A320 crash in France. The main version of the death of the Egyptian airliner A320 is considered a terrorist attack. Airport delay and sharp decline

The Airbus A320 of the budget carrier Germanwings, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, has crashed in a remote area of ​​the French Alps. On board the liner, en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, were 142 passengers and 8 crew members. Most likely, they all died, said President Francois Hollande. According to him, there were citizens of Germany, Spain and Turkey on board the plane. Russian diplomats are now checking whether there were Russian citizens among the passengers.

The causes and circumstances of the disaster are being investigated. However, according to the French media, the weather conditions in the area of ​​the crash of the liner in the south-east of France were almost ideal and could not cause a tragedy.

“The sky was clear, there was practically no wind. Thus, weather conditions can be excluded from the possible causes of the disaster, ”RIA Novosti quotes a statement by a weather observer for the French news channel BFMTV.

Airport delay and sharp decline

As it became known, the plane, for unknown reasons, was delayed for 20 minutes at Barcelona El Prat Airport. However, the crew of the liner did not send distress signals, reports France-Presse with reference to the General Directorate of Civil Aviation. “The crew of the aircraft did not give mayday signals. This was done by the ground services, which decided to recognize the aircraft in distress, since the control services had no contact with the crew and the aircraft, ”the DGAC clarified the agency.

According to the FlightAware service, the Germanwings Airbus A320 that crashed in France began to lose altitude sharply in the last phase of the flight. The liner reportedly dropped from almost 40,000 feet (12 km) to 25,000 feet (7.6 km). After that, the information from the aircraft stopped coming.

Residents of two towns in the French Alps, where the disaster occurred, spoke about what they saw and heard. “I think I saw him before he crashed. I saw a plane that was flying a little lower than usual - this attracted my attention, ”said a resident of the town of Meolan-Revel, adding that the flight altitude of the liner was about 4 thousand meters. Another eyewitness notes that a very loud noise of a jet engine attracted his attention.

Bernard Bartolini, the mayor of Prades-le-Bleon, the closest town to the crash site, said it was "two and a half hours on foot" from the last house to the mountain range where the crash occurred.

The wreckage of the Airbus A320 has already been found at an altitude of 2,000 meters. Currently, helicopters deliver the bodies of the crash victims to a nearby school, RIA Novosti reports. The scene has been cordoned off by the police.

The reaction of officials

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was shocked by the crash of the Airbus A320, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a statement.

The German Chancellor has canceled all events scheduled for today. She has already phoned French President Francois Hollande and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Tomorrow, the German Chancellor intends to visit the crash site of the Airbus A320.

“I myself will go there tomorrow so that I can have my own picture of what happened,” Merkel said.

King Philip VI of Spain, who arrived with his wife in France as part of a state visit, said that in connection with the crash of the Airbus A320 plane, he intends to return home ahead of schedule.

Spanish First Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said there were at least 45 passengers with Spanish surnames on board the ship. Madrid is working with Berlin and Paris to investigate the cause of the crash, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said.

At a special briefing, he noted that at the moment "there is no exact information" about the causes of the tragedy, and also said that he plans to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, King Philip VI of Spain, and Arturo Mas, head of the government of Catalonia. Rajoy also added that at this difficult and dramatic moment, the country will extend a helping hand to the families and friends of the passengers of the aircraft and will do everything to support them.

“First of all, I want to express my solidarity with the families of the victims. This is a tragedy,” French leader Francois Hollande tweeted.

Je veux exprimer aux familles des victimes de cet accident aérien toute ma solidarité. C "est un deuil, une tragedy.

Francois Hollande (@fhollande)

Airbus A320 is a very popular model. Such an aircraft in the world takes off or lands every two seconds. Given the mass character, disasters happen to him infrequently.

So far, there have been 4,467 Airbus A320s in the sky. Dry statistics - you can’t argue with it: this is the most bought main liner in the world. And one of the safest: in a quarter of a century - only eight plane crashes. Now it's nine. And, by a strange coincidence, at least three - in France.

The first - already during a demonstration flight in 1988. Then the 320th Airbus is a new ultra-modern model, just entering the market. A few months after receiving the certificate, three aircraft from the concern are immediately purchased by the launch customer, AirFrance. Arranges demonstration performances at the air show in Mulhouse. Welcoming the audience, the commander, under the guns of television cameras, decided to pass at low level.

