Air Emergency (2003–…): Season 16, Episode 7 - Murder in the Skies - full transcript
On an ordinary day Germanwings flight 9525 has an outcome beyond belief in March 2015 on the French Alps.
NARRATOR: Aircraft
debris litters the French Alps.
HEIKE (Archive):
This is a tragic
moment for Lufthansa,
and it's really a
dark day in our history.
NICOLA: People
want answers quickly.
NARRATOR: The fatal
flight path of Germanwings 9525
seems inexplicable.
ROMAIN: Completely under
control right up until the end.
HANS: What was
the reason for it?
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, this is Marseille.
Come in please.
*
ROMAIN: What's going on?
NARRATOR: Black box data points
to a shocking possibility.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Lubitz!
ROMAIN: As a safety
investigator you, you think:
How could this happen?
CPT. SONDENHEIMER:
Open this damn door!
NARRATOR: One so dark
it's almost beyond belief.
[* theme music ]
[* theme music ]
*
NARRATOR: It's a sunny morning
at Barcelona Airport in Spain.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: After-start
checklist. Anti-ice.
FO. LUBITZ: Anti-ice off.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Rudder trim.
FO. LUBITZ: Rudder trim is zero.
NARRATOR: The crew of
Germanwings Flight 9525
is preparing for departure.
Most of the 144 passengers
are from Germany and Spain,
drawn by the
airline's low fares.
HANS: Germanwings
was founded in 2002.
It's part of Lufthansa Group.
It always has been a low-cost
carrier serving European routes.
NARRATOR: A group of
German high school students
who've just
finished a cultural exchange
is on the flight to Dusseldorf.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT:
Seat forward, please.
CHILD: Mama.
MARIA: Yeah.
NARRATOR: Singer Maria Radner
is traveling with her husband
and young son.
The rising opera
star just completed
a string of
performances in Spain.
KLAUS (translated): I
was very proud of Maria.
It made me so happy that
she had chosen a profession
that she truly
loved, making music
and using her beautiful
voice to bring people joy.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER:
Flight attendants,
please take your
seats for takeoff.
NARRATOR: Captain
Patrick Sondenheimer
is a former
Lufthansa First Officer
who recently
transferred to Germanwings.
HANS: That was a good
opportunity to change from
co-pilot, be upgraded as a
captain and fly for Germanwings
on the European route.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: You have control?
FO. LUBITZ: I have control.
NARRATOR: First
Officer Andreas Lubitz,
who has been with the
airline for just over a year,
will handle the flying.
HANS: As a co-pilot,
you're learning every hour,
every day on every flight.
*
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Cleared
for takeoff zero-seven-right,
Germanwings 9525.
*
FO. LUBITZ: Takeoff thrust.
NARRATOR: It's a routine takeoff
on an ordinary Tuesday morning.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: 80 knots.
FO. LUBITZ: Crosscheck.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: V-1. Rotate.
NARRATOR: Just after 10
a.m., Germanwings Flight 9525
gets airborne.
HANS: Two, three
minutes after takeoff
they must have broken cloud and
been climbing out into the sun.
FO. LUBITZ: Autopilot on?
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Autopilot on.
NARRATOR: They're heading
northeast over the Gulf of Lyon
towards the French Alps.
They should be in Dusseldorf
in just over two hours.
Twenty-seven
minutes into the flight,
the plane reaches its cruising
altitude of 38,000 feet.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER:
Marseille, Germanwings 9525.
I'm at flight level 380.
NARRATOR: Air traffic control
in Marseille tracks the plane
as it crosses France.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Good morning, Germanwings.
Direct to IRMAR.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Direct to
IRMAR. Merci. Germanwings 9525.
HANS: IRMAR is a well-known
waypoint in the French Alps,
a point you over fly
when you do this route
and then you don't
talk to ATC any longer
until they tell you
to start your descent.
*
FO. LUBITZ:
If you need to go to the
bathroom, now's your chance.
*
NARRATOR: Four minutes later,
the controller in Marseille
notices something odd.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, Marseille.
Confirm what cruising
altitude you're cleared for.
NARRATOR: Flight 9525 is
descending without permission.
HANS: Well if the air traffic
controller sees an airplane
leaving its assigned altitude,
of course he wants to know why,
because he hasn't give
him clearance to descend.
So he of course wants to
inquire, why are you descending?
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, this is Marseille.
Come in please.
