With so many airlines now insisting on the minimum of two in the cockpit, my bet is that there will be a rise in the number of 'Jihadists' applying for jobs as Cabin-Crew....

I am not a pilot but reading this thread I am astonished at the professional pilots posting on this thread sheer unwillingness to face up to the proponderence of evidence before their eyes which is tending to show this as an act of evil perpetrated by the First Officer. Even for a non-pilot such as me, some of the possible (non-murder theories) are so implausible and are frankly clutching at straws. It is time that the professional pilots here started to face up to the shocking and disgusting reality of what one of their colleagues has done.

Whilst I am not a pilot, I am a lawyer and do know a thing or two about examining the available evidence. So far in this thread, I haven't seen any condemnation of this pilots actions by any of the posters rather and somewhat incredibly there is effort after effort to somehow offer banal nonsensical rant about possible contributory factors such as the terms and conditions of employment at low cost carriers and the undesirability of low hosted pilots sitting in the RHS of an airliner. Aren't you all forgetting what this First Officer did to all those innocent victims? Moreover, his mental health difficulties can never justify his actions.

looking at the

PROSECUTER, I wonder whatever happened to aircraft accident investigators.
Gone with the wind ?

No more relevant, I´d say,
as GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT
seems to be the norm for TV , Press and radio.

...just my tow cents.

Note that the BEA accident investigating agency of France has nothing
on its website besides the initial report of 24 Mar. Today, it´s 27 Mar, 08:30z.
Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses (BEA) - English Homepage

Regards,

Well put Silvastrata, the pressures on flight crews theses days are extreme, in my humble opinion & it's easier to blame crew than the machine. This one will roll on for years no doubt.

@Rubberchicken:
anyone who wants to can watch a training video by Airbus on youtube

There are some recurring pointless posts and themes now obscuring this tragic thread. Before refusing to believe anything or putting on rose tinted glasses, I suggest everyone review one of the very few truly enlightening and sensible posts on here, which was from Capt Kremin, who basically called this very early on logical grounds as per known facts. I do not know how to link his posts so reproduce one here, which if you are prepared to consider facts from an experienced Airbus pilot, is worth its weight in gold:


The bewilderment of the Lufthansa CEO regarding this incident is telling.

There has been no mention of any faults being revealed via ACARS. If you cut back to AF447 they were referenced very early in the piece.

The Lufthansa CEO would be apprised very early by his own people if any hint of mechanical problems was evident. But nothing so far except extreme bewilderment.

The aircraft was travelling at excessive speed; in excess of VMO. That is acceptable if you are on fire and heading for Nice or somewhere like that. This aircraft remained on track.

Travelling in excess of VMO in a A320 disconnects the AP and triggers the high speed protections which pitch the aircraft up. This aircraft did not pitch up. Which probably means it was being over-ridden by whomever was flying it.

That raises the possibility that the aircraft was hand flown all the way down.

That is ok if you are trying to get to an airport quickly but this aircraft stayed on track and headed directly for the Alps.

This aircraft did not capture any altitudes. Either the descent altitude was set below 6000 feet on the FCU; unlikely but it could have been done in error for the initial descent, or it was being hand flown.

Pulling open des on an emergency descent, provided a lower altitude is set in the FCU, in cruise engages the speed mode which would have captured the cruise mach, which then would have crossed-over to an IAS somewhere on descent. The autothrust commands IDLE and the selected speed is controlled by the elevators.
Therefore only way to achieve max speed is if someone sets it there. There is no reason to do so, and you certainly don't deliberately fly in excess of VMO. The high speed protections would be fighting against you.

Barring some sort of irrecoverable autoflight glitch, the foul play aspect will be increasingly looked at.

My only insight into the French legal/criminal system has been gleaned from watching detective and police series from that country.
It does however seem distinctly different to what a lot of people may have experienced or are expecting.
However that it is what is happening and we are going to have to bear with that
and try to understand.
There is no one standard or system even within Europe let alone worldwide.

As for motive: we do not yet know. One thing is certain, a simple suicide does not kill 150 people. When someone kills 150 people they are making a statement. You can call them a terrorist if you wish - but it may be a lone act such as Breivik in Norway or part of a bigger "cause". Depression alone does not cause someone to kill 150 people, nor a desire to die for oneself. I suggest that time will tell in this case.