Exactly what happened has never been answered. According to the official version, the pilot is to blame: he simply did not take into account the peculiarities of the new aircraft, switched the engines to an increased operating mode too late and therefore could not gain altitude. There were 136 people on board. By some miracle, most survived. Three died, 98 were seriously injured.

This tragedy almost cost the manufacturer's reputation. But the dangerous roll did not become fatal: the A320 quickly gains momentum and takes to the wing. Scatters all over the world - from India to Brazil, from Nepal to the United Arab Emirates. But on January 20, 1992, the crew again lost control, and again - in France.

It was a domestic flight from Lyon to Strasbourg with Air Inter. The plane was already ready to land, but suddenly deviated from the course and crashed into a mountain, only 20 kilometers short of its destination.

"When I came to my senses, the first thing I saw was an open fire, right in front of me. I started to panic. I said to myself: that's it, I'll just burn out. I ran to the tail of the plane - or rather, to the part that is from it remained. And there I saw other survivors," says Nicolas Skourias, a passenger on the Lyon-Strasbourg flight.

This is one of nine survivors of that plane crash. 87 people died. It took a decade and a half to find out the causes of the tragedy. At first, the airline employees were accused of manslaughter: an air traffic controller, managers and a representative of the general director. But the French prosecutor's office could not prove their guilt. We decided that the whole thing is a combination of factors: the weather conditions are bad, and the crew did not cope. But the main thing is that the onboard control system turned out to be imperfect. After the incident, they decided to urgently finalize it.

“We have developed 45 recommendations, including additional training for the crew when programming the autopilot. In addition, now one of the pilots must have at least three thousand flight hours. We decided that this figure is optimal,” says former Air Inter pilot Gerard Arnoux.

“We conducted separate checks, special tests to find out what the combustion temperature was on board. We determined the figure at 260 degrees Celsius. We increased the fire resistance of the black boxes so that they retain information even in extreme conditions,” explains another expert.

It is curious that for many years the A320 was assembled exclusively in France, in Toulouse. And only seven years ago, due to increased demand, they decided to expand production by opening a branch in Germany.

It was then, in 2008, that the German airline XL Airways Germany purchased another A320 aircraft, which on November 27 of the same year made a test flight and fell into the Mediterranean Sea. Coincidentally, off the coast of France. There were seven people on board, all died. The cause of the tragedy is the poor maintenance of the aircraft: water got into the sensors. At altitude, it froze and disabled the sensors. Disoriented pilots simply lost control of the situation.

“On-board computers respond to the data that is entered into them. But in this case, both sensors were blocked, and the main control panel did not receive information about this at all. The pilot could not do anything,” says aviation expert John Bosch.

After this disaster, they again draw conclusions and again improve the on-board computer. The A320 is still one of the most sought after models on the market. Not only for safety reasons, but also for the relatively low cost of maintenance for an aircraft of this class.

Crashed on March 24 in the Alps, the plane was one of the oldest in the airline's fleet. The 1990th year of release is perhaps the oldest modification. It passed all pre-flight checks, judging by the documents, it did not cause any complaints from specialists. However, if we take into account the history of aircraft accidents of this particular model, formal technical serviceability does not always guarantee flight safety.

On March 24, a Germanwings A320 passenger plane (Lufthansa low-cost airline) crashed in the southeast of France, en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. The disaster occurred in the Trois-Evesche mountain range in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department near the town of Digne-les-Bains. On board were 150 people - 144 passengers and six crew members. Among the passengers were citizens of Germany, Spain, the United States, Australia, Argentina, Iran, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Kazakhstan, Israel, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Aircraft A320 of Germanwings airline - a liner of just such a modification crashed in the Alps.

The accident over Provence of the Germanwings Airbus A320 aircraft was, in total, the seventeenth accident of this type of aircraft and the fifteenth, resulting in human casualties, in the 27 years of operation of Airbus aircraft of this class. Nevertheless, the A320 remains one of the most reliable airliners in the world, with one aircraft crash in more than 14 million flight hours.

Flight and fall trajectories of the A320.

The crew did not send signals for help before the plane crashed. This was done by dispatchers in Dusseldorf after they could not contact the crew of the liner.

Search work at the crash site.

Vice President Lufthansa Europe Heike Birlenbach called the main version of the crash an accident, the rest of the versions, according to her, are speculation.

The search operation will continue for at least another two weeks.

One of the pilots of the aircraft left the cockpit before the crash and could not return to it. This is evidenced by the data from the flight recorder - on the record you can hear how at first a person outside knocks on the cockpit door, but does not receive any answer. “Then he knocks harder, and again there is no answer. You can hear him banging on the door."- said the source.