We've got a problem here.
Germanwings unresponsive,
descending rapidly.
HANS: It must be a big surprise
seeing this airplane descending
without any communication.
NARRATOR: The plane
is dropping steadily.
In just minutes, it's
lost ten thousand feet.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, come in.
Do you read me?
*
MARIA: Are we landing already?
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: It
seems odd. We shouldn't be.
*
NARRATOR: The control center
is now in emergency mode.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Now approaching 25,000 feet.
HANS: So maybe they need help?
They are in an
emergent descent or something?
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, this is Marseille.
Come in, please.
HANS: But to help the
crew they need to have contact
to the crew.
NARRATOR: The Airbus
is hurtling downwards
at maximum operating speed,
an astonishing 350 knots.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, come in!
Lima-Echo-X-ray
relay from Marseille.
I need you to try and
contact Germanwings 9525.
What is their situation?
HANS: And there was
even another airplane
that tried to relay air
traffic control's requests.
PILOT: 9525, how do you read?
HANS: But there was no answer.
NARRATOR: The plane has dropped
below seven thousand feet.
The towering
mountains loom closer.
It's been ten minutes
with no radio contact,
an eternity for controllers.
HANS: He's powerless. There's
nothing he can do about it.
He just has to watch. It
must be absolutely devastating.
AUTOMATION: Pull
up. Too low. Terrain.
*
AIR TRAFFIC
CONTROLLER: We've lost contact.
NARRATOR: The plane is now too
low to be detected by radar.
AUTOMATION: Pull up. Too low.
[passengers screaming]
[plane descending]
[explosion]
HANS: The airplane really
crashed at a very high speed.
It was very
important that police forces
get access to the
accident site immediately.
NARRATOR: Rescuers
race to find the crash site
of Germanwings Flight 9525.
At the same moment, the
world's attention turns
to these remote
peaks in the French Alps.
NICOLA: The news about this
plane crash spread very quickly
on social media. I
mean Twitter just lit up.
NARRATOR: Nicola Clarke is a
reporter for the New York Times.
NICOLA: Bits and pieces
immediately started coming out,
people asking
questions on social media
almost simultaneous
with the news alerts.
NARRATOR: It takes
an hour for searchers
to spot the first
remains of Flight 9525.
Hope of finding
survivors quickly fades.
NICOLA: The first helicopters
that flew over the site
found just sort of
an aircraft obliterated
and, you know, just shattered
into small bits and pieces.
It was pretty
immediate that they concluded
that there couldn't possibly
have been any survivors.
NARRATOR: Among the
dead, sixteen young students
who will never return
home to their families
in Haltern, Germany.
The death of opera singer Maria
Radner and her young family
is another devastating loss.
KLAUS (translated):
You're overwhelmed by it.
You cannot think about anything
other than the
death of your children.
NARRATOR: The enormity of
the crash quickly sinks in.
It's the worst air
disaster on French soil
in more than three decades.
The aviation
community needs an explanation.
HANS: Was it an
incapacitation of the pilot?
Was it an, a
technical malfunction?
What was the reason for it?
NICOLA: Accidents like
this take on a magnitude
and a life of their own.
People want answers quickly.
NARRATOR: The disturbing
answers will come more quickly
than anyone imagines.
NARRATOR: The medieval
village of Seyne-les-Alpes
has become a
makeshift operations center
for the investigation
into the Germanwings disaster.
Arnaud Desjardin leads the
investigation for the BEA,
the French accident
investigation agency.
ARNAUD: Keep personal effects
separate from the other debris,
please.
ARNAUD: We knew it was
going to be a big job,
big job meaning you
would have to coordinate
not only with Airbus and so
on, but there was going to be
a big political issue, a big
international investigation.
ARNAUD: If there's any sign of
the black boxes, let me know.
NARRATOR: Desjardin hopes
his team can quickly recover
the plane's flight recorders.
They could hold
crucial evidence.
But combing through the
wreckage is proving to be
a heart-wrenching task.
ARNAUD: The hardest thing
I, I find personally to find
is toys, little dolls,
or teddy bears, you know,
that belonged to a, to a child.
NARRATOR: At BEA
headquarters near Paris,
Romain Bevillard
joins the investigation.
ROMAIN: We need the
weather charts, now.
ROMAIN: My part was
to gather some facts
on the accident itself,
but at the same
time to coordinate
with the judicial authorities,
with our counterparts
from Germany, from Spain.
