With little information known earlier in the week of why the
Germanwing, a jet with 150 people on board, crashed into the mountains
northwest of Nice (France) amid a relatively clear sky on Tuesday, investigators are now saying
that one pilot left the cockpit prior to the plane’s descent and was unable to
get back in. According to an audio recording, the investigator said “The guy
outside is knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer. And then he
hits the door stronger, and no answer. There is never an answer. You can hear
he is trying to smash the door down.” While the audio appeared to give some
understanding into the circumstances leading to the Germanwings crash, it also
left many questions unanswered. There are so many questions: why did one pilot
leave the cockpit? Why wouldn’t the other pilot open the door? The descent from
38,000 feet in about 10 minutes is alarming, but gradual enough to suggest that
the Airbus had not been damaged drastically and at no point during the descent
was there any communication to air traffic controllers or any other sign of
emergency for that matter. The plane was traveling with enough speed that it
was all but destroyed, killing all 144 passengers and crew of six, leaving very
few clues. At the crash site, workers found the casing of the plane’s other
black box (flight data recorder), but the memory card had been thrown loose or
destroyed by the impact. A French official involved in the investigation said
that the lack of communication from the pilots during the plane’s descent was
disturbing, and that the possibility that their silence was deliberate could
not be ruled out. He also stated, “So far, we don’t have any evidence that
points clearly to a technical explanation, so we have to consider the
possibility of deliberate human responsibility.”
I do not understand just how many airplane disasters it is
going to take before the airline industry transmits flight data electronically,
rather than storing it in a little black box that gets destroyed with the plane
itself. There are too many casualties to date between airplane crashes or
airplanes ‘disappearing’ – how does an airplane DISAPPEAR?! The possibility
that we may never learn what caused this tragedy is unsettling.
Brittany Schrum
03/26/15
6:56PM
No comments:
Post a Comment