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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: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:14PM
Whay are we seeing these type of news here? I thought this was a geeky site with geek news!
If I wanted to see all the drama new forums offers I would hve been there. Same problem with /. Someone is happy to get to publish "Breaking News" that frankly has nothing to do with just about any of us.
Meanwhile I on purpose don't avail myself of the daily dramatic and catastrophic type of stuff spewed out by the normal media. Which mostly affect a small number of people while good news that does is not even reported. Creating a distorted and overly negative picture of the world.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hartree on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:32PM
Because issues with aircraft flight control in fly-by-wire aircraft are indeed geeky tech related items. This is related to the risks of computer use (having a computer link in your control systems) and if it's appropriate for the well known RISKS mailing list, I'd say it's absolutely appropriate for here.
The A-320, IIRC, has had questions about its autopilot disengaging and the plane going into an uncommanded descent before. Whether that was a factor in this, it's still too early to speculate much.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday March 24 2015, @06:09PM
Firstly, you do not have to read every story. If this one is not to your liking, please feel free to read a different one.
However, if we disregard the loss of 250 people in an air disaster, aircraft are technical, and there are many technical issues that can be, and are being, discussed here. Geeks and nerds don't have to be associated with computers. Aviation in its widest sense is a topic for this site.
Additionally, when a large employer such as Boeing or Airbus suffers the loss of an aircraft it can affect the's jobs of people working in the aircraft manufacturing industry, the aircraft operators, the component manufacturers, and many other related areas. We do discuss business here at SN.
Finally, the stories are provided by the community. Someone in this community is interested enough to submit a story in order that we can, if we choose, discuss it and improve our knowledge of such things. I have tried very hard not to sensationalize the story, and the comments indicate that people are not entering into needless speculation too much. I believe that our coverage is unique in this regard.
If you have a feel-good story that you think the community would be interested in - submit it, please. It stands a very good chance of being on the front page as long as it meet the submission requirements.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday March 24 2015, @09:58PM
Geeks and nerds don't have to be associated with computers.
Not to mention that airliners are stuffed to the gills with actual computers.
Call these "why is this here" posts Seagull Posting--fly in, shit on the article, fly away.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by morpheus on Tuesday March 24 2015, @07:12PM
Since I was the submitter I can offer my own justification for posting this type of news to SN:
1. This is a great tragedy, yes, but as of now it is also a technical mystery: a lot of data is already available so what is the most likely cause? I studied the descent profile, airspeed profile and still cannot find any convincing clues as to what might have happened. In contrast, after Colgan Air accident, a cursory reading of the crash report made it clear that the airplane entered a spin.
2. On a philosophical level, what is and what is not news depends on the context. It is a testament to the great sophistication/complexity of modern technology (I use this word very loosely) that failures are rather rare and make (sometimes tragic) news. In a sense, this does not paint a dark picture of the world at all, quite the opposite. As a chief pilot used to say at a company I worked for: `The most dangerous system on the airplane is the pilot'. Is it in this case? Think of it this way: `hundreds of airplanes carrying thousands of passengers crossed the Atlantic under ten hours today' is a very reassuring statement which would be pure science fiction a hundred years ago. And today ... it is not news.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2015, @11:54AM
Do you watch the news because you have this nagging feeling that taking notice of the horrible things that happen in the world are a moral obligation? Or a responsibility?
Because if you want horror, consider how much isn't news because it's happening every day.
Planes hardly ever crash. When they do it's news.
Disease kills many more daily. But that happens every day and isn't news.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday March 24 2015, @08:11PM
Airplanes are very complex systems, when complex systems break, that's news. This isn't some crap about someone being shot, or about US government tedium.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2015, @09:20AM
I agree this news shouldn't be on a tech-centric site. /. pulls this crap too, sometimes it's even news about celebrities! The whole appeal of sites like SN and /. is that they are for a very specific audience, bringing news that you don't find on other news sites.
Every other news site is already all over this crash, it's not like you're providing a community service to nerds who need to know what's happening in the world.
Whether the crash had anything to do with technology is pure speculation at this point with no opportunity to draw any conclusions. An investigation into what caused the crash has only just begun and it'll be months before we get results.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday March 31 2015, @10:42AM
If you want to ask that question, and by all means it's a valid question to ask given the way the original site went downhill in the last 10 years (although I argue this story did have a potential systems failure - and indeed it did, with an extreme case of OSI layer 8 failure - meatware always has unusual bugs), but why not ask about this trash? [soylentnews.org], with no tech angle whatsoever?