Jeff Wise - Fatal Descent: Andreas Lubitz and the Crash of Germanwings Flight 9525

Fatal Descent

Andreas Lubitz and the Crash of Germanwings Flight 9525

By Jeff Wise

Copyright 2015 by Jeff Wise

I. TEN MINUTES

The departure area is nearly empty. Above the floor of polished pink granite, white latticelike trusses support walls of glass two stories high that offer a cinematic view over the concrete expanse of the tarmac and its ceaseless traffic of baggage carts, fuel trucks, and taxiing jets. The sky is overcast, and the air a little cooler than usual for this time of year in Barcelona, just barely nudging up into the 50s. Spring just a few days old, and still in the habits of winter.

One by one, and by twos, and then in larger clusters, the passengers arrive and sit down to wait. A young father bounces his baby while his wife prepares a bottle. A seated woman leans against a brown leather backpack, her elbow on her knee and her cheek on her fist. A cluster of teenage students streams in, chattering in German. A young man rises to find something for his mother to eat. People stare out the floor-to-ceiling windows, or page through their paperbacks, or look at their cell-phone screens. Here they are, stuck in the place between doing one thing and doing the next, the kind of time when one can neither truly focus nor relax.

A little after 9 a.m., a plane rolls up to the jetway. A stream of passengers emerges from one of the gates, pools near the Samsung TV displaying a judo match, and then meanders off. Over the PA comes the announcement that the flight will begin boarding. The passengers, who have been waiting patiently, file down the gray-walled jetway, turn left, and are greeted at the aircraft door by a flight attendant wearing a maroon jacket and scarf over a white wide-collar shirt: Guten Morgen! she says with a tireless smile. Good morning! Through the open doorway, the captain is visible in the left-hand seat, running through checklists in preparation for the flight. The first officers seat is out of sight to the right.

The plane, an Airbus A320-211, is old. Built in 1990, it is one of the last of its kind still flying. Designed to carry 150 to 180 passengers on short-haul routes, it has had a hard life, sometimes flying as many as four round-trips a day for its owner, Lufthansa. It should have been headed for the boneyard, but recently European aviation authorities have relaxed their rules so it has been cleared to fly for many more years. Its no longer deemed worthy of service for Germanys flag carrier, however, so its been assigned to one of the carriers subsidiaries, the budget airline Germanwings.

The passengers file down the single center aisle to take their seats. In front of the first row, marked off with a pleated gray curtain, is the galley, and a few feet beyond that, the cockpit door. A plastic window to the left of the curtain gives passengers on that side of the plane a clear view of this door.

The passengers stow their bags and settle into their seats. The captain comes on the PA and says the flight is running 20 minutes late, but the crew will try to make up the time en route. The flight attendants conduct the safety briefing in German and English, then pass up and down the aisle. Everyone waits. The plane comes to life and begins to move backward. The engines spool up, and the plane reverses direction, rolling forward before turning left and then right on the taxiway. After a few more minutes of waiting, the plane dashes onto the runway and turns parallel to the centerline. The engines immediately crescendo to a roar as the craft surges forward.

The front of the plane cranes into the air, and the passengers feel themselves bellying upward into the sky, the tarmac and the apron falling away. To the right the ocean stretches into the distance beneath a lid of low clouds. The engines drone as the plane rises over beachside tennis courts and swimming pools. Then the view instantly goes white, and the passenger compartment bumps along momentarily through the blankness inside the clouds, until just as suddenly the view resolves itself into a vista of snowy cloud tops and dazzling blue sky.

Passengers close their eyes, or study the snack menu, or adjust the overhead air vent. The plane settles on an easterly heading just off the coast, paralleling the beaches and rocky headlands of the Costa Brava of northeastern Spain. Passengers ears pop as the plane climbs through 10,000 feet. Leaving land behind, the flight heads east across the mouth of the Gulf of Lion. The clouds below give way to glittering dark sea. To the right lies the expanse of the Mediterranean; to the left, the coast of southern France, with the distinctive eye-of-the-needle Thau Lagoon set in a smooth broad arc of shoreline.

Flight attendants push a food cart up the aisle, passing out drawstring bags with cold-cut sandwiches, a small bottle of water, and a packet of Haribo gummy bears. The engines steady drone grows quieter and settles in pitch as the plane reaches its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet. Five minutes later, at 10:30 a.m., it heads inland just south of Marseille. Passengers sitting on the left side can see the pink-roofed ancient port city sprawl along the rugged coast.

The left wing dips. Out the windows the landscape wheels for a moment, and then the plane straightens out on its new course. The cockpit door opens, the gray curtain shifts aside, and the captain, 34-year-old Patrick Sondenheimer, emerges. Smooth-cheeked, with a high forehead and a receding hairline, he carries himself with brisk precision down the aisle past the passengers, toward the lavatory at the rear of the plane.

Moments later, the engines under the wings become significantly quieter, and the plane seems to tilt downward, as though in preparation for landing. For most of the passengers, the change in attitude barely registers. Its just one of the many adjustments in speed, heading, and angle of attack that planes make as they wend their way through busy airspace.

Below, Provence scrolls past. Long ridges rise above broad valleys patched with towns and fields. To the left, neatly paralleling the planes track, the Durance River threads a sinuous course from the Alps to the sea.

The view is changing, and its not just because the land below is rising toward the mountains. Theres a hard-to-define quality about the scenery, for the few who are taking it in. It looks different. The reason is that in the last three minutes the plane has descended 8,000 feeta fifth of its altitude.

Captain Sondenheimer emerges from the lavatory and strolls back to the front of the plane, his gait a little quicker than before. He parts the gray curtain, slips through, and presses two digits on a keypad on the wall near the entrance to the cockpit. He waits.

Checking his watch, Sondenheimer picks up an intercom handset, pushes a button, and holds the phone to his ear. A moment later he hangs up. Passengers at the front of the plane can see hes frustrated as he enters a longer sequence of digits into the keypad. Nothing. He knocks. Then knocks again, harder. Um Gottes Willen, mach die Tr auf!" he barks. For Gods sake, open the door!

A murmur ripples through the front of the cabin. The captain is banging on the door now. What is going on? Is it possibleis he locked out?

Out the window, the world clearly doesnt look the way it should from a plane at cruising altitude. It doesnt have that flat, abstract lookthe passengers arent above the world, theyre in it. The mountains have palpable three-dimensional shapes. The view to the right is of a forested ridge. To the left, small villages nestle in a bowl of peaks that seem nearly as high as the plane. Wait, have we started the descent? Thats not right. Weve got another hour to go.

The passengers murmuring grows louder, punctuated by gasps and exclamations at each of the captains shouts. Hes banging with all his might now. Mach die verdammte Tr auf!"Open the damned door!