Just saw on the news that the flight hours required to be in his co-pilot position in the US is 1200 ( maybe 1500 ) and that if the pilot leaves the cockpit, a flight attendant has to go in in their place so there are two people in the cockpit
Isn’t pilot “suicide” the most likely explanation for the disappearance of Malaysia flight 370? When asked by reporters about suicide as a motive in the Germanwings crash the official replied that we need another word for someone who kills 149 others with them.
“I don’t buy this suicide theory yet. How many people who commit suicide need to take 150 people along with them?
He seemed awfully young to me to be the co-pilot of this plane.”
I also don’t buy it yet. How can they so quickly label the first officer as a mass murderer? They need to do a complete investigation first. How do they know he wasn’t dosed with something by the captain or flight attendant, that knocked him out? How do they know he didn’t fall asleep, deeply, or have a medical issue that incapacitated him? Too early for solid conclusions. And why would they not have a door with a code, that one would have to intentionally override, not passively ignore? Crazy.
He was not really that young, but I heard he only had about 650 flight hours, overall. If that is accurate, that’s extremely low time. In the US, you generally need a minimum of 1500 hours pilot in command time, for any major carrier to interview you, and most people have far more.
“And why would they not have a door with a code, that one would have to intentionally override, not passively ignore? Crazy.”
I heard they did but whoever is in the cockpit can manually override that - which is why they don’t think he was incapacitated.
I hadn’t read that he’d overridden it. That does make a big difference. However, I still wouldn’t jump to conclusions. Did he override it every time the captain knocked, or just when the captain tried to use the emergency entry method? If he went to the override position every time, that could be incapacitation, as it could be one switch configured so one direction is open, the other is override.
I don’t know the answer to that but I would assume the investigators could tell what was going on from the sounds in the cockpit and that sometime before the 30 seconds were up the co-pilot over road it when the regular code was put in and again when the emergency code was put in. But, I’m not a pilot, so. And the CEO of Lutftansa in his presser seemed pretty confident in was deliberate by the co-pilot.
They also said that the “button” to command a quick descent is not something which is accidentally pushed.
That’s awful, horrible, terrifying. A plane malfunction is one thing, but the co-pilot deliberately crashing a plane??? Why? Why would he want to do that? Suicide doesn’t make sense…
This is awful to say this, but at least this pilot crashed the plane where people could find it.
“They also said that the “button” to command a quick descent is not something which is accidentally pushed”
Yes, I heard that, too.
Were this a spy novel, there would a passenger on board who others wished to do harm to. The co-pilot would have been blackmailed to bring the plane down or risk harm to his family.
And, believe it or not, I find this more plausible than someone spontaneously deciding to end his own life while flying over the Alps with 150 passengers.
I am very curious as to what this button to command a quick descent entails. It’s not like any airplane has a hurry up and crash selection. Did he deploy the speedbrakes? That gets you down quicker than anything. I’ve just listened to bits and pieces on this, but someone who was speaking very commandingly and definitively, perhaps it was the CEO, sounded like he was so clueless about aviation, we were amazed. When I get home, I have to listen closer, and read the aviation boards. There will be many A320 pilots commenting on this.
^BD, I don’t think there is a button, per se. From what I heard and read was that it was a slow, controlled descent (8 minutes in length iirc,) which would have had to be manually entered to override autopilot.
@emilybee, the video I watched said “button,” but it was someone translating the French guy into English, so I figured that word may not have been a precise translation.
If the co-pilot did this intentionally – and the French officials stated in the press conference that this is the conclusion that the evidence point towards – then the proper word to describe his actions is “mass murder,” not “suicide.” The suicide is incidental as compared to the mass murder. I’ve always wondered why the press speaks of possible pilot “suicide” in air crashes, when in any other setting the perpetrators are referred to as mass-murderers, even when the incidents also involve suicide of the perpetrator.
Locked cockpit door that cannot be compromised from outside is due to changes after 911. That way a terrorist cannot force a pilot outside the door to open it. You can protect from intruders or insiders, but not both.
As to the suicide theory, had the pilot hung himself or shot himself, life insurance probably would not have paid out. If he thought that the voice recorder would be destroyed, then an “accident” might have meant double indemnity on life insurance, plus a payout from the airline to provide for his family.
I am doubting Islamic terrorism because there was no shout out to Allah as the plane approached the mountain.
They can’t call it terrorism because they don’t know his religion. Seems legit enough. Quoted from CNN:
""From what investigators have found, it seems the co-pilot “wanted to destroy the aircraft,” the prosecutor said.
However, as of now, there’s “nothing to allow us to say that it was a terrorist attack,” he said.
Robin said the co-pilot was a German national and not on any terrorism list. He named him as Andreas Lubitz.
When a reporter asked Robin whether he knew Lubitz’s religion, Robin said that he did not know."
Just nauseating.
Terrorism does not necessarily have anything to do with religion, nor are all cases of mass murder terrorism, although there has not been any indication of any kind of terrorism (i.e. politically motivated violence) yet.
Well, this hits even closer to home than I thought when I shared H was flying back from Germany on Tuesday. I found out this morning after I posted that, that one of our neighbors was supposed to be on that flight, but missed his connection because he was delayed coming out of Chicago on Monday due to the snow.