French Alps plane crash:Julie Bishop share details of air disaster

 

Australian Foreign Affairs minister Julie Bishop has once again fronted a press conference to share details of another air disaster. Photo / Getty Images

Too often Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has had to inform the nation of deaths in horrific circumstances overseas.
The weight of that burden was evident yesterday as she once more fronted an early morning press conference to share details of another air disaster that has plunged an Australian family into searing grief.
Like too many others over the past year, a Victorian woman and her adult son won't be returning home to those they love. Their remains, along with 148 others, lie among the shattered remains of Germanwings Flight 4U9525, high in the snow-covered French Alps.

Greig Friday

Later Bishop confirmed those killed were 68-year-old Carol Friday and her 29-year-old son, Greig.

Carol Friday

Bishop read out a statement from the family in Parliament.
They were "in deep disbelief and crippled with sadness", it said.

Friday was a loving mother of two and devoted wife to her husband Dave. She had just celebrated her birthday.
Greig was to turn 30 in April, and was adored by all his family and friends.
The two were enjoying a few weeks on holiday before the start of Greig's stay in Europe, where he was to teach English this year.
"They will forever be with us in our hearts, memories and dreams," the statement read.
The deaths have pushed Australia's death toll in air disasters over the past year to 46.
Some 38 Australians died when Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over Eastern Ukraine in July last year. Just a few months earlier, in March, six Australians perished when Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished en route to Beijing.
The strain of yet another tragedy was clear on Bishop's face and in her voice. "I don't think it gets any easier announcing the deaths of Australian citizens in a tragedy overseas."
Pausing at times, she encouraged Australians not to be fearful and to do what they've always done.
"Australians are inveterate travellers and we cannot be changing our behaviours because of what is apparently being treated as an accident."
Australia is sending consular officials to a town near the crash site, where they'll help manage the flow of information and the grim task of trying to recover the remains of the woman and her son.
Australia's recent plane disaster toll
2014
October: PNG - Australian co-pilot dies along with three others in a twin engine plane crash near Port Moresby.
July 17: Ukraine - 38 Australians among 298 people killed when Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is shot down over a rebel-held area of Eastern Ukraine.
March 8: Location unknown - Six Australians among 239 people killed when Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanishes en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
2013
October: Laos - Six Australians among 49 killed when Lao Airlines flight QV301 crashes while trying to land during a storm at Pakse International Airport.
With white sheets and hastily requisitioned flags, villagers and police in the remote French Alpine community of Seyne Les Alpes were turning their youth club building into a makeshift funeral home.
As the search and rescue helicopters descended from the high peaks, hope faded even of finding intact bodies from the Barcelona-Dusseldorf flight. A team of 10 helicopters had scoured the area for a day, while 300 firemen scaled the steep slopes in search of bodies. Last night the operations resumed.
The day had dawned beautifully. It was, according to one Air France pilot, a fabulous day for flying. Gerard Monchablon, in the cockpit of his plane, was flying high above the clouds over the southern French Alps. Suddenly, across his radio, came the terrible news that a plane nearby had crashed. "It was the only aircraft near me. Then two Mirages [French fighter jets] arrived."

Down in the valley below, in the hamlet of Beaujeu, a local man outside his home near Digne Les Bains heard an unusual sound. "It was strange," he told local newspaper Le Dauphine Libere. "I'm used to planes going overhead, but not like that. It was low; it was really low. Normally if it's low it's a military plane. I couldn't see because of clouds, but from the noise I could tell it wasn't a military plane. I would have said it was trying to keep its altitude."
Emile Gall, also below the clouds in the village of Seyne, did not see the plane either. "But I heard it. I heard it flying really low." She, too, thought that it was a military plane. "Then I heard a funny noise, like an engine misfiring. Then I heard a big muffled sound."

Evelyne Bayle of Vernet, who saw and heard the crash, said the engine made a real racket. "It was really loud. A bit like the noise when you set off an avalanche or a rock slide ... After, there was an impact and an explosion."
Jean-Christophe, who grazes cows in the pastures near the crash site, helped the rescue teams find the site. "I saw bits of the plane, the smoke. The parts weren't very big, you could see that it had totally exploded - it was all in little pieces. Completely pulverised. I don't think you'll find any bodies intact there, having seen the impact."
Several Germanwings flights were cancelled yesterday after their crews refused to fly, as it emerged that the aircraft which crashed in the French Alps with 150 people on board had been grounded for an hour for repairs the day before the accident.
Pilots and cabin crew refused to fly over concerns the crash may have been linked to a repair to the nose-wheel landing doors, according to an unconfirmed report in Spiegel magazine. Lufthansa denied that there was any link between the repair and the cancelled flights.
Crews were refusing to fly for "personal reasons", a spokesman for the airline group said.
The airline confirmed that the aircraft which crashed into the Alps had been grounded for an hour on Monday for repairs to the nose-wheel landing doors, but insisted the issue was not "safety related".