The actions of the co-pilot of the Airbus A-320 can be regarded as the intention to destroy the aircraft, the Marseille prosecutor said on March 26 Brice Robin. According to him, the co-pilot, a 28-year-old German citizen Andreas Lubitz deliberately did not open the cockpit door to the aircraft commander and deliberately initiated the liner's descent: “This is the version that seems to us the most likely at this stage of the investigation.”.

The aircraft's autopilot was manually set to a minimum flight altitude of 100 feet (about 30.5 meters). According to Marseille's prosecutor, circumstantial evidence proves co-pilot Andreas Lubitz did it. The steps to reconfigure the autopilot could be "only voluntary", he claims.

Andreas Lubitz.

A search in the home of German pilot Andreas Lubitz in Düsseldorf, who is suspected of deliberately crashing an Airbus A-320 airliner, led investigators to "important discovery" writes the British newspaper Mirror. The police said they may have found the key to understanding the cause of the tragedy. The investigators did not share details, assuring journalists that this was not a suicide note.

Search of the house of Andreas Lubitz in Düsseldorf.

German tabloid Bild citing a source in Lufthansa, said that Andreas Lubitz was undergoing psychiatric treatment. Six years ago, he turned to doctors for help due to severe depression, because of this he was even forced to take a break from his studies as a pilot in Bremen.

In Lubitz's personal file with the Federal Aviation Administration, there was a note that he needed "special and regular medical examination". The same mark was on his pilot's license. It is reported that he periodically experienced bouts of fear.

On the day of the flight, Lubitz was supposed to be on sick leave, Düsseldorf's chief prosecutor said on March 27. Ralph Herrenbrück. According to him, a torn certificate of sick leave for the date of flight 4U9525 was found in the pilot's apartment. Herrenbrück believes that this is a confirmation of Lubitz's attempts to hide the fact of his illness from his colleagues.

In addition, according to the message Bild, investigators are aware of the problems in their personal lives that the alleged perpetrator of the tragedy faced shortly before the incident. He allegedly experienced a crisis in relations with his girlfriend, everything that happened left an imprint on him. This version is being actively developed by experts.

One of the residents of the city of Montabaur, where the suspect lived, said that Lubitz had wanted to become a pilot since childhood. Before he got his license, he worked as a flight attendant for Germanwings for a year. In addition to Montabaur, where he lived with his parents and brother, the pilot had an apartment in Düsseldorf. Friends speak of him as "a cheerful and calm person."

Andreas Lubitz during the 2013 Frankfurt Half Marathon.

“Andreas was a nice young man, studied here, was a member of the flying club,- says a member of the flying club in the city of Montabaur Peter Rücker. - Always cheerful, although a bit shy and quiet. A simple guy, nothing special. He had a good relationship with everyone, he liked spending time here.”.

Was Lubitz prepared for what he did, or was it a spontaneous act? The recorder kept a record of the last 30 minutes of conversations in the cockpit. Two-thirds of this time, the pilots communicate easily, even cheerfully, but suddenly, as soon as the aircraft commander is about to leave the cockpit, the partner's answers to the commander's questions become dry and monosyllabic ...

Europe mourns the dead.

Photo and video materials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of France, Bild, AP, EPA were used

The crash of the Airbus A320-232 airliner of EgyptAir remains in the center of attention of the world media. Almost a week after the tragedy, the authorities of Egypt and France, as well as the structures involved in the investigation, cannot answer the question of what happened to the plane, or at least limit the range of possible versions.

To date, it is known that flight MS804 Paris - Cairo, carrying 56 passengers, 7 crew members and 3 security personnel, crashed into the water about 290 kilometers north of the Egyptian city of Alexandria.

The ships involved in the search found deformed parts of the fuselage, life jackets and personal belongings of passengers on the surface of the water.

Four days after the disaster, the President of Egypt Abdel Fatah al-Sisi warned against jumping to conclusions: "All scenarios remain open, nothing has been proven."

In the case of the MS804 crash, there are currently a lot of different kinds of reports, which are then refuted, as a result of which it is very difficult to create a coherent picture. The situation can be clarified by the rise of the "black boxes", in the event that they were not badly damaged.

There are several main versions of what happened, each of which, in turn, is divided into several options.

