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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 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?
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