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BBC reports the co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the Alps intentionally locked the pilot out of the cabin and initiated the flight's descent into the ground:
The co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps, named as Andreas Lubitz, appeared to want to "destroy the plane", officials said.
Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin, citing information from the "black box" voice recorder, said the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit.
He intentionally started a descent while the pilot was locked out.
Mr Robin said there was "absolute silence in the cockpit" as the pilot fought to re-enter it.
Air traffic controllers made repeated attempts to contact the aircraft, but to no avail, he said.
The story seems SN-worthy because it is an object lesson in the consequences for our lives when we put complex machines and systems into the hands of others. In this case it was a trained pilot who killed a plane full of people who were powerless to stop him. Another example could be engineers who sabotage a dam and wipe out entire communities downstream. We mostly don't think about stuff like this because there is an invisible web of trust, sometimes called a "social contract," that leads people to get on a plane, or go to work, or take their kids to school without giving it a second thought. But when that social contract unravels, all bets are off...
(Score: 5, Informative) by Aichon on Friday March 27 2015, @03:13AM
Were it one or two of the factors, I might agree with you, but when such a string of coincidences is tied together, what other conclusion could possibly be reached?
1) He turned a knob to set the auto-pilot's altitude to 100ft
2) He manipulated a separate set of controls to set the descent at 1000 ft/min
3) He went through a process to lock the door that involves a sequence of specific pushes and pulls on a lever
4) All of this occurred specifically and immediately after the pilot left the cockpit
5) He was still alive, was breathing, and had his headset on
6) There were no sounds of the co-pilot slumping, falling, or crashing against the controls
All of which is to say, I can understand having a stroke (or fainting), falling against the controls, and being in a lucid nightmare as you watch the plane you have control over crash into the Alps, but that's not what happened here. For one, falling against the door controls can't cause them to lock. They're designed to prevent accidental changes like that. And while it may be plausible that a fall could explain how the knob that controlled the altitude got turned, that wouldn't explain how the rate of descent was set. Likewise the other way...if he fell against the descent controls, how did he then fall as well on the knob to control the altitude? Moreover, they heard everything else going on in the cockpit, but never heard any indication that he had a fall of any sort, which means that even if he did faint or have a stroke, he must have been strapped in and thus not hit the controls anyway.
You get one, maybe two, explainable actions from a fainting, stroke, or other such unexpected act. You don't get three or more, least of all ones that cannot be done by accident, and especially not when there's absolutely none of the telltale signs of him having had any such incident.
The only investigation to be had is into his motives.
(Score: 3, Informative) by kbahey on Friday March 27 2015, @03:18AM
You are right.
Earlier today they said on TV that there was a mechanism for the pilot to get in, but it was unclear why he could not use it.
Later, I read the detail about the door locking with the 3 modes, and those mean a deliberate action.
Seems the French inspector is right.
Sigh ...
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