Doomed jet’s sister plane hit trouble 4 months ago

ONLY the quick-thinking of a pilot averted a similar tragedy last year when a sister plane of the Germanwings jet suddenly lost altitude and nose-dived.

A Lufthansa A321 – a longer version of the A320 – unexpectedly descended 3,000ft while cruising over Pamplona, Spain, last November.

The jet, with 109 passengers and crew aboard, was at an altitude of 31,000ft when it started to lose height. The flight crew managed to regain control at 28,000ft.

In December an Airbus A320 crashed into the Java Sea killing all 162 people on board in an as-yet unexplained incident.

The plane operated by AirAsia – owned by QPR chairman Tony Fernandes – vanished from radar screens in bad weather with initial reports suggesting it climbed so fast into a storm that it lost lift and plunged into the sea.

Another dramatic rescue of an A320 was the so-called ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ in January 2009 when a US Airways Airbus crash-landed in New York’s Hudson River.

Thanks to pilot Captain Chesley Sullenberger’s text-book landing after striking a flock of geese all 1 people on board survived.

Such incidents confirm the fears of some pilots, who remain uneasy about the highly automated systems used by Airbus, which use electronic side stick – like a video game joystick – rather than a traditional mechanical control column.

Until yesterday there have been 60 incidents since the aircraft family was introduced, including a 11 previous fatal crashes that have resulted in 789 fatalities.

The first A320 entered service in March 1988 and by the end of February 201 nearly 6,200 ‘A320 family’ aircraft were in operation worldwide. Airbus says that to date, the entire fleet has accumulated more than 8 million flights, carrying around 12billion passengers.