Germanwings Flight 9525 (4U9525/GWI18G was a scheduled international passenger flight from Barcelona–El Prat Airport in Spain to Düsseldorf Airport in Germany, operated by Germanwings, a low-cost airline owned by Lufthansa.
On 24 March 2015, the aircraft, an Airbus A320-200, crashed 100 kilometres (62 mi) northwest of Nice, in the French Alps, after a constant descent that began one minute after the last routine contact with air traffic control and shortly after the aircraft had reached its assigned cruise altitude. All 144 passengers and six crew members were killed.
French and German prosecutors believe that the crash was intentionally caused by the co-pilot, 27-year-old Andreas Lubitz. Lubitz, having obtained a sick note for the day of the crash, reported for duty nonetheless, and is believed to have locked the captain out of the cockpit before initiating a descent that caused the plane to impact a mountain.
In response to the incident and the circumstances of Lubitz's involvement, aviation authorities in Canada, New Zealand, Germany and Australia implemented new regulations that require two authorized personnel to be present in the cockpit at all times. Three days after the incident the European Aviation Safety Agency issued a temporary recommendation for airlines to ensure that at least two crew members, including at least one pilot, are in the cockpit at all times of the flight. Several airlines announced they had already adopted similar policies voluntarily
Flight 9525 took off from Runway 07R at Barcelona–El Prat Airport at 10:01 a.m. CET (09:01 UTC) and was due to arrive at Düsseldorf Airport by 11:39 CET.[2][14] The flight's scheduled departure time was 9:35 CET.
The air traffic controller declared the aircraft in distress after the aircraft's descent and loss of radio contact. According to the French national civil aviation inquiries bureau, the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile (BEA; English: Bureau of Investigations and Analyses for the Security of Civil Aviation), pilots confirmed instructions from French air traffic control at 10:30 CET. At 10:31 CET, after crossing the French coast near Toulon, the aircraft made a slight course correction, left its assigned cruising altitude of 38,000 feet (11,580 m) and without approval began a rapid descent.
The descent time from 38,000 feet was about 10 minutes and radar observed an average descent rate of approximately 3,400 feet per minute or 58 feet per second (18 m/s) . Attempts by French air traffic control to contact the flight on the assigned radio frequency were not answered. A French military Mirage jet was scrambled from the Orange-Caritat Air Base to intercept the aircraft. According to the BEA, radar contact was lost at 10:40 CET; at the time, the aircraft was flying at an altitude of 6,175 feet (1,882 m). The aircraft crashed within the territory of the remote commune of Prads-Haute-Bléone, 100 kilometres (62 mi) northwest of Nice.
The crash is the deadliest air disaster in France since the crash of Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 1308 in 1981, in which 180 people died, and the third-deadliest in France behind Flight 1308 and Turkish Airlines Flight 981 This was the first major crash of a civil airliner in France since the crash of Air France Flight 4590 on takeoff from Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2000. The crash is also the first loss of a Lufthansa-owned airliner during the cruising phase of flight
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