Plane crashes in France
An Airbus A320 operated by Germanwings, the budget carrier of Germany’s Lufthansa crashes in a remote area of the French Alps Tuesday, near the ski resort of Barcelonnette, killing all 150 on board in the worst plane disaster in mainland France for four decades. The Airbus A320 plunged for eight minutes into a snowbound inaccessible mountain area in southeastern France. French officials say no distress signal had been issued. The plane, carrying 144 mainly Spanish and German passengers and six crew, was travelling from Barcelona to the western German city of Duesseldorf when it came down. Civil aviation authorities
The crew did not send a Mayday. It was air traffic control that decided to declare the plane was in distress because there was no contact with the crew of the plane
Lufthansa:
We’ve never had a total loss of aircraft in the company’s history until now.
Flights cancelled
Several Germanwings flights are cancelled after their crews refuse to fly over concerns the crash may have been linked to a repair to the nose-wheel landing doors on Monday, according to an unconfirmed report in Spiegel magazine. Lufthansa denies that there was any link between the repair and the cancelled flights. The airline confirms that the aircraft had been grounded for an hour on Monday for repairs to the nose-wheel landing doors, but insisted the issue was not “safety-related”.
The repair was purely to fix a noise that the door was making, and the aircraft was flying again from 10am on Monday.
Offers financial assistance
Lufthansa offers to pay the families of the victims up to 55,000 euros per passenger on the crashed Germanwings plane. The families are not required to pay back this financial assistance. Additional compensation from Lufthansa is expected to follow since the fact that Lubitz had been hiding a serious mental illness from management did not activate the exclusion clause in Lufthansa’s insurance policy.
Flight data recorder unrecoverable
A senior Lufthansa manager doubts that the flight data recorder (will be found because the plane was traveling so fast (500 mph) that the recorder could have been pulverized. The cockpit voice recorder has already been found.
It could be that the impact was too much and it is not sending any signals.
Informed flight school of depression
Lufthansa says Lubitz had informed the flight school about his previous mental health issues in 2009. Lufthansa:
In his correspondence, he informed the Flight Training Pilot School in 2009… about a previous episode of severe depression.