A German aviation publication is calling for the reopening of the investigation of the Germanwings A320 crash in France in 2015, saying there were some fundamental errors made by investigators. The crash, which killed all 150 people onboard, was blamed on the suicide of Flight 9525’s First Officer Andreas Lubitz, who the investigation found deliberately plowed the airliner into a mountain. Simon Hradecky, who runs the popular aviation incident Web site Aviation Herald, said in a lengthy post on his site on Friday, there is evidence Lubitz wasn’t on the flight deck at the time of the crash and that Capt. Patrick Sondenheimer was monitoring the flight deck when the plane went down. “Hence the investigation into the Germanwings Flight 9525 accident needs to be re-opened and conducted by an independent accident investigation authority who has not been involved in the investigation so far,” Hradecky wrote.
He also claims that conclusive proof of who was flying could be available in the records of human remains found at the site but DNA tests on the remnants of a person who was ejected through the windshield of the aircraft have not been made public. There are also CVR recordings that suggest whoever was on the flight deck was somehow incapacitated based on his rapid respiration rate of about 26 breaths per minute. Hradecky also says his research and experimentation using two A320 flight control units proves the system is capable of initiating an uncommanded descent such as was documented in the incident. In fact, he said the altitude selections as recorded by the flight data recorder happened so quickly they could not have been the result of manual inputs by crew members.
Among the most puzzling inconsistencies found by Hradecky is the investigation’s determination that Lubitz was in the left seat and the captain was in the right seat. It’s fundamental to the official conclusion that Lubitz, whose alleged history of mental health issues quickly became the focal point of the investigation, had locked himself on the flight deck after the captain left the flight deck. Hradecky said there is evidence it was actually Lubitz who first asked permission and then exited the flight deck. Hradecky said the keypad lock for the flight deck door was known to be faulty, presumably meaning the door had to be opened from the flight deck. The incapacitated crew member on the other side of the door would have been unable to allow whoever had left the flight deck back in.
The crash resulted in a cascade of operational changes based on the finding that it was the result of suicide. A flight attendant must now enter the flight deck when either of the pilots in a two-pilot crew leaves his or her seat. There has also been increased scrutiny of pilots’s mental health histories and initiatives to ensure pilots are mentally fit. Lubitz’s family have maintained he was not depressed at the time of the crash but had one short period of depression eight years earlier that was fully resolved. They were critical of local authorities blaming the crash on his suicide just two days after the crash and long before the investigation was completed.
