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Germanwings A320 crash in French alps


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Not much to go on at this stage, but a Germanwings A320 flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf is reported missing over the French alps, and helicopters have reported seeing the remains of an aircraft on the ground.

So sadly it looks like a bad one :(

Prior to disappearing from radars it descended from FL380 to Fl110 in about 8 minutes, and then proceeded down to about 6800 feet before leveling off and shortly after that vanished from radar. Terrain in the area goes well above that altitude though, so the pilots might have been in a situation they couldn't get out of once they got control of the aircraft.

 

 

EDIT: The whole flight can be tracked here http://www.flightradar24.com/data/airplanes/d-aipx/#5d42675

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In light of what we know so far, thanks to <enter deity here> he didn't aim this missile at a built up area.

A mayday by ATC - that's pretty novel.   John

Well, it did fly into a granite wall at about 370 knots.  The photos of the CVR show the base housing (rectangular structure) severely distorted but the cylindrical portion containing the memory board

They may have had a decompression problem, hence the dive but this is normally communicated by radio however I dare say all radio units have been told to stay schtum, however it will all come out in the wash

sad thing to happen though

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A bit of cut and paste, the quote below comes from AVHerald.com.

"France's DGAC reported the crew transmitted an emergency call just prior to the aircraft disappearing from radar near Bassinet."

No further mention of what type of emergency though.

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Lot's of speculations indeed..

 

Saw that Der Spiegel among other things mentioned a possible bird strike... at FL380.... sounds rather unlikely...

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Its pretty hot stuff here in Spain. The flight was from Barcelona, there were 45 Spaniards aboard and also 16 german kids going home after having been in a family interchange program with school teachers.

As mentioned, there werent any mayday from the flight. ATC made the alarm when the AC disappeared from radar.The weather was supposedly good.

The AC was a 24 year old Airbus A320 That had been checked yesterday. They are trying to go to the place where the AC is now. The weather will change to snow later on and tomorrow. Its in an area with difficult acces near Barcelonette in the french alps.   

Maybe I´m wrong, but lots of Airbus falling down lately?  THis computer controled sidestick thing gives me the creep.

 

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@Anders, you have to have 8 computers fail on an airbus to lose control and it won't let you put it in a dangerous attitude. 

 

It has to be something devastating, as Micke said, too high at FL380 for birds. An explosion has been discounted due to the size of some of the debris.

 

A sad day for both nations and their families.

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I think it is strange that there was no distress call given the time taken to lose all that altitude.  

 

On the news at ten this evening a woman who lives near the crash site said she heard a loud engine noise and then a huge explosion. To me that sounds like a powered decent which would rule out a high altitude structural catastrophe.   So why no distress call if the aircraft was intact during its decent?

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As Anders said one of the black boxes were found yesterday.

 

From what I've picked up it's the CVR, there are however rumors that it was damaged and that it might be impossible to retrieve the data.

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@ J G  I'm thinking rapid decomprssion and an imobalised flight crew :(

Good call. My thinking too. They had 8 minutes to make an emergency call. Even if they had their hands full handling a rapid decent, you would expect an emergency call.

Rapid decompression and immobilised crew sounds plausible to me.

As for A320's and accidents...given that the majority of airliners in European airspace are now Airbus, you would expect reported accidents to be predominantly Airbuses'. Doesn't mean they are more prone to accidents at all. Hope I don't start a "which is best" discussion, but my preference is fly-by-wire with it's flight envelope protection any day. Boeing or Airbus.

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From what I've picked up it's the CVR, there are however rumors that it was damaged and that it might be impossible to retrieve the data.

 

The news I´ve got is that indeed it is the CVR and it is damaged but it should be possible to retrieve the data. If you see the photoarrow-10x10.png posted before and the video of the scene,... Everything is totally damaged.

Speculation about what happened is until now...... speculation. We know nothing.

 

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Interesting, but hardly surprising, that there are such differences in what media reports. 

 

Although I did get the information regarding issues with data retrieval from one of the Swedish tabloids (Aftonbladet in case you are from up here originally, Anders could after all be a Swedish name :whis: ), so perhaps not the most reliable source....

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