NARRATOR: It's
standard procedure
to check if weather
conditions might be a factor.
In the Alps, the weather
can change in an instant.
ROMAIN: Southern
Alps, 10:40 a.m.
ROMAIN: At this stage, you're
just trying to understand
what went wrong
and what happened.
NARRATOR: But on this morning
in this part of the range,
flying conditions
were nearly perfect.
ROMAIN: Definitely
not a weather problem.
*
NARRATOR: The investigation
is just hours old,
but Germany's biggest
airline is already under
intense pressure.
HEIKE (Archive): This is a
tragic moment for Lufthansa,
and it's really a
dark day in our history.
NARRATOR: The town of Haltern,
Germany, is in mourning.
MAYOR (Archive, translated):
You can sense a state
of shock all around.
It's pretty much the worst
thing anyone could imagine.
NARRATOR: The deadly
crash comes just two months
after a terrorist killing
spree claims seventeen lives
in and around Paris.
Many now fear that the
terrorists have struck again.
NICOLA: One of the
reasons that people speculated
that this might
be a terrorism event
was simply the
proximity to the attacks
on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper
that left really all of
France in a state of shock.
*
ROMAIN: Is this the radar
track from air traffic control?
Let's get it set up right away.
NARRATOR: Investigators
turn to radar data
in the hope of discovering if a
bomb blast is a possible cause.
ROMAIN: Let's see how
this plane was flying.
NARRATOR: They
study the flight path,
noting altitude,
time and direction.
What they find is a straight,
controlled path downwards.
ROMAIN: Completely under
control right up until the end.
ROMAIN: It was looking
like a normal descent.
It's just that it was
not happening at let's say
the proper time.
NARRATOR: The data
strongly suggests no bomb.
ROMAIN: If we had a
bomb onboard the aircraft,
we would probably have seen
evidence of in-flight breakup
and we may have
lost radar information.
NARRATOR: The
wreckage confirms it.
Recovery crews are finding
thousands of small pieces
in a fairly confined area.
ARNAUD: I don't think so.
NARRATOR: A bomb blast
would send large pieces falling
over a much wider space.
ARNAUD: This is
not a bomb blast.
NARRATOR: Investigators
are desperate for a lead.
They wonder if the Marseille
air traffic controllers
have any information
that might help explain
the strangely
steady flight path.
ROMAIN: A very straight line.
ROMAIN: The ATC controller
is not an eyewitness,
but he may be the last
person who talked to the,
to the crew or who could
notice anything unusual.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, Marseille.
Confirm what cruising
altitude you're cleared for.
Germanwings, this is
Marseille. Come in please.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
I'd never seen that before.
ROMAIN: So after they
confirmed the waypoint,
you never heard from them again?
AIR TRAFFIC
CONTROLLER: Not a word.
NARRATOR: The
controllers are just as baffled
as the investigators.
ROMAIN: They indicated to
us that they tried to call
the Germanwings
flight crew eleven times.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, this is Marseille.
Come in please.
ROMAIN: And they
never got any answers.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, come in.
Do you read me?
ARNAUD: And the fact
that the crew did not respond
to ATC control was intriguing
and it was really unusual.
NARRATOR: Investigators
struggle to understand
Germanwings's mysterious
descent into the mountains.
ROMAIN: Have we got
through to maintenance yet?
They wonder if a mechanical
failure might be to blame.
[explosion]
Something the crew
could not control.
The A320 is one of the
most popular planes in the sky.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Anti-ice.
FO. LUBITZ: Anti-ice off.
NARRATOR:
Investigators worry the Airbus
may have a hidden flaw.
FO. LUBITZ: Rudder trim is zero.
NICOLA: If there is some
kind of a technical problem,
especially an
aircraft like the A320,
they want to know
as quickly as possible
and get that resolved in
order to eliminate that risk
for the rest of
the flying public.
NARRATOR: One theory
fits the strange flight path:
loss of cabin pressure.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
We got a problem here.
Germanwings unresponsive,
descending rapidly.
HANS: When the
airplane depressurizes
and the pilots do
not get enough oxygen,
they will suffer from hypoxia.
In other words, they
will lose consciousness
in a very short time,
depending on the
altitude of the airplane.
At flight level 3-8-0,
they will lose consciousness
within about 10 to 15 seconds.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, come in!
