Aviation experts suggest it was likely a mechanical issue that caused Germanwings Flight 9525 to crash Tuesday in the French Alps.
The Airbus A320 was about an hour into its flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf, cruising at more than 30,000 feet, when it descended suddenly to 6,550 feet and then crashed into terrain. All 150 on board are feared dead.
Germanwings is the budget-oriented subsidiary of Germany’s largest airline, Lufthansa.
Aviation expert Karl Moore says the jet’s drastic descent could have been the result of pilot error, but it was likely a mechanical problem that brought the plane down.
“My sense is that it was probably a mechanical failure,” Moore told CTV News Channel.
He also says the age of the 24-year-old plane is unlikely to have been a factor in the incident.
“It’s an older plane but these planes are very well maintained,” said Moore, who teaches at McGill University in Montreal. “Lufthansa has a seven-star rating in terms of safety, very well respected.”
Aviation training expert Phil Durdey said preliminary information available Tuesday indicated that the plane lost altitude at 3,500 feet per minute, 1,500 feet per minute faster than the normal descent rate.
“If [the pilot] lost both engines, that could be a significant problem to have,” Durdey told CTV News Channel.
It is possible that the pilots may have attempted to glide the A320 to a nearby airport. Durdey said a 2,100-foot runway was approximately 10 kilometres southeast of the crash site.
Such a short runway is drastically shorter than the minimum distance required for a plane of that size to land.
“But that’s all you’ve got in the area, so it’s better to put the aircraft down there than to put it down in the mountains.”
Unusual timing
According to a safety analysis by Boeing, only 10 per cent of fatal aviation incidents occur during the cruise phase.
Aviation safety consultant Chris Yates said it is peculiar for a plane to crash during that stage in its flight.
“It is unusual for an aircraft to literally fall from 30-odd thousand feet down in a very short space of time,” said Yates.
The A320 is certified to fly at altitudes of up to 39,000 feet above sea level.
Yates said recovery crews will focus on locating the tail portion of the plane, since that’s where the flight recorders are installed in most aircraft.
Data stored in the recorders should help investigators determine what brought down the jetliner.
With files from The Associated Press
