fighter jet tried contact

its claimed, that the pilots wouldn't respond anymore to ATC traffic control.

also, by now surprisingly no reports of phone calls from within the plane.



there was a jet fighter in the area, while the airbus was in trouble, or around that time and the place. this has been reported right from the start, but now it seems this was an control-flight on the airbus - French transport minister Ségolène Royal confirmed this.

but - if this plane has been designed to rule out/overrule pilot error - then it should be impossible that the plane dives on its own into the ground, when someone falls asleep. one would assume, it might gone autopilot (until fuel runs out or shot down by fighter)...

if the fighter-jet is related to the crash, then it would be interesting to know if they have missed other waypoints along the route (if there were any), and how often atc called them before the jet went up.

also, the jet would have taken pics and vid, and this shouldn't be a secret..

the mirage jet from orange base


added:

Ségolène Royal French transport minister:

- contact to air traffic controller lost a couple of minutes before the crash

- last message from crew around Aix-en-Provence, after that descending

- ATC tried contact 5-6 times to no avail

- jet couldn't establish contact either

airbus inflight customer service

update on the november 2014 Lufthansa flight from bilbao - munich, which got into trouble (nose down, stall - "serious incident"). perhaps, it will give some insight, what could have happened on this Barcelona-flight as well..

it wasn't so, that the superman-captain within a few minutes, while diving towards the ground in high speed, figured it was a problem with the Data Units and then, sweating and like in the famous red-blue-bomb-cable scenes in the movies, eventually pulled the right plug at last minute.

the crew had plenty of time, the whole thing may have lasted 20 minutes or more, and some airbus-maintenance was called by the crew to help analyse the problem.
airbus-maintenance then verified the data collection on board and recommended to switch off air data unit 2 and 3 or only 2.
the crew did and all was good again.

the report is out there in English too, don't have link and just glanced over.

because there are still rumours about the Barcelona-flight (germanwings) having had "some contact" to somewhere, but it wasn't ATC, it could have been that they also were talking to "maintenance" and - being too busy to reply to the air controller.

ACARS transmits flight data realtime

most important seems anyway the voice data recorder, as it gives clues what the pilots didn't understand, they were working on, what wouldn't work and so on...

the technical flight data are transmitted anyways by ACARS messages (and some others) to the airbus-maintenance-center.

by the acars messages, they must have a strong indication already of the cause.

from the NEWS - Wednesday mar 25


- the plane kept on course during its 8 minutes down - course to dusseldorf !

german "tagesschau" ponders on some wild theories:

- pilot unconscious - other pilots believe this, as no interaction with the plane
- report says pilots have realized shortly before, that they crash into rocks, but leaves open why this is assumed
- interviewee thinks the following is possible: engines fail and at the same time poisonous gas got into the pilot cabin (he forgets that there are oxygene masks, but hey what to nitpick here...)
http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/interv ... h-101.html

...if unconsiuos, then the autopilot should have managed a fair bit, and it would be unusual to just go down in some random area (for my understanding)
...if engines break, they can sail and would have turned to the airport of Marseille (close by) and not went down in alpes hautes - keeping course dusseldorf.

that the plane stayed on dusseldorf-course is CREEPY... was it the airbus psycho-board-computer ?

BEA press conferences - wed mar 25

- Rémi Jouty, head of BEA, talks about 30,000 ft altitude, while flightradar24.com (page 1) shows 38,000 and more

- don't know yet, why plane descended

- don't know yet, why pilots not answered to ATC

- no explosion, "the aircraft was flying till the end"

- they were able to read an audio-file till the impact, but too early for conclusions

- is confident to read all files

- BEA needs the flight data recorder to make a statement, it seems

- Jouty says, Flight Data Recorder not yet found

- french Hollande said that the “envelope of the second black box has been found", but not the flight data recorder. (the memory chip is missing, reports german "the stern" magazine)


the voice data recorder from germanwings a320

if they could have avoided to go down in that area, they would have done...

the psycho-board-computer kept course to duesseldorf...

New York Times & CNN reporting (WITH A QUESTION MARK, MIND YOU) cockpit voice recorder tells that one pilot left the cockpit for a short duration, leaving the second pilot locked alone inside. Voices and heavy pounding on the cockpit door is heard from the outside pilot, with NO RESPONSE from the inside pilot. There is no way to open or unlock that cockpit door from the outside. (not sure who was inside yet, pilot or co-pilot).

So is it a matter of suicide/homIcide by one pilot or did he have some medical incapacitation in that short time the other pilot was gone?

NOTE: Bad news for Luftansa either way...because it is absolutely against all flying protocol to leave just one person in the cockpit alone for any reason. If pilot or co-pilot must leave for a bathroom break or any reason, the head flight attendant is supposed to enter the cockpit until they return. This is going to cost them some serious money in lawsuits.

Hate to say it, but if those reports are true, it sounds like a pilot purposely took the plane down. What are the odds he had such a severe medical emergency and couldn't hit a panic button or yell or do anything in that tiny window of opportunity while the second pilot was gone? But he didn't plunge the plane straight down in a death spiral so who knows? Another plane crash mystery that may never be solved to everyone's satisfaction in the works?

Soi Dog wrote: NOTE: Bad news for Luftansa either way...because it is absolutely against all flying protocol to leave just one person in the cockpit alone for any reason. If pilot or co-pilot must leave for a bathroom break or any reason, the head flight attendant is supposed to enter the cockpit until they return. This is going to cost them some serious money in lawsuits.

Wrong
This is Europe not the US and we are not talking about an intercontinental flight.
There are different laws.

this info seems true, as on the press conference bea it was said, they have retrieved "one voice", but wouldnt state whose it was...

this was already an odd info, somehow.

the conversation in the cockpit before was said to be "smooth and cool"... sounds not uncommon for germans...

https://blackboxdown.wordpress.com/

the pilot outside tried to break down the door.