NARRATOR: Hypoxia would
explain the radio silence.
It would not be the
first time it happened.
In 2005, a Boeing 737 ran into
trouble en route to Athens.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Helios 522, do you read?
All radio
contact was lost after
the crew became incapacitated
by a lack of oxygen.
NICOLA: The pilots
never regained consciousness
and that flight
ultimately crashed
when the plane ran out of fuel.
[crash]
*
NARRATOR: Now
investigators want to know
if the same thing
happened over the French Alps.
ARNAUD: Hypoxia was a
very likely possibility.
[plane descending]
[crash]
NARRATOR: Investigators
discover that Germanwings
looked into a
mechanical issue with the plane
the day before it crashed.
Were mechanics
concerned about something
that could have caused
a loss of cabin pressure?
*
ROMAIN: There was a problem,
the left nose gear door.
NARRATOR: They soon
learn the answer is no.
ROMAIN: Nah. That wouldn't have
anything to do with this crash.
HANS:
Faulty landing gear door is
not an issue at all because it's
well outside the pressurized
area of the airplane.
*
ROMAIN: We saw that the
aircraft was maintained
according to a
proper maintenance program.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: V-1. Rotate.
ROMAIN: We were quite confident
that the aircraft was in a,
in a good structural
condition when it took off.
NARRATOR: So far, evidence
has ruled out severe weather
and a midair bombing.
There are no red flags
in the maintenance records.
Investigators are
still in the dark.
ROMAIN: We can't
completely rule out hypoxia.
[cell phone rings]
NARRATOR: But before the first
day of investigation is through,
the team has a new lead.
ARNAUD: We found it.
NARRATOR: Searchers have found
the cockpit voice recorder.
It's in bad shape, but if
the data can be retrieved
it could answer a
lot of questions.
NICOLA: There was
hope that that recording
would reveal something clear
about what actually happened.
*
NARRATOR: Crews
continue the difficult job
of recovering bodies from the
mountains near Seyne-les-Alpes.
*
The local gymnasium
is now a welcome center
for grieving families.
Air crash investigators,
military police and firefighters
all work the crash site.
Their focus is
finding the second black box,
the flight data recorder.
ARNAUD: Literally
dozens of, of people looking.
We had difficulties
in, in locating it.
But we were not going to
leave this accident site
without recovering
the flight data recorder.
[Speaking French]
NARRATOR: French prosecutor
Brice Robin arrives on the scene
to oversee a separate
criminal investigation.
NICOLA: In France, it's a
very different situation.
The French
authorities automatically
open two investigations,
a technical investigation into
the causes of the crash and
a criminal investigation that
ultimately seeks to determine
whether there was any liability.
NARRATOR: The two investigative
teams must work side by side.
For now, neither
can point to a cause.
There simply
isn't enough evidence.
PRESS CONFERENCE
(Archive): We cannot understand
how an airplane which was
in perfect technical condition
with two experienced and
trained Lufthansa pilots
was involved in such
a terrible accident.
ROMAIN: Are we ready?
NARRATOR: Could the
cockpit voice recording
provide new insights?
ROMAIN: Captain is mic
one. First officer is mic two.
ROMAIN: I've
worked for six years
as a flight recorder specialist.
We may not be able to understand
why everything happened
but at least we have
a good starting point.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: After-start
checklist. Anti-ice.
FO. LUBITZ: Anti-ice off.
ROMAIN: Okay. So the captain's
running the checklists.
That means the
first officer is flying.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Rudder trim.
FO. LUBITZ: Rudder trim is zero.
The checklists and taxi to
the runway are all faultless.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: 80 knots.
FO. LUBITZ: Cross checked.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: V-1. Rotate.
NARRATOR: The
takeoff seems fine.
They hear no
hint of any trouble.
*
Twelve minutes later, a
flight attendant requests entry
to the cockpit.
HANS: What you can hear
there is clicks and clacks
of switches being operated.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: I'll let her in.
HANS: You can hear cockpit
doors opening and closing.
So you're... you have a lot of
sounds that can be interpreted.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT:
How delayed are we?
Some of the
passengers are asking.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: Thirty minutes.
We might make some of that
up in the air but not much.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Okay. Do
either of you need anything?
FO. LUBITZ: I'm
getting a bit hungry.
Would you mind
bringing me some lunch?
FLIGHT ATTENDANT:
Okay. I'll be right back.
ROMAIN: There was some general
talking about the flight.
