamed on the Airbus flight computer. That’s the point. Read the previous accident conclusions provided by the NTSB/FAA for the A320.
They draw logical conclusions from existing current information.
Actually, no, we don’t have the same evidence. You see, I have read every accident and incident report associated with the A320. The carrier I flew for before I retired offered type rate me in the A320. I declined based on the accident data. (and I’m not the only one)
1)Inexperienced co-pilot
2)Overwhelmed co-pilot
3)The world's most expensive chainsaw
4)Experienced pilot having inadvertently been locked out.
I'm in no position to comment on numbers 1 through 3 while you,a pilot,are.However,on #4...I did some googling a few hours ago and found a video made by Airbus regarding their system that insures cockpit security.Among the things learned from that video is that it's easy to gain access *with* the cockpit's consent,fairly easily accessed in cases of cockpit crew being incapacitated and essentially *impossible* to access if the cockpit crew actively denies access.So,during the 6 minute descent the stewardesses *and* the senior pilot would have known the different procedures yet *still*,it would appear,failed to gain access.
Can you think of any plausible explanation to explain this apart from "an overwhelmed,inexperienced,co-pilot"? The Airbus video I saw clearly showed that it just takes a quick flip of a switch in the cockpit to deny access to anyone trying to use the "incapacitated crew" option for access.
Yes, they are drawing what appears to be “logical conclusions”, but they are doing so before all the data is in and that is not an example of how a professional handles such events. Ask yourself, why would a French Prosecutor hold a press conference to talk about this accident and not the French Minister of Transportation? Isn’t that just a wee bit odd to you?
BTW, in the USA the FAA requires you to have 1500 hours before you can even apply for an Airline Transport Rating (ATP). That's more than twice the airtime this guy apparently had.
Future litigation.
BTW, with most accidents, it isn’t any one thing that causes it. Generally, it is a series of events that stack up and in the vast majority of cases ulitmately pilot error is to blame. That is precisely why Airbus developed their fly by wire system, to eliminate the biggest cause of accidents.
We’ll likely find out he was sympatico with Islam.
Not unusual at all in this type aircraft once cruising altitude is reached.
One or both
Congratulations. That's the dumbest thing I've read all week.
Is it possible this guy took the airplane out? Sure, but given the history of the A320 I would not fixate on the limited information gleaned from the cockpit audio. Has any serious audio analysis been done? I doubt it. I read they say you can hear the co-pilot breathing normally and sounds that indicate the pilot was banging on the door wanting in. How do we know the co-pilot was conscious? Answer: we don't.
Best to wait until all the bio info is available, and to evaluate possible motives based on facts, n'est ce pas?
.
“What about him leads you to believe that he is a Muslim? He could not look more like a generic native German twentysomething.”
What does a muslim look like since islam is a cult and not a race?
“How many A320 accident reports have you read? I’ve read all of them.”
So, how many 320 aircraft lost flight control or autopilot control and made a controlled descent resulting in a crash??
I read all of your replies and all recount that you have read A-320 accident reports and are hung up on the fly by wire system.
If the co-pilot had difficulties with understanding what the FBW/FMS system was doing, why did he not let the Captain enter the cabin?
If I was in his seat and unable to open the door using the center console panel, I would have left the seat and opened the door.
You are using this accident to trash the A-320. It is your “punching bag.” If you must blame the airplane, then be open to accepting that if a pilot doesn't know how to operate it, it is the PILOT”S fault.
Typed in 727,757,767,747-400,777, DC-8, DC10
” Air France flight that flew into the Atlantic after the pitot tube iced up “
You obviously didn’t read THAT accident investigation. Air France 447 stalled due to pilot input pitching beyond critical AOA. The flight computer had nothing to do with that crash.
“How do we know the co-pilot was conscious? Answer: we don’t. “
Breathing does help determine that a person is conscious. If you knew anything about human physiology you’d know that.
Audio can also tell investigators if switches are being flipped or buttons being pushed. This pilot sat there doing seemingly nothing.
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