Tragedy in the Alps: Remembering victims of fatal flight six years on
It was the plane crash that horrified the world.
On this day in 2015 the 28-year-old co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 brought down the aircraft, killing all 150 people on board. Among the victims were mothers and babies, and a group of schoolchildren. Three Britons lost their lives in the tragedy.
French and German investigators later concluded that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz intentionally crashed the Airbus A320 into a mountain in the French Alps 40 minutes after the Düsseldorf-bound flight left on what should have been a routine two-hour flight from Barcelona in Spain.
Investigators believed the co-pilot was severely depressed. He was seen by 41 doctors in the years before the crash and was urged to attend a psychiatric hospital weeks earlier, but his employer was never alerted. Both Germanwings and its parent company, Lufthansa, previously said Lubitz had passed all tests of fitness to fly.
However, Lufthansa also acknowledged it knew the co-pilot had suffered from severe depression in 2009 while training for his pilot’s licence.
The British victims were Paul Bramley, 28, a student from Hull, Martyn Matthews, 50, a dad of two from Wolverhampton, and sevenmonth-old Julian PraczBandres, who had been travelling with his mother, Spanish-born Marina Bandres Lopez-Belio, 37.
The investigators’ report a year after the crash was based on evidence obtained from the cockpit voice recorder. It revealed the plane took off from Barcelona at 9am and began travelling over the Mediterranean towards France, taking about half an hour to climb to 38,000ft.
In the first 20 minutes of the flight, the pilots could be heard discussing the stop-over at Barcelona with a flight attendant. At 9.30am the plane made its final contact with air traffic control – a routine message about permission to continue on its route.
Shortly afterwards, the captain – father of two, Patrick Sonderheimer – told the co-pilot he was leaving the cockpit (probably to go to the toilet) and asked him to take over radio communications. The cockpit door is heard opening and closing.
Seconds later, shortly before 9.31am, the selected altitude was changed from 38,000ft to 100ft and the plane began to descend.
Two minutes later its speed had increased and air traffic control contacted the co-pilot – continuing to do so over the coming minutes without a response. A buzzer requesting access to the cockpit sounded at 9.34am followed by knocking and muffled voices asking for the door to be opened. Investigators said that at 9.39am “noises similar to violent blows on the cockpit door were recorded on five occasions” over the course of a minute.
Seconds before impact the “terrain, terrain, pull up, pull up” warning was triggered and continued until the end of the recording at 9.41am.
As a result of the crash, many airlines changed their policy to ensure two crew members remained in the cockpit at all times.
The European Aviation Safety Agency also recommended that “airlines should ensure that at least two crew, including at least one qualified pilot, are in the cockpit at all times of the flight or implement other equivalent mitigating measures”.