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A Germanwings (Lufthansa subsidiary) Airbus A-320-200 airliner has crashed in the French Alps. It is reported to have carried 154 people on board (including 6 crew members). Unfortunately, no survivors have been found so far. There were reports about the crew sending out distress calls shortly before the crash. The flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf was last registered on the radar at 6800 feet.
http://www.laprovence.com/article/actualites/3326948/un-airbus-a320-secrase-dans-les-alpes-de-haute-provence.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/24/us-france-crash-airbus-lufthansa-idUSKBN0MK0ZP20150324
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/24/german-a320-airbus-plane-crashes-french-alps
[Edit 16:35 UTC. janrinok. Source: BBC] The 'black box' has been recovered. The aircraft descent took place over a period of approximately 8 minutes, and communication between the crew and the French air traffic controllers was 'broken' when the aircraft was at an altitude of around 6000 feet. The TV pictures being broadcast show a large number of helicopters being deployed to a snow free landing-zone but the surrounding mountains have significant snow cover and there is a low cloudbase. French authorities have said that the recovery of the bodies will take 'several days'.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:25PM
The flipside is that if the engineers did the inspection/maintenance by the book, then they are off the hook, that's what the book is for.
For everyone's sakes, I hope (which is a useless thing to do) that indeed it was all by the book, and this is just a freak catastrophe. If not, then culpability needs to be addressed harshly, sometimes the strict rules are really there to protect you.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday March 24 2015, @06:11PM
It's a bit of a delicate balance. If the consequences are too high, everyone will lawyer up and you'll never learn why the plane crashed.
As long as the responsible party isn't a psychopath, they'll beat themselves up enough to make sure it doesn't happen again.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:17PM
Why would you hope it's a freak thing? If there was a mistake somewhere that people can point to, in theory that mistake can be fixed.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 25 2015, @12:26AM
If something wasn't right there's blame. There's something that was done wrong. Therefore the loss of lives was likely avoidable. That's a way way worse situation IMHO.
I.e. it's not better to be bad such that you can improve.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by fnj on Wednesday March 25 2015, @12:57PM
With respect to safety-critical items in aviation, I respectfully disagree. If something fails, there is ALWAYS blame. Maybe not always blame in the sense of specific punishable culpability, but at least blame in the sense of something done wrong or some highly unusual condition occurring and not successfully detected and mitigated. The design was inadequate, or the construction was poor, or the workmanship was lacking, or the crew was inattentive or not adequately trained or experienced, or a part of the aircraft caught fire, or the structure was overstressed due to very rare external conditions which were not adequately detected, or something in the cargo caught fire, or intentional mayhem, or software behaved unpredictably, or icing was allowed to proceed to criticality, etc.
The closest thing to something where only god or nature can be "blamed" is something like fatal destruction due to clear air turbulence or fatal loss of control due to wind shear when in close proximity to terrain, and these have progressively been reduced to vanishingly small probabilities through technical measures and achievements.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 25 2015, @01:38PM
It also appears you don't believe in black swans - have you thought of a career in finance?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 26 2015, @10:16PM
I'm not saying freak things don't happen. But if it's not a freak thing, it can be prevented in the future. I would much rather somebody gets blamed and fired over it, and the problem fixed, than we just say, "Oh well, it was an act of God. Maybe it'll happen again. But at least no one's feelings were hurt!"
Deciding whether or not the accident could have been avoided seems like a rather pointless exercise. It wasn't, so the bad thing happened. At that point you just want to know whether it can be fixed/avoided next time. Saying "this guy fucked up" doesn't bring back the victims.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 27 2015, @10:02AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday March 27 2015, @03:35PM
No, you hope it was a freak accident and I hope somebody fucked up.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"