Germanwings Airbus A320 crash: Grim reality of crash site

By Philip Otuo,

Wreckage ... part of the Germanwings Airbus A320. Picture: AFP/Denis Bois

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• Authorities say black box findings 'usab...
• Wreckage ... part of the Germanwings Air...

• Black box recording retrieved reveals pilot left cockpit
• Spanish relatives on way to crash site
• Bodies begin to be pulled from wreckage
• France’s leader Hollande, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Mariano Rajoy from Spain visit crash site

THE first half of Germanwings Flight 9525 was chilling in its normalcy. It took off from Barcelona en route to Duesseldorf, climbing up over the Mediterranean and turning over France. The last communication was a routine request to continue on its route.

Minutes later, at 10:30am on Tuesday, the Airbus A320 inexplicably began to descend. Within 10 minutes it had plunged from its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet to just over 6,000 feet and slammed into a remote mountainside.

To find out why, investigators have been analysing the mangled black box that contains an audio recording from the cockpit. Remi Jouty, the head of France’s accident investigation bureau BEA, said that it has yielded sounds and voices, but so far not the “slightest explanation” of why the plane crashed, killing all 150 on board.
A newspaper report, however, suggests the audio contains intriguing information at the least: One of the pilots is heard leaving the cockpit, then banging on the door with increasing urgency in an unsuccessful attempt to get back in.
“The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door and there is no answer,” The New York Times quotes an unidentified investigator as saying. “And then he hits the door stronger and no answer. There is never an answer.”
Eventually, the newspaper quotes the investigator as saying: “You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”
The investigator, whom the newspaper said could not be identified because the investigation is continuing, said officials don’t know why the pilot left. He also does not speculate on why the other pilot didn’t open the door or make contact with ground control before the crash.

Briefing ... employees of Lufthansa — which operated the budget airline — head to a meeting to prepare for the arrival of the relatives. Picture: AFP/ BERTRAND LANGLOIS

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, airlines in the US don’t leave one pilot alone in the cockpit. The standard operating procedure is that if one of the pilots leaves - for example to use the bathroom - a flight attendant takes their spot in the cockpit. It was not immediately clear if European airlines have adopted the same practice.
The names of the pilots have not been released.
French officials gave no details from the recording on Wednesday, insisting the cause of the crash remained a mystery. They said the descent was gradual enough to suggest the plane was under the control of its navigators.
“At this point, there is no explanation,” Jouty said. “One doesn’t imagine that the pilot consciously sends his plane into a mountain.”
Jouty said “sounds and voices” were registered on the digital audio file recovered from the first black box. But he did not divulge the contents, insisting days or weeks will be needed to decipher them.
“There’s work of understanding voices, sounds, alarms, attribution of different voices,” the BEA chief said.

Scattered over mountainside ... debris of the Germanwings Airbus A320. Picture: AFP /DENIS BOIS

Confusion surrounded the fate of the second black box. French President Francois Hollande said the casing of the flight data recorder had been found in the scattered debris, but was missing the memory card that captures 25 hours’ worth of information on the position and condition of almost every major part in a plane. Jouty refused to confirm the discovery.
French officials said terrorism appeared unlikely and Germany’s top security official said there was no evidence of foul play.
This latest development came as the leaders of Germany, France and Spain made first-hand inspections of the investigation operations at the foothills of the crash site and from the air for the first time since the aircraft crashed.
Relatives of the Spanish victims have also begun their journey to the crash site.
A bus with 14 relatives has left Barcelona for an overnight journey that will take them to the crash area by Thursday.

Search mission ... Search and rescue personnel making their way to the crash site. Picture: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Those going on the bus apparently did not want to take a Thursday morning flight from Barcelona to Marseille that is expected to shuttle many more relatives toward the site.
Spanish civil protection spokesman Sergio Delgado said all of the Spanish relatives will meet up in Marseille and head to the remote crash zone in Seyne-Les-Alpes together.
Spain’s government has said at least 51 Spaniards were among the 150 victims of the crash. Airline Germanwings has said 35 of the 125 passengers identified were Spaniards.
This comes as authorities made the first grim retrievals of bodies from the doomed crash with
helicopters beginning to airlift the remains of the victims.

Meeting point ... Rescue crew get ready to go out and continue the investigation. Picture: Patrick Aventurier/Getty Images

Mr Jouty revealed the airline flew in a straight line directly into the what would have been a weather visible mountain but he stopped short on saying whether this was on purpose or an autopilot error.
Germanwings also yesterday confirmed 72 Germans were killed in the crash, the first major air passenger disaster on French soil since the 2000 Concorde accident just outside Paris, with another 51 passengers coming from Spain. There were also passengers from America, Britain, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Colombia, Denmark, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Iran, Venezuela and the Netherlands although positive DNA confirmation could take weeks.

Greig Friday. Picture: Supplied.

Carol Friday. Picture: Supplied.

The Australian’s, the mother and son from Victoria, Carol and Greig Friday, had been enjoying a holiday of a lifetime in Barcelona before they boarded the Airbus A320 aircraft for the 10am flight from the Spanish city to Dusseldorf in Germany.
Parent company Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said the late takeoff from Barcelona of the Germanwings plane was due to airport congestion and not related to the incident.
Spohr added the crash of the plane that killed 150 people remained “incomprehensible.”
Spohr said Wednesday that “we still cannot understand” what happened in the “terrible accident.” He said it is “too early for speculation” about the cause.
The aircraft “had a clean maintenance bill” from an inspection the day before Tuesday’s crash and was “in perfect technical shape,” he said. No distress signal was received from the plane.
Spohr said he had a “very, very emotional meeting” with the relatives of the victims.

