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It’s March 24, 2015, a typical day at the Marseille air traffic control center. At 9 hours,
29 minutes, and 40 seconds, the controller on duty establishes a radio connection with Germanwings
Flight 9525, flying from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. Following a standard procedure, the captain is
given clearance to fly directly to the IRMAR waypoint. The Airbus A320-211’s pilot confirms
the controller’s instructions by reading back the clearance. His aircraft is successfully directed.
Less than a minute later, the controller notices that Flight 9525 has changed the
selected altitude from 38,000 ft (11,500m) to 100 ft (30m). The autopilot mode is set
to descend, and the autothrust to idle. The plane is slowing down and descending.
Marseille control center tries to contact the Flight 9525 crew, but no one responds.
The controller keeps trying as the plane keeps descending. Something’s definitively wrong.
The French Air Defence system also tries to contact the Germanwings crew, but with no success.
At the Orange-Caritat Air Base, a military Mirage jet takes off to intercept the airplane.
The aircraft is now at an altitude below 10,000 feet (3,000m) and still descending. Then,
eleven minutes after the last radio contact, Flight 9525 disappears from the radar.
Germanwings Flight 9525 crashes into the side of a mountain, killing everyone on board.
It’s a full-scale tragedy, and no one’s quite sure what just happened. Was it
hijacked? Did it break down and crash? No. It was a small but essential oversight of
those responsible that resulted in one of the greatest aircraft disasters ever.
Earlier that morning, Germanwings’ Airbus A320-211 passed a regular preflight check
at its port of departure, the Barcelona–El Prat Airport. The flight was scheduled for 8:35 AM,
but the plane sat at the gate with a delay. Finally, after a quick boarding procedure,
the pilot rolled the aircraft toward the runway. Behind the controls was 34-year-old Captain,
Patrick Sondenheimer, an experienced pilot with ten years of flying experience and
6,000 flight hours. His co-pilot, 27-year-old Andreas Lubitz, who had joined the company 18
months before, had far less experience, with only 630 flight hours. The same crew made the outbound
flight that day, taking off from Dusseldorf at 6:01 AM and landing in Barcelona at 7:57 AM.
After apologizing for the delay, Captain Sondenheimer promised the Flight 9525 passengers
that he would do his best to make up for the lost time. At 9:00 AM UTC, Airbus A320-211,
registered as D-AIPX, took off from the runway and rose over the city of Barcelona.
After taking the course toward the north, Captain Sondenheimer set the autopilot
to Climb and Navigate mode. At 9:27 AM, the plane reached the cruise altitude of
38,000 feet (11,500m). With only an hour and a half to landing, Sondenheimer told his first
officer to prepare the landing gear and check the Dusseldorf airport and weather information.
Lubitz replied with a short but somewhat mysterious response: “Hopefully. We’ll see.”
A minute later, the crew established contact with the Marseille en-route control center and received
the flight route over France. It was 9:30 AM. The plane was on its course, so Sondenheimer handed
over the controls and the radio communication to Lubitz. He left the cockpit for the restroom.
Less than half a minute later, Lubitz changed the selected altitude at the Flight Control
Unit from the current 38,000 feet (11,500m) to 100 feet (30m), the lowest possible. The plane
began descending, but neither the passengers nor any of the crew, including the pilot, noticed
it. In Marseille, however, the controller did. He called Lubitz in but received no response. A
minute later, Captain Sondenheimer was returning from the restroom, and as he tried to enter the
cockpit, he found the door locked. The captain knocked but also got no response from inside.
He attempted to enter the emergency access code at the door panel, but it was disabled.
The co-pilot had switched on the cockpit-door lock on the cockpit pedestal to prevent access.
The feature was installed to prevent hijackers from entering the flight cabin.
Captain Sondenheimer tried to contact Lubitz over the intercom but with no success.
All that time, Marseille center continued attempts to establish a radio connection
with the crew. Lubitz was silent, but the controller could clearly hear his
breathing. He was conscious, calm, and in complete control of the plane.
