Can you imagine the horror for the passengers.

They were all aware of what was happening as they could hear the pilot trying to beat the door down....

according to the voice recorder, the screaming started just seconds before the crash

if they knew for the whole 8 minutes, i would think someone would have tried to use his cellphone (on the other hand: in that area and height probably no network)

It is not easier for the coward. In that case he would need to "face" the other pilot while kicking him etc, that pilot may be his friend so punching is not that fine for him. Easier just to ignore him locking him out. You know when people try to ignore someone instead of facing him, it is just easier for them.

Could be be a spontaneous action from the copilot. Like, he didn't think about this prior to takeoff, but when the commander left the cabin, copilot though - "hell, why not? Life is boring, it's a chance to get my 10 minutes of glory". In other words. he did it for the lulz.

that is strange, because if you go down that fast, you must feel it, at least in your ears ... :2 cents:

Really i don't know exactly, may be it's just media provided misleading info but I read yesterday that one of blackboxes was damaged and there was no possibility to read out info. Well, I hope it's wrong statement

it was at normal rate, not faster than usual

oh, ok then ... :Oh crap

exactly what I said :Oh crap

voice recorder was found and data was recovered

flight data recorder was not found yet

Yeah, thanks

But wouldn't you worry if you are "landing" in the middle of the trip?
Unless cabin crew calmed them down and said that they are landing for some pit stop.

i don't know how often you fly - i do maybe 6-10 times a year

but when you do, do you sit in your seat and analyze the planes behaviour and once you consider it outside the norm (whatever you think it is) you call the stewardess and ask her to ask the pilot if he knows what he's doing?

and would you expect any other answer from the stewardess than "it's all fine, sir, don't worry"?

and how good are you at calculating the correct flight level from looking out of the window?

especially when you cross mountains?

seriously...

How could one German be so evil and want to murder so many innocent people.... oh wait

If it's pilot suicide/murder, it will be the 3rd or 4th time this has happened now.

This isn't going to help trust between pilots..

2 people in the cockpit at ALL times needs to be compulsory.

Just going for a piss - hold on while I get a steward in case you go psycho..

Are you serious?
You just said that plane was landing at the usual trajectory etc.
If I notice that a plane is landing in the middle of the flight - of course I would ask wtf is up, so would all the other passengers would do.

i can only assume you never fly

I do. About 30 times in my lifetime. You never start "landing" that much for 8-10 minutes in the middle of the flight. Never.

I'd also suggest a 3rd person in the cabin, a security officer to watch over the pilots.

I wonder if there are gonna be many copycats after this crash.

which is totally not the point here.

the point is that people sit in a plane, hardly notice the descent when it's at normal rate and even when someone starts wondering, it won't be until 1-2 mins before the crash (planes btw descent and climb all the time to change flight levels).

and at that time still not in panic because you can't even tell how high you are when you fly over mountains

but of course if all passengers were an expert like you are..

I hope this is the kick in the ass that the government needs to mandate modern flight recorder capabilities. You can fit a camera in a shirt button or glasses frames these days so flight data recorders need to include video. In the cockpit and outside of the cockpit door at a minimum. It doesn't have to be 4k living color with 3d audio, just piece of shit run of the mill 240p cctv video that compresses well. You can fit a flights word of that on magnetic media no problem. In fact, why not stream it 100% along with the transponder blip? Yes I'm aware of how much air traffic there is. It's BS that they have to now sit there with headphones with their eyes closed like WW2 code breakers while they pick out individual voices when video would instantly reveal so much at a glance.

Dude, plane was losing altitude at the speed of highest to ground in 8 minutes. That is the speed which you feel as a passenger.
So you feel the non stopping descent for the whole 8 minutes!
Change of altitude happens, as you say, but it does not happen at this rate. Neither in speed of descent, nor in time of how long it continues at once...
People would start getting cold sweat and increased heart beat after just 1 minute of non stop descent like that!
In 2nd minute they would start shitting their pants!
So the only thing to calm them down would be for cabbin crew to "explain" something.

What you seem to be missing here is that when you fly the plane changes altitudes multiple times during your flight, and no one notices a thing. When the plane changes altitude to avoid turbulence, no one runs into the cockpit and says "What the fuck is going on". Generally speaking no one notices such changes, and if they do they assume it is routine.

