Germanwings Flight 9525
Germanwings Flight 9525 (4U9525/GWI9525) was a scheduled international passenger flight flying from Barcelona, Spain to Düsseldorf, Germany, operated by the Lufthansa-owned low-cost airline Germanwings. On 24 March 2015, an Airbus A320-200 jetliner crashed around 100 kilometres (62 mi) northwest of Nice, in the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board.
| 260px D-AIPX, the aircraft involved in the accident in 2014 | |
| Occurrence summary | |
|---|---|
| Date | 24 March 2015 |
| Summary | Controlled flight into terrain due to suicide by pilot |
| Place | Prads-Haute-Bléone, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France 44°16′48″N 6°26′20″E / 44.280083°N 6.438750°ECoordinates: 44°16′48″N 6°26′20″E / 44.280083°N 6.438750°E |
| Passengers | 144 |
| Crew | 6 |
| Fatalities | 150 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Aircraft type | Airbus A320-200 |
| Airline/user | Germanwings |
| Registration | D-AIPX |
| Flew from | Barcelona–El Prat Airport, Spain |
| Flying to | Düsseldorf International Airport, Germany |
Overview
The plane, which had taken off at 10:01 a.m. from the Barcelona-El Prat airport, disappeared from the radars at 10:39 a.m., when it was at an altitude of 2,000 meters above the department of Alpes de Alta. Provence, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region.
Telemetry data indicated that, before disappearing from radar, the A320 would have started to fall at 10:31 a.m. and would have lost about 4,000 meters of altitude in four minutes. At first it was thought that the pilots had issued an emergency signal at 10:47, when the plane was at an altitude of 1,500 feet and in an abnormal situation, but it was actually sent by the controllers. In the words of the President of the French Republic, François Hollande, the conditions of the incident suggest that there would be no survivors. Hollande also initially stated that the plane was carrying German, Spanish and Turkish passengers, without specifying whether there were more victims of other nationalities.
The main hypothesis for the cause of the aircraft crash is that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately caused it to crash. The recording of one of the black boxes of the destroyed Airbus allows us to verify that Lubitz activated the closing of the cockpit door and deliberately began the descent of the plane over the mountains. His breathing at the time of descent was normal and he ignored the captain's instructions to open the door, even when the latter tried to knock it down with an ax to regain control of the aircraft. It shall also be noted that before, he was deemed mentally unfit to fly, but still continued to fly aircraft.
Crew and passengers
Opera singers Oleg Bryjak and Maria Radner were passengers on the plane.
| Citizenship | Deaths |
|---|---|
| File:Flag of Germany.svg Germany | 72 |
 Spain
|
51[a] |
 Argentina
|
3 |
 Kazakhstan
|
3 |
| File:Flag of the United States.svg United States | 3 |
 Australia
|
2 |
 Colombia
|
2 |
 Iran
|
2 |
 Japan
|
2 |
 United Kingdom
|
2 |
 Venezuela
|
2[b] |
 Belgium
|
1 |
| File:Flag of Denmark.svg Denmark | 1 |
| 23x15px Ivory Coast | 1 |
 Mexico
|
1 |
 Morocco
|
1 |
| File:Flag of the Netherlands.svg Netherlands | 1 |
| Total | 150 |
Germanwings Flight 9525 Media
- 4U9525 flight path v1.svg
Flight path of Germanwings Flight 9525 (English).
- Altitude Chart for Flight 4U9525 register D-AIPX.svg
Altitude chart for Germanwings Flight 9525 (crashed), register D-AIPX (English)
- Méolans-Revel, Trois-Évêchés NO et Dent 2.jpg
The Massif des Trois-Évêchés, the site of the crash
- 4U9525 Memorial at Düsseldorf Airport.jpg
Memorial at Düsseldorf Airport
- 4U 9525 Gemeinschaftsgrab in Le Vernet - 8403.jpg
Mass grave in Le Vernet cemetery for the unidentifiable remains of the victims. The names of all 149 victims are engraved on the cemetery wall.
Notes
References
- ↑ "Absturz 4U9525: Entschädigung für Absturzopfer könnte sehr unterschiedlich ausfallen". FAZ.NET (in Deutsch). 2015-04-03. Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2025-03-23.
Other websites
Media related to Germanwings Flight 9525 at Wikimedia Commons
