Germanwings Flight 9525

Germanwings Flight 9525
	D-AIPX in June 2014
Accident
Date	24 March 2015
Summary	Deliberate act caused by the co-pilot
Site	Prads-Haute-Bléone, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France ; 44°16′50″N 6°26′25″E / 44.280556°N 6.440278°ECoordinates: 44°16′50″N 6°26′25″E / 44.280556°N 6.440278°E
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Airbus A320-200
Operator	Germanwings
Registration	D-AIPX
Flight origin	Barcelona–El Prat Airport, Spain
Destination	Düsseldorf Airport, Germany
Passengers	144
Crew	6
Fatalities	150 (all)
Survivors	0

Germanwings Flight 9525 (4U9525/GWI9525)^[a] was a scheduled international passenger flight flying from Barcelona, Spain to Düsseldorf, Germany, operated by the Lufthansa-owned low-cost airline Germanwings.

On 24 March 2015, the Airbus A320-200 jetliner crashed around 100 kilometres (62 mi) northwest of Nice, in the French Alps. All 144 passengers and six crew members were killed.

The crash was a murder-suicide planned and acted out by 27-year old co-pilot Andreas Lubitz.

Overview[change | change source]

The plane, which had taken off at 10:01 a.m. from the Barcelona-El Prat airport, disappeared from the radars at 10:39 a.m., when it was at an altitude of 2,000 meters above the department of Alpes de Alta. Provence, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region.

Telemetry data indicated that, before disappearing from radar, the A320 would have started to fall at 10:31 a.m. and would have lost about 4,000 meters of altitude in four minutes. At first it was thought that the pilots had issued an emergency signal at 10:47, when the plane was at an altitude of 1,500 feet and in an abnormal situation, but it was actually sent by the controllers. In the words of the President of the French Republic, François Hollande, the conditions of the incident suggest that there would be no survivors. Hollande also initially stated that the plane was carrying German, Spanish and Turkish passengers, without specifying whether there were more victims of other nationalities.

The main hypothesis for the cause of the aircraft crash is that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately caused it to crash. The recording of one of the black boxes of the destroyed Airbus allows us to verify that Lubitz activated the closing of the cockpit door and deliberately began the descent of the plane over the mountains. His breathing at the time of descent was normal and he ignored the captain's instructions to open the door, even when the latter tried to knock it down with an ax to regain control of the aircraft.

Crew and passengers[change | change source]

Opera singers Oleg Bryjak and Maria Radner were passengers on the plane.

Nationality	Passengers	Crew	Total
Germany	66	6	72
Spain	51	0	51
Kazakhstan	3	0	3
United Kingdom	3	0	3
United States	3	0	3
Canada	3	0	3
Argentina	3	0	3
France	3	0	3
Australia	2	0	2
Colombia	2	0	2
Iran	2	0	2
Italy	2	0	2
Morocco	2	0	2
Venezuela	2	0	2
Japan	2	0	2
Mexico	2	0	2
Bosnia and Herzegovina	1	0	1
Netherlands	1	0	1
Belgium	1	0	1
Sweden	1	0	1
Denmark	1	0	1
India	1	0	1
Israel	1	0	1
Turkey	1	0	1
Poland	1	0	1
Chile	1	0	1
Paraguay	1	0	1
Norway	1	0	1
New Zealand	1	0	1
Total	144	6	150