I flew for two hours yesterday and didn't look out the window once. I was busy watching a movie.

I think the aviation industry needs to make some changes.

A few changes that are obvious....
- Real time transmission of flight data. My cell phone has GPS on it so this can't be too difficul.
- Three people in each cockpit, or at least a minimum of two people.
- Cameras in the cockpit.

Easy.

I already said: altitude drop from highest point to the ground in 8 minutes is the drop that you feel, as a passenger.
And yes, I feel when a plane is lowering in order to avoid turbulence or stuff like that. It continues for a short time, 10 seconds, 20 seconds whatever. That is routine. 1-2 minutes of non stop lowering and people would be shitting their pants. Let alone 8 minutes...

:1orglaugh

the plane descends 32,000 feet in ~ 8 minutes and no one on the plane notices?

please.

read it up - 4000 fpm descent are not common but also not unusual (slam dunk approach)

and:
you're making assumptions about something you don't know anything about

another pilot

32,000 feet in 8 minutes are 4,000 fpm - slightly more than usual

it was unusual enough to be noticed by ATC.

of course - because it was in the middle of the flight and the plane did not respond

all i am trying to say is that passengers might not have realized what is about to happen right until it happened - and that their screaming only starts a few seconds before the impact supports that

This was not like on Flight 93

News headline:

Mass-killer co-pilot who deliberately crashed Germanwings plane had to STOP training because he was suffering depression and 'burn-out'. German police make 'significant discovery' at his flat

Daily Mail article here

2 Minutes after the captain left the F/O manually set the AP to 100ft (96ft) with open setting 6 sec´s later aircraft started a 4 000fpm descent. most passengers will notice the start of the descent but once descent is uniform is not noticeable anymore.

I was hoping that the cause was a rapid decompression so all onboard had passed out before crash, it was not the case so to all RIP.

For the ones interested here is the transponder messages...

The last dark line at 9:30:55 is the F/O input in the A/P to 100 ft



http://s24.postimg.org/6v28wb2px/4_U9525.png

so between 09:30:52 and 09:30:55 he changed altitude from 38,000 ft to 96 ft - do I read that correct?

The F/O changed the A/P altitude settings, doesn't mean aircraft was at that altitude.

In between he set A/P to 13008 feet

Just on the news

Easy jet , air canada and air transat starting tomorrow will have a mandatory 2 man crew in cockpit all the time.

Norwegian Air Shuttle, Europe's third largest budget airline, announced Thursday it would also adopt a rule requiring two crew members to be present in the cockpit.

no no, that's not what i meant.

it took him 3 seconds to change the altitude settings, the message at 09:30:54 was sent while he was still dialing it down i guess

and btw - where did you get this from?

yes he was dialing it down, what bugs me is why if he intended to kill himself not initiate an emergency descent instead of dialing down the altitude

maybe he didn't like stress...

You can get this data in any flight tracking site

yeah, found it by now - thanks

Just also found out from an a320 pilot that he dial down the altitude instead of emergency descent because dialing down the airplane will descend and give warnings on its way but will do nothing.

The other way around the a320 has a alpha protection that may avoid terrain pulling up by itself.

that makes sense...

hard to put in extra security - you need to be able to program the altitude that low for approach and the plane cannot know if after the descend there is a mountain or not...

This would not surprise me. The guy cannot even afford cheap Apple products. He is always talking about how expensive they are. :winkwink:

Of course, he always naturally takes the predictable "I am going to bash something I cannot afford" route.

It is far too early in the investigation to know for sure what happened. A crash like this can easily take six months, a year, or more to investigate. Anything at this point is at best an educated guess.

I am sure 70% of the internet are convinced they've solved the mystery. Those people should go celebrate with Courtney Love.

Okay so it's looking like a suicide but what I find strange is that the co-pilot kept quiet the whole time he was alone in the cockpit. You would have thought that he would have responded to the radio even if he ignored requests - almost all suicides leave a note to say why they are doing it and I would have thought that he would have done that over the radio. keeping totally silent is strange.

Only 30 times for a whole life? :helpme That explains why your vision of World is so childish...

Looks like Germanwings is a pretty interesting company. The guy was visiting a psychiatrist for a year and a half and he was able to work as a pilot. Is that a normal thing in Germany?