I don't think anyone suggested this.
What I envision (and I sincerely hope to be proven wrong), are airlines controlled remotely by ATC. A human on the ground in a control room will be at the controls, not a computer.
Unless someone can smuggle a weapon or bomb onboard, nobody will ever be able to hijack a plane anymore.
If this is really a suicide, the case for pilotless cockpits just got much more stronger.

Talk about idiots on camera giving away "trade secrets", as some will do or volunteer to say anything just to get on camera.

I have no faith whatsoever in a government to tell the truth, so I don't put too much faith in it's agencies. Remember the cover up of some evidence with the TU144, crash at Le Bourget in the mid '70's, later admitted by a retiree? I am not convinced we have heard all the evidence about the Concorde disaster either.

Too many vested interests at stake here also.

1. Suppose there was one of these low tech curved metal gadgets, keys we used to call them, overrides the number code pad, when you go out of the cockpit you take it with you. Having a system which can, through malfunction or otherwise, lock people out of the cockpit was always going to cause grief one way or another.

2. Suggesting having an FA in the cockpit monitoring the remaining pilot is dumb. They have no idea what is going on and most likely couldn't do anything about it if they did.

3. If this was deliberate, i.e. the co pilot was not in some way incapacitated, then it wouldn't have happened with the U.S. 1500 hour system. He would still have been flying a 402 at this point. If that.

Perhaps you should talk to Mr Airbus? :O

Some people have expressed doubts about what a microphone can pick up.

There are many types of microphone, and in my work I regularly use Pressure Zone (or "Boundary Effect") Mics, as well as standard "Omni-directional" Mics.

These are low cost and freely available, and do indeed pick up everything in a room clearly, and almost equally; thus they are superb for conferences, music and stage work. I do not know what type of mic is used in the flight deck, but miniature versions of all these mics are available.

Even with my fairly basic music/audio software I can enhance and process what the mic has picked up.

I see no reason to cast doubt on what was heard.

Maybe it's because the professionals are waiting to hear the FACTS after the formal investigation is concluded, rather than acting on all the 'facts' provided to us by the media and other unqualified sources.... Some of them wouldn't know an A320 from their a--- !

Flying Hours
 

Its been reported that the Co-Pilot had 630hrs of flying time - is that Total Time or Time on Type? If its total time, which would be very odd indeed - what has he been doing for the last 7 or 8 years when that is typically what some pilots knock out in a year minimum?? Either way it looks strange to me!

Agree with 1 & 2. Disagree with 3. Nutjobs can occur at any age.

Sharksandwich - I think the objective in having a crew member in the cockpit when one of the pilots is absent is to have someone other than the pilot available to unlock the door.

Flying Counsel wrote:
Obviously, you have already made-up your mind and concluded that, after 2 days of investigation and no FDR found, the evidence is conclusive. The authorities might as well stop investigating.
Well, I think they shouldn't. The stuff debated on this network is from and for pilots, who speak a language you may not understand. The concerns raised are real and confront us every day.
And for the record: if the FO took everyone down on purpose, even for this there should be an explanation.
So I suggest, you sit back, read (maybe take notes), and let us deal with the situation the best way know.

Could be time on type or total time, the difference is at most 90 hours not counting his glider time.

Apparently he joined the lufthansa flight school in 2008, took a break in 2009 and returned after he was declared fit to fly again. At this time the economic crisis was in full swing and flight training was slowed down as much as possible. After that he worked in the cabin while he was on the waiting list for a flight deck position within the lufthansa group. In 2013 he joined germanwings as a student pilot and completed his MPL there (remember, the full MPL is only issued after the LIFUS phase is completed) and then continued to fly the line there.

not ideal computer programing?
 

Just watching the morning news as a bog standard PPL but with many many more hours than the commercial co-pilot! I am a tad surprised on two fronts a) that 2 people in the cockpit was not considered best practice by Europe when the USA did and strikes me as logical b) seeing the flight sim clip where you just dial in the height and say go, it seems odd with such clever systems you can dial in to "crash" when it would seem sensible it should not be able to fly itself below MSA etc unless in landing config accepting you can never completely prevent a very sad individual determined to kill 150 innocent people.