Further disruption is expected today after Germanwings flights from Dusseldorf to several destinations were cancelled. Three flights from Stuttgart were also cancelled.
The passengers who boarded Germanwings flight 4U 9525 at Barcelona's El Prat airport on Tuesday were the usual midweek mixture of tourists, business travellers and families.
The ground crew responsible for the Airbus A320 were having a busy morning. The aircraft had landed with 122 passengers on board, and had to be cleaned, refuelled, restocked and checked over in less than 40 minutes.
It took off more than 25 minutes late from Barcelona for reasons which are not yet clear, heading north for what should have been a 90-minute flight.
All was normal for the next 40 minutes. The Airbus, with an experienced crew at the controls, slowly climbed to its cruising altitude of 38,000ft in the skies over southern France. But then something went catastrophically wrong.
Less than a minute after reaching 38,000ft, the aircraft went into a steep and terminal descent. The pilots made no request to air traffic control to begin an unscheduled descent, and for the next eight minutes the aircraft plunged back down to earth at a rate of 4000ft per minute.
No Mayday signal was sent during that eight-minute fall. The aircraft remained intact, automatically relaying its altitude, airspeed and heading, and air traffic controllers implemented an aircraft distress alert, based on its rapid loss of height. Then all contact was lost.
It had dived to an altitude of 6000ft when its last signal was sent.

Without any apparent attempt by the pilot and co-pilot to correct the dive, the aircraft had flown into a mountain in the Alps called Les Trois Eveches north-west of Monaco, where it had "disintegrated", in the words of one local official.
The first of the Black Box flight recorders has been recovered, holding vital information that will hopefully answer the question of why a well-maintained aircraft suddenly dropped out of the sky.
The pilot, as yet unnamed, had 10 years' experience and 6000 hours flying Airbuses for Lufthansa and Germanwings. The aircraft, called Mannheim, was 25 years old but had always been owned by Lufthansa and went through routine maintenance this week and an overhaul in 2013.
Suspicion has fallen on the computer technology used the fly the A320. Last year an Airbus A321 went into a sudden descent at 31,000ft, falling at the same rate before the crew managed to regain control.

One of the two pilots on the doomed Germanwings flight was apparently locked out of the cockpit before the plane crashed in the French Alps.
Cockpit recordings recovered from the site of the crash that killed all 150 people on board indicated one of the seats was pushed back and the door opened and closed.
Knocking can then be heard, said a source close to the investigation, adding "there was no more conversation from that point until the crash".

Rescue workers at the plane crash site near Seyne-les-Alpes, France. Photo / AP

The source said an alarm indicating the proximity to the ground could be heard before Germanwings flight 4U9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf crashed in remote terrain after an unexplained eight-minute descent in mid-flight.

No distress signal was sent from the Airbus A320 and the crew failed to respond to ground control's desperate attempts to make contact.
The cockpit recording of Tuesday's flight showed the pilots speaking normally in German at the start of the flight, the source said, adding that it could not be determined if it was the captain or the first officer who left the cockpit.
The New York Times cited a senior military official involved in the investigation as saying the black box data indicated one pilot was locked out and tried unsuccessfully to smash his way back in.
Photos of the mangled black box retrieved at the site showed its metal casing torn and twisted. The casing of a second black box, the flight data recorder, has been found but not the device itself.
Investigators have said the plane was still flying when it smashed into the remote mountainside, with the force of the impact leaving only small pieces of debris scattered over a wide area.
A mountain guide who got near the crash site said he was unable to make out recognisable body parts.
"It's incredible. An Airbus is enormous. When you arrive and there's nothing there ... it's very shocking," said the guide, who did not wish to be identified.

A French army helicopter heads to the Germanwings flight crash site. Photo / AP

The crash site is at about 1500 metres altitude and accessible only by helicopter or an arduous hike on foot.
Arrangements were being made for the families of the victims, at least 51 of whom were Spaniards and at least 72 Germans, to gather near the crash site on Thursday.
Lufthansa, which owns popular low-cost operator Germanwings, announced it would lay on two flights to take the victims' loved ones from Barcelona and Duesseldorf to the southern French city of Marseille.
Helicopters began winching the remains of victims to Seyne-les-Alpes on Wednesday.
Interpol said it had dispatched a team of victim identification experts to the site.
Authorities who had the gruesome task of sifting through the debris called off the search at nightfall on Wednesday. They will resume at dawn.
Weather does not appear to be a factor in the crash and Germanwings had an unblemished safety record.
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel flew over the site to see the devastation on Wednesday. Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy also visited a crisis centre near the scene.
"My deepest sympathies with the families and all my thanks for the friendship of the people of this region and in France," Merkel wrote in a book of condolence.

A rescue worker climbs past debris at the plane crash site near Seyne-les-Alpes, France. Photo / AP

The plane was carrying six crew and 144 passengers, including 16 German teenagers returning home from a school trip.
Bereaved pupils from their high school in the small German town of Haltern wept and hugged near a makeshift memorial of candles as they shared the pain of losing their friends.
"Yesterday we were many, today we are alone," read a hand-painted sign at the school, decorated with 16 crosses.
Those killed - most of them about 15 years old - had reportedly won the trip in a lottery of their classmates.