German Wings A320 crashed

The Airbus is still a death trap. That just wasn't the cause of this specific accident, apparently.

The DC-9 series has quite a high fatal accident rate. Forget all the DC-10/11 that flip upon landings. If the bus is a death trap then Douglas is a Flaming Inferno Death Machine.
 
FWIW, I wrote that before learning about his Devine Wind bit.

However, I would point out the irony that the Europeans have historically been stricter than the US with procedures and regulations in aviation and security. Under current US ops and laws, he 1) would not have been employed by the air carrier
Could you elaborate? I thought I read he was a German national. Out nationals are allowed to work anywhere in the US.
Actually this is a big topic. American Samoans have the highest military service per capita of any US state or Territory yet none of them get to vote. Them and the Swain islands are the only two places left that are US territories, but we do not afford them citizenship.
 
Could you elaborate? I thought I read he was a German national. Out nationals are allowed to work anywhere in the US.
Actually this is a big topic. American Samoans have the highest military service per capita of any US state or Territory yet none of them get to vote. Them and the Swain islands are the only two places left that are US territories, but we do not afford them citizenship.


1500 hr rule.


Lufthansa just reported he trained in Phoenix.
 
What a creepy turn of events. Was he nuts or was this a carefully coordinated and planned? Where others involved? There are more questions to answer now then there would have been if it was an actual accident.
Obviously all speculation, but I'll bite.

From what I understand, the F/O remained silent. He didn't call ATC, he didn't deviate course, he didn't respond to the CA, he didn't start a suicide chant. To myself, this accident reeked of a hypoxic/depresurazation event like the Helios 737 crash. And perhaps, that's what he intended. The 320 hit hard enough to send the FDR chip flying out of the box, and they had one hell of a time getting the CVR read out from what I've read. The bastard almost got away with it. Hell, even with the CVR when it was released that one of the pilots was locked out, I'll be honest and say I still didn't think it was intentional, I figured it was an unfortunate chain of events. Maybe he wanted to kill himself but didn't want it to look like he killed himself.

Of course, short of a note or confession, we'll never know for sure. We can't get inside his head. He's dead. As is everyone else who had the misfortune of being on board that day.
 
Obviously all speculation, but I'll bite.

From what I understand, the F/O remained silent. He didn't call ATC, he didn't deviate course, he didn't respond to the CA, he didn't start a suicide chant. To myself, this accident reeked of a hypoxic/depresurazation event like the Helios 737 crash. And perhaps, that's what he intended. The 320 hit hard enough to send the FDR chip flying out of the box, and they had one hell of a time getting the CVR read out from what I've read. The bastard almost got away with it. Hell, even with the CVR when it was released that one of the pilots was locked out, I'll be honest and say I still didn't think it was intentional, I figured it was an unfortunate chain of events. Maybe he wanted to kill himself but didn't want it to look like he killed himself.

Of course, short of a note or confession, we'll never know for sure. We can't get inside his head. He's dead. As is everyone else who had the misfortune of being on board that day.

Wouldn't you just flip a breaker if you wanted to kill the CVR, ala FedEx? I doubt he cared.
 
Obviously all speculation, but I'll bite.

From what I understand, the F/O remained silent. He didn't call ATC, he didn't deviate course, he didn't respond to the CA, he didn't start a suicide chant. To myself, this accident reeked of a hypoxic/depresurazation event like the Helios 737 crash. And perhaps, that's what he intended. The 320 hit hard enough to send the FDR chip flying out of the box, and they had one hell of a time getting the CVR read out from what I've read. The bastard almost got away with it. Hell, even with the CVR when it was released that one of the pilots was locked out, I'll be honest and say I still didn't think it was intentional, I figured it was an unfortunate chain of events. Maybe he wanted to kill himself but didn't want it to look like he killed himself.

Of course, short of a note or confession, we'll never know for sure. We can't get inside his head. He's dead. As is everyone else who had the misfortune of being on board that day.

If it were a hypoxic/depressurization event, it's likely everyone in the back would have been affected as well. But they say the captain was trying to break the door down.
 
The DC-9 series has quite a high fatal accident rate. Forget all the DC-10/11 that flip upon landings. If the bus is a death trap then Douglas is a Flaming Inferno Death Machine.

The DC-9 accident stats would be skewed because the airplane started operations in the '60s rather than the late '80s. A whole hell of a lot has changed in that time to improve safety beyond just the aircraft design, and you'll note that fatal accidents in the -9 were nil while NWA and DAL operated them the last couple of decades.

But that's not to say that the old Douglas products were perfect. They just had a pilot-centric design philosophy that basically said "the pilot is in control, period." Even after throwing all of the fancy avionics and automation into the 717, nothing ever took the pilot out of complete control over the airplane. No computers second guessing you.
 
600 hours? Is that the norm for European carriers? Not that it had anything to do with this... just curious.
 
As a pax, I don't want to wait for the report - I want to know as soon as possible if there's a safety threat. No need to wait to start implementing stricter regulations about not leaving one person alone in the cockpit. Not going to hurt anything by doing that before the report comes out.

And as a PAX what exactly are you going to do about it?

Why is a quick action based on incomplete data better than a well thought out action based on ALL the data?
 
The CEO is getting grilled on psychological testing and evaluation. Wow. If this goes all the way, here comes your pilot shortage Mr. Darby.


Also, the translation is making things difficult, but I think the CEO said this guy trained in Phoenix in 2008 and then worked as an FA before becoming an FO in 2013. :confused:
 
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