Version one. Technical difficulites

According to some reports, 7 minutes before the loss of communication with the aircraft, several automatic messages were received from ACARS (Aircraft Communications Address Reporting System), signaling a variety of problems on board, including a possible fire in the toilet and the main electronics compartment.

Theoretically, these maneuvers of the aircraft, coupled with automatic signals about malfunctions, may indicate a failure of the equipment, accompanied by a fire on board. The crew in this case could start an emergency descent, trying to land as quickly as possible.

Against this version is the fact that the pilots did not contact the controllers, did not report any problems and did not request an emergency landing.

Version two. Assault in the air

An Agence France Presse source close to the investigation suggested that the death of the aircraft could have occurred "as a result of human actions." This is not a crew error, but the intervention of third parties, that is, the hijacking of the aircraft.

An example of this is the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York. In addition, flying from Alexandria to Cairo, and threatening to blow up a dummy "suicide belt", landed the plane in Larnaca. The invader turned out to be not a terrorist, but an inadequate citizen, but the very possibility of capture looks quite real.

This could explain both the fact that the signals about the problems came from the cockpit area, and the fact that the crew did not contact the ground - they could simply not be allowed to do this.

This version is opposed by the presence on board of three Egyptian security officers who were supposed to interfere with the actions of the terrorists. At the very least, this should not have made the catastrophic development so rapid.

Version three. Crew error

Crashes as a result of incorrect actions of pilots happen often, and therefore this version appears among the main ones.

However, in this case, this version does not look convincing. Flight MS804 was operated by an experienced crew, the 36-year-old aircraft commander Mohammed Said Shokeyr worked for EgyptAir for 12 years. The flight took place along not the most difficult route, in almost ideal weather conditions. During the time the crew was in touch, the pilots did not report any difficulties they had.

Version four. Explosion on board

The Egyptian authorities are extremely reluctant to talk about this version, but so far it appears as the most probable.

On May 24, the Associated Press, citing forensic experts, reported that the analysis of the remains of those killed in the disaster. In particular, one of the experts of the investigation team, who personally took part in the examination of the remains, said that the fragments of the bodies delivered to Cairo were “so small that there is not even a single whole part of the body among them, for example, hands or heads. The logical explanation is that it was an explosion.”

Later Officials of Egypt. No traces of explosives have been reportedly found on the wreckage currently recovered.

Nevertheless, experts agree that the explosion on board most logically explains the rapid development of the catastrophic situation and the lack of attempts by the crew to contact the ground. At the same time, the explosion could be carried out both by a suicide bomber and with the help of a pre-planted explosive device.

The wreckage of an Airbus A320. Photo: Reuters

On October 31, 2015, as a result of an explosion on board the Russian company Kogalymavia, which was flying on the route Sharm el-Sheikh - St. Petersburg. All 224 people on board were killed.

November 16, the head of the FSB of the Russian Federation Alexander Bortnikov- an improvised explosive device with a capacity of up to 1 kg in TNT went off. This became clear after traces of an explosive not made in Russia were found on the wreckage of the aircraft and the belongings of the passengers. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the ISIS group, banned on the territory of the Russian Federation by a court decision. The Egyptian authorities did not confirm the version of the attack until February 2016, when the country's president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.

The EgyptAir A320 passenger plane was most likely destroyed in the attack. This was stated by the Minister of Civil Aviation of Egypt, Sherif Fathi.

“Supposedly (I say “presumably” because I don’t want to speculate), we are talking about some kind of incident on board, about a terrorist attack. This is more likely than the failure of equipment, ”said the official, whose words are quoted by world agencies.

Meanwhile, according to Le Figaro, the French prosecutor's office launched an investigation into the crash of the liner, and security checks are underway at the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport.

The director of the FSB of Russia, Alexander Bortnikov, also spoke about the terrorist attack as a possible cause of the death of the aircraft. “Unfortunately, today there was another incident with an Egyptian airlines plane. Apparently, this is a terrorist act, ”said Bortnikov, urging all countries to make every effort to find those responsible for what happened. US presidential candidate Donald Trump also spoke out on this issue. “This looks like another terrorist attack,” the politician tweeted.

The first reports of an incident with an EgyptAir plane flying from Paris to Cairo appeared on May 19 early in the morning. According to the BBC, the aircraft left Paris the night before, at 21.09 local time (22.09 Moscow time) and headed for Egypt. The liner was supposed to arrive there at 3.00 local time (4.00 Moscow time). However, suddenly the plane disappeared from the controllers' radar. This happened at a time when the A320 was 16 km from Egyptian territory and leaving Greek airspace. After some time, it became clear that the plane had crashed into the sea. The fact that the plane did not just disappear, but crashed, was announced by several officials, including French President Francois Hollande.