No explanation ... Remi Jouty, the head of France’s Bureau of Investigation and Analysis for the Security of Civil Aviation. Picture: AP/Francois Mori

Germanwings crash ... Gendarmes Regional commander General David Galtier at Seyne-less-alpes. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

He said Lufthansa has never lost a plane during the cruise stage of flight.
“This represents the darkest hours in the 60-year history of our Lufthansa group. We are still in a state of shock,” he said. That is despite confirmation a Germanwings flight crashed in 1953 less than 2km from the latest incident.
Lufthansa, which owns Germanwings, has offered “immediate financial help” for those who need it.
France’s leader Hollande, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Mariano Rajoy from Spain personally thanked search teams and met residents in the villages of Le Vernet and Seyne-less-Alpes, where the salvaging operations have been set up.
Germanwings meanwhile said it cancelled one flight on Wednesday and was using 11 planes from other carriers for about 40 flights after some of its crew members had refused to fly amid safety fears.

Sombre: ... Thomas Winkelmann, chief executive officer of Germanwings, during a press conference in Cologne. Picture: Getty

Parent company Lufthansa has also arranged for two flights to leave from Spain and Germany today to take family members of the victims of the crash to southern France.
“This will have the support of the French authorities who will be able to bring the relatives and friends of the victims to a family assistance centre near the crash site which is still locked off and will remain locked off,” Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr said.
He added: “I just returned from meeting the relatives and friends of those who lost their lives yesterday and this meeting is hard to describe in words, it was very, very emotional for all of us.”
Analysts whoare yet to say what caused the crash have suggested the rate of descent must have been a catastrophic failure. It has also been revealed the pilots were most likely so busy trying to save their aircraft they did not make any distress signal or call. Weather was fine and not deemed a factor to the crash.
The site of the wreckage is a remote corner of the French Alps, in a deep broken moonscape-like ravine with everything on flight 9525 scattered over the whole area.

Black box ... the Cockpit Voice Recorder from the downed Germanwings Airbus A320. Picture: AFP

“It’s big, bigger than big,” Regional Gendarme commander and site operations and investigation co-ordinator General David Galtier told News Corp Australia, describing the scene and task ahead.
Gen Galtier said as well as his 600 personnel now in the area he had a small team of psychologists, doctors and priests to help the victims’ families who began their journey into the mountains to find answers.
“The most important thing for us is to preserve the zone and find the bodies, that is the most important thing for us,” he said.
“The wreckage area is very large, it is difficult to get there and work there and that is why we have specialist (gendarme) personnel here. The area I would say that we are dealing with is the size of two football stadiums.
“It will be a very, very long operation and investigation to find out what happened. We have to go in there (site) little by little, slowly, this is important for our investigation.”

In person ... German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and French President Francois Hollande pay their respect. Picture: AFP/CHRISTOPHE ENA

A sea of lit candles and flowers has covered the front steps of a German school in mourning after 16 of its students died in the plane disaster in the French Alps.
Pupils wept and hugged near the makeshift memorial of candles to share the pain of losing their friends in the tragedy.
The 14 girls and two boys were among at least 72 Germans who made up nearly half the disaster’s total death toll of 150.
General Galtier said it was a French operation but had international cooperation and coordination with the German and Spanish authorities and others.
He said at the foremost of the minds of his men and women was also the families.
“We want to explain to them what happened but also to assure them that we are finding their loved ones,” he said.

In mourning ... Students and well wishers gather at a memorial of flowers and candles. Picture: AFP/ROLF VENNENBERND

Paying respects ... The Germany team observes a minutes silence in remembrance of victims. Picture: Matthias Hangst/Bongarts/Getty Images

French President Francois Hollande has vowed that the remains of those who died when the Germanwings Airbus slammed into the French Alps will be found and returned to grieving relatives.
Reports out of Germany suggest the flight was grounded just 24 hours earlier with technical problems centred around its landing gear. Neither the airline nor air crash investigators would confirm or deny the reports.
The doomed aircraft’s last routine check was March 23 in Germany by Lufthansa technicians with a major overhauling check performed in 2013.
The Captain of the doomed flight had more than 10 years flying experience and 6000 flight hours of this particular model.
On Tuesday, many Germanwings aircrew refused to fly, stranding passengers in both Germany and the UK, claiming they had safety fears.

Tragic news ... Fans hold up a banner in remembrance of the victims of Germanwings flight 4U9525. Picture: Dennis Grombkowski/Bongarts/Getty Images

Tragedy ... residents of Llinars del Valles react after observing a minute of silence to honour the victims of the crash. Picture: AFP

Spain declared three days mourning for their dead as Spanish King Felipe cut short his first state visit to France.
Among the dead also, opera singers Oleg Bryjak, 54, and Maria Radner, 33, flying to their home city of Dusseldorf. Radner was travelling with her husband and baby, one of two infants on board the plane.
The Barcelona soccer club is also joining three days of official mourning.
The club made the announcement in a statement Wednesday, saying club flags will be flown at half-staff.
Two Iranian journalists who covered the “El Clasico” soccer match between Barcelona and Real Madrid on Sunday were among the crash victims.