Once the captain realized the plane was descending, he started banging on the door,
yelling at Lubitz to open it. With silence inside, Captain Sondenheimer tried to break in using
an ax. He smashed the door as hard as he could but could not break it. After 9/11, all planes
were required to install shock-proof cockpit doors. There was no way to enter the flight
cabin unless it was unlocked from the inside. The noise the captain was making while trying
to break in caught passengers' attention. At that moment, the plane was at an altitude of
10,000 feet (3,000m), with the peaks of the French Alps mountains dangerously close.
There was panic in the cabin as passengers screamed in fear. The captain kept yelling
and banging on the door, while from the inside of the cockpit, a warning message could be heard:
“Terrain! Terrain! Pull up! Pull Up!” The beeping became more frequent as the airplane
rushed unstoppably toward the mountain slopes. The flight recorder that tracked the entire
situation and allowed the reconstruction of these events stopped working at 09:41 AM.
At 10:15, the Marseille en-route control center informed The French Bureau of Enquiry
and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) of the Flight 9525 crash. The crash site was
located at an elevation of 5,085 feet (1,550m) on the southern slopes of the Tête du Travers peak,
which is at Alpes-de-Haute-Provence in southeastern France. At the moment of impact,
the airplane was flying at 435 miles per hour (700 km/h), causing total destruction of the aircraft.
The plane wreck was scattered across an area of two square kilometers.
The following day, on March 25, French Gendarmerie helicopters transported seven BEA investigators
to the crash site. They were accompanied by the search-and-rescue teams. Yet, there was hardly
anything to rescue. The largest piece of the wreck was the size of a car. None of the 144 passengers
and six crewmembers survived the crash. The scale of the airplane destruction,
coupled with the harsh weather and terrain conditions at the site, led the investigators
to focus their search on finding the cockpit voice recorder, the so-called “black box.”
After finding the voice recorder on the first day of the search and the flight data
recorder the following week, the inspectors could reconstruct the course of the event.
BEA included inspectors from Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the
United States in its investigation. While the investigation was ongoing,
the owner of the Germanwings airline, Lufthansa, organized the transport of the victim’s relatives
to the crash site. At Marseille, Germanwings established a family support center to
help relatives identify their loved ones and organize their transport back home. Passengers
on board the plane were citizens of eighteen countries, most coming from Germany and Spain.
After a month of investigation, the BEA prepared the preliminary report on May 6, 2015.
The report concluded that co-pilot Lubitz deliberately crashed the airplane by setting up
flight control inputs. Further, it was confirmed that during the outbound flight from Dusseldorf to
Barcelona, Lubitz practiced the same procedure. While the captain was absent from the cockpit,
he set up the altitude to 100ft (30m) and had Bordeaux air traffic control warn him.
It was a shocking claim. What makes a pilot, who was supposed to fly people
between locations safely, commit mass murder? Was he a terrorist? Was he insane?
Lubitz was born in 1987 in Neuburg an der Donau, Bavaria, but grew up in Montabaur,
a small town in the Rhineland-Palatinate state in western Germany. As a child,
Andreas Lubitz was quiet and “normal.” He dreamt of being a pilot. When he was 14, he joined the
Westerwald flight club, where he flew gliders. As an adult, his friends and colleagues said he
was a diligent and determined pilot. Definitely not the man who would deliberately crash a plane.
Airplanes and flying were Lubitz's passions. For him,
it wasn't just a job…it was a dream come true. When he was 20, Lubitz applied to join Lufthansa’s
flight academy in Bremen and was among the five percent of applicants who joined the program.
During the course at the Bremen academy, Lubitz took a short pause in his training,
after which he moved to Lufthansa’s training center in Arizona, in the United States.
Here he gained 100 hours of flight training. In 2011, Lubitz returned to Germany to continue his
training in flying jets. His first job was at Lufthansa as a flight attendant,
a standard path for everyone becoming a pilot. After finishing his training at the academy in
2013, Lubitz joined Germanwings and quickly became the first officer. As a co-pilot,
Lubitz co-piloted short flights across western Europe. That same year, he moved into a luxury
apartment in Dusseldorf with his girlfriend. In 2015, his life was going on a steady path.