You could tell by
the tone of their voices
that it was like a
normal follow-up of the flight.
FO. LUBITZ:
If you need to go to the
bathroom, now's your chance.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Good
idea. I think I will go.
*
ROMAIN: You can
hear noises of a person
going out of the cockpit,
and from this point the
cockpit gets very quiet.
ROMAIN: The
captain's left the cockpit.
The first officer
is alone in there.
NARRATOR: It is the exact moment
that the plane
starts descending.
*
No voices can be heard in
the cockpit for two minutes.
Then three. Then four.
ROMAIN: The captain is
still in the bathroom.
The first officer
is clearly on his own.
The cockpit
microphone picks up the sound
of the first officer breathing,
evidence that the plane
did not suffer a
fatal depressurization.
*
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, Marseille.
Confirm what cruise
altitude you're cleared for.
Germanwings, this is
Marseille. Come in please.
ROMAIN:
He's not starved for oxygen.
No loss of cabin pressure.
Why isn't he answering ATC?
*
NARRATOR: The strange
silence in the cockpit
mystifies investigators.
The search for an explanation
will lead them down
a very troubling path.
*
NARRATOR: Investigators hear the
captain trying to regain access
to the cockpit of Flight 9525.
HANS: The pilot could
reenter by pressing a buzzer.
Then the other pilot
can watch on the camera
if he has the right
to enter the cockpit.
NARRATOR:
All he has to do is flip a
switch to unlock the door.
[knocking]
But there's no
response from Lubitz.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, this is Marseille.
Come in please.
ROMAIN: What's going on?
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, do you read me?
Come in.
ROMAIN: Why isn't
he unlocking the door?
[knocking]
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Lubitz.
ARNAUD: We could hear
some breathing, but of course
you can breathe
and be unconscious.
So, yes, the
physical incapacitation
was a possibility.
*
ROMAIN: The intercom's working.
We can clearly hear it.
[beeping]
HANS: The buzzer or the
call of course is noticeable,
and it is distinguished to any
other sounds in the cockpit.
So you know that
somebody wants to talk to you
or wants to enter the cockpit.
There's no doubt about that.
NARRATOR: The plane is
now well into its descent,
speeding towards the Alps.
[knocking]
ROMAIN: Why isn't he opening
the door? Is he unconscious?
NARRATOR: The sound of the
banging grows louder and louder.
[captain banging
door and shouting]
ROMAIN: Hearing the banging
on the door is quite disturbing
because it's not what
you're used to listening to
when you listen to CVRs.
*
AUTOMATION: Pull up.
Too low. Terrain. Too low.
[plane descends]
[explosion]
*
ROMAIN: At the end of the
recording we were, you know,
still trying to
understand what had happened.
NARRATOR: There
seems to be no evidence
of a mechanical failure.
No terrorist group has
claimed responsibility.
All
investigators know for certain
is that the first officer
was alone in the cockpit
when the plane
hit the mountains.
ROMAIN: Did he
do this on purpose?
NICOLA: There were really sort
of one of two possibilities.
Either the pilot
was incapacitated
or that this was some
kind of suicidal act.
NARRATOR: They are forced
to consider the unthinkable,
that First Officer Andreas
Lubitz locked his captain
out of the cockpit and
deliberately crashed the plane.
ROMAIN: Pull
everything we've got on Lubitz.
*
NARRATOR: Just three
days into the investigation,
the French prosecutor
makes an unprecedented move.
He speculates publicly
on the cause of the crash.
PRESS CONFERENCE
(Archive, translated):
The most credible,
the most likely
explanation for us
is that the
co-pilot voluntarily refused
to open the cockpit door.
NARRATOR: Though all the
facts still aren't known,
the prosecutor's statement
paints a chilling picture.
NICOLA: It was something
that was not only a shock
to the public at large but
I think particularly a shock
to the aviation community
and to the pilot community.
NARRATOR: Within hours,
several European airlines
vow to make rule changes
requiring two crew members
in the cockpit at all times.
ROMAIN: Hi, hello,
I'm calling from the
Accident Investigation Bureau.
I'm wondering if you
had just a few moments
to talk about your
colleague, Mr. Andreas Lubitz.
NARRATOR: The BEA's
job now is to find out
why a 27-year-old pilot with
a bright future ahead of him
might want to deliberately
crash a passenger plane.