The search and rescue services of Egypt and Greece immediately joined the search for the wreckage of the liner, and soon French colleagues joined them. Quite quickly, the wreckage of the liner was discovered.

“An Egyptian military aircraft C130 spotted parts of the aircraft on the surface of the ocean south of the island of Crete. Vessels will be sent there to further search for the wreckage of the A320, ”the Greek Defense Ministry said in a statement quoted by the Le Figaro newspaper.

It is reported that there were 66 people on board, including citizens of France, Great Britain, Belgium, Iraq, Kuwait, Sudan, Chad, Portugal, Algeria and Saudi Arabia. The nationality of one of the passengers has not yet been established. It is also known that in addition to passengers and crew members, three members of the Egyptian security services were flying on the plane. According to media reports, there were no Russians among those who flew this A320.

According to the Greek Civil Aviation Authority, the A320 pilot was cheerful and thanked them in Greek during the last conversation with the controllers. He did not mention any signals about an emergency situation with the liner.

Several experts in the field of civil aircraft also stated about the terrorist attack as the most likely cause of the crash of the liner. “The commander of the ship, according to all international aviation rules, is obliged to report to the ground if any factors appear in flight that pose a threat to flight safety. There was no such report from the commander. This tells us that something instant, catastrophically fast happened on board, ”Oleg Smirnov, former Deputy Minister of Civil Aviation of the USSR, Honored Pilot of the USSR, told Gazeta.Ru.

According to him, this could happen due to the instantaneous failure of mechanical or electronic elements of the equipment.

“In addition, the plane could crash due to dangerous weather events that arose on its way, for example, if it flew into a zone of powerful thunderclouds, which caused severe turbulence. And finally, the third option is external intervention. This includes a hit by a combat missile, and the destruction of the A320 by a combat aircraft, and a terrorist attack that occurred on board, ”said Smirnov.

Jean-Paul Trode, former director of the Civil Aviation Accident Investigation and Analysis Bureau, questioned whether the crash could have been caused by a technical failure. “A sudden technical problem, a fire on board or an engine failure usually does not lead to an immediate crash of the aircraft, and the crew in such cases has time to react,” he told Europe1 radio station.

However, so far no terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the destruction of the A320. Specialists are now looking for "black boxes", and, according to Smirnov, even if they lie at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, it is quite possible to detect them.

“The same French have experience in extracting flight recorders from a depth of 4 km.

This happened when their Air France airliner crashed in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Nevertheless, they found these boxes, took them out and deciphered them. There is less depth here, so I think the chances of getting them are very high. Moreover, modern recorders give a special signal with the help of special beacons that will work until their batteries run out. And this will not happen soon, ”the expert said.

The leaders of several states, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, expressed their condolences in connection with the A320 disaster. His spokesman Dmitry Peskov added that it is not yet known how the crash of the Egyptian plane will be reflected in the resumption of flights from Russia to Egypt. But the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Transport, a deputy from A Just Russia, Mikhail Bryachak, said that the resumption of air traffic with Egypt could be postponed.

The executive director of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR), Maya Lomidze, told Gazeta.Ru that it is too early to talk about the impact of the EgyptAir plane crash on the resumption of flights to Egypt until the exact reasons for what happened are clarified.

“It is unlikely that this incident with the plane will frighten Russian tourists. Geographically, this is not directly related to Egyptian territory: the plane was flying from Paris to Cairo, ”she said.

According to Lomidze, the Russians, on the contrary, in spite of everything, are waiting for news about the opening of the Egyptian direction.

“This is also evidenced by the report of our analysts, who investigated the queries of people in search engines. During April, Egypt featured so frequently in these searches that it became one of the top ten most requested destinations. Turkey was not among them - everything is clear with her. And they are actively interested in Egypt and are waiting for developments. So far, they go to Russian resorts or to Tunisia, although in this country, not everything is unambiguous with safety,” said the executive director of ATOR.

The EgyptAir plane crash on May 19 was the tenth fatality since the Airbus A320 entered service. The previous tragedy happened on October 31, 2015: the Russian passenger airliner Airbus A320 of the Kogalymavia airline, en route from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, crashed 100 km from El Arish in Egypt. 217 passengers and seven crew members died. The cause of the crash was a terrorist attack on board the ship.