Nothing was implying he had any sort of problems. That was until German police
inspectors searched his flat and a family home in Montabaur after the crash. Looking through
Lubitz's personal documents and computer revealed that he had kept a terrible secret from everyone.
Investigators found several torn-up sick notes that indicated Lubitz had a serious
health issue that should have prevented him from flying an airplane. He was suffering from
a psychosomatic disorder and anxiety disorder. The co-pilot initially thought he was losing his
sight and may have lost his pilot's license and job as a result. However, neither of the dozens
of ophthalmologists that examined him found any problems with his vision. On the other hand,
some of them noted Lubitz had developed obsessive fear and hypochondriacal disorder.
Over time his mental health deteriorated to the point that he began to consider suicide.
In the months leading up to the incident, his computer's browsing history showed he searched
the web for the most effective means of doing so. At that same time, Lubitz again started seeing
private physicians for his vision and sleep problems. One of them diagnosed
him with possible psychosis and recommended psychiatric hospital treatment. The doctor
prescribed him antidepressants and sleeping aid medications. Lubitz was issued a sick
note for 19 days. That was on March 12, 2015, twelve days before the accident.
The sick note, and many others he received before, were never forwarded to his employer. On top of
that, none of the doctors informed Germanwings of Lubitz's aggravated mental condition.
Knowing this, one might wonder how a man with a psychosomatic disorder could fly an airplane.
Was it possible that his superiors oversaw it? It was a surprise to his employers when Andreas
Lubitz's mental illness was discovered. According to Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr,
the company was unaware of any problems and had never been informed about them.
When he was hired, Lubitz passed a psychological test and never showed signs of distress during
flight. Spohr said, "He was 100% set to fly without restrictions. His flight performance
was perfect. There was nothing to worry about." Indeed, Lufthansa was never informed by Lubitz’s
physicians about his health issues. Despite the law allowing them to report the patient's status
to the authorities if it endangered other people's lives, they chose to adhere to the confidentiality
policy. Another problem was that European pilots were required to pass a psychiatric screening
only at the beginning of the training. After that, annual medical inspections did not include
thorough psychiatric tests. As far as Lufthansa was concerned, they couldn’t have known Lubitz
was incapable of flying an airplane. Or perhaps they could have?
As mentioned, Lubitz joined the Lufthansa Pilot Academy in Bremen in 2007. However, after just a
few months of training, he dropped out and returned home. Why? Because he was diagnosed
with a severe depressive episode followed by suicidal thoughts. After being treated with
powerful antidepressants, Lubitz's psychiatrist recommended to German aviation officials that he
resume his training in July 2009. According to him, "Mr. Lubitz completely recovered, there is
not any residuum remained. The treatment has been finished”. What he kept secret was that Lubitz
continued using his medication until October. Aviation officials allowed Lubitz to continue
the program but amended him to a “specific regular examination.” If
the pilot showed a need for psychiatric treatment, he would have been grounded.
In 2010, when Andreas Lubitz applied to a training program in Arizona, he lied about
his previous psychological problems. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration caught the lie
and forced Lubitz to admit he had a history of depression. In the end, he was granted to attend
the program and earn his pilot’s license. This was all noted in Lubitz’s personal
record. Lufthansa officials had the means to know he had a history of mental problems.
Additionally, they had to know, and they were obliged to ensure he was fit to fly. It would
have been possible to prevent the tragedy on Flight 9525 if officials had paid attention.
In retribution, Lufthansa agreed to pay the families of victims €75,000 each ($90,000)
plus €10,000 to every close relative of a victim as compensation for their pain and suffering.
Unfortunately, neither Lufthansa nor Arizona flight school was
held legally accountable for the disaster. In response to the tragedy, the BEA recommended
that all pilots in European Union airlines undergo routine in-depth psychological testing. Meanwhile,
The European Aviation Safety Agency recommended airliners adopt a rule of always having two
crewmembers in the cockpit for the entire flight duration. However, a year after the tragedy,
the recommendation was withdrawn. Lufthansa and Germanwings aborted the policy in 2017.
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