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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: 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.