ROMAIN: As a safety
investigator you think,
how could this happen?
ROMAIN: Okay.
Thank you very much.
I just need five
minutes of your time.
ARNAUD: Yes. Hello.
This is Arnaud Desjardin.
ROMAIN: Okay. I understand.
NARRATOR: None of Lubitz's
close friends or family
will speak to them.
ARNAUD: How about
you? Any success?
ROMAIN: No. No one will talk.
NICOLA: There is a very strong
culture of privacy in Germany,
and family members
tend to be quite guarded.
NARRATOR: Reporters
visit his local flying club.
People there remember Lubitz
as an unassuming young man
who loved to fly.
KLAUS (translated):
He was a very calm, responsible
man. It's inconceivable.
NARRATOR: In a
Dusseldorf neighborhood,
the search for
evidence intensifies.
NICOLA: The German police went
to Andreas Lubitz's apartment
and started looking for
any and every bit of evidence
as to what might
have motivated him,
what his mental
state might have been.
NARRATOR: An examination
of Lubitz's personal life
could answer the question now
being asked around the world.
Was there a dark
and dangerous alter ego
hiding behind a calm exterior?
NARRATOR:
As the perilous recovery work
continues in the French Alps,
so does the search for
the flight data recorder,
a key piece of evidence
that could reveal if the plane
was deliberately
flown into the ground.
*
In Paris,
aviation investigators dig
into Andreas
Lubitz's background,
his training and
medical records.
ROMAIN: Okay. Let's
see what we've got.
NARRATOR: They go back
to Lubitz's basic training
at Lufthansa's Flight
Academy in September 2008.
ROMAIN: Just two months
into training he broke it off.
He didn't return
for nine months.
It was for medical
reasons. Depression.
NARRATOR: The
records show that Lubitz
suffered a severe depression
and was hospitalized.
NICOLA: Treatments
included antidepressant drugs,
psychotherapy, and
it emerged as well
that he had actually
had suicidal thoughts.
*
NARRATOR: He later
applied to resume his training
but needed a new
medical certificate.
ROMAIN: He was still on
antidepressants in early 2009.
He had to
provide a doctor's note.
NARRATOR: Lubitz got the
clearance from his psychiatrist.
NICOLA: He had a certification
from his treating doctor
that said that he
was fully recovered.
ROMAIN: He moved to the US
and completed his
pilot training there.
ROMAIN: And after
the end of his training
he ended up
flying for Germanwings.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: I'll let her in.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT:
How delayed are we?
Some of the
passengers are asking.
NARRATOR: Lubitz
received regular medical exams
from company doctors.
His last check-up was
seven months before the crash.
ARNAUD: The medical
examiners that saw him
all thought he was fit to fly,
and as a matter of fact he
flew safely for several years.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: Thirty minutes.
NARRATOR: Even on
the day of the crash,
Lubitz seemed perfectly healthy.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Do
either of you need anything?
FO. LUBITZ: I'm
getting a bit hungry.
Would you mind
bringing me some lunch?
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Okay. No
problem. I'll be right back.
PROF. BOR:
A mental health problem
might not necessarily lead
to significant
changes about their behavior.
NARRATOR: Professor
Robert Bor is a specialist
in aviation psychology.
PROF. BOR: In some cases,
people do put out signs that
they are feeling increasingly
fragile and disoriented
to the extent that they
may be thinking of suicide.
*
But there will
always be those people who
are planning and indeed plotting
their own demise, suicide,
but they will not
communicate it to anyone else.
NARRATOR: Digging
deeper into Lubitz's records,
they learn that in the
months leading up to the crash
he seemed to take a
turn for the worse.
PROF. BOR: He was
convinced that perhaps
he was losing his eyesight,
and yet nothing was found that
was abnormal about his eyesight,
and it does also appear
that he was becoming
increasingly frightened
to the point of desperation
that his career was
going to be disrupted.
NICOLA: He saw something
like 41 different doctors
complaining of the same
symptoms and same issues.
And it's not clear
that any of them knew
how many other
doctors he was seeing,
and it's not
clear how many of them
might have known that
he was airline pilot.
*
NARRATOR: Among the items
found in Lubitz's apartment,
investigators make a
remarkable discovery.
ROMAIN: What have we got here?
*
NARRATOR: A recent doctor's note
advising the
disturbed pilot not to fly.
ROMAIN: This note was issued
just days before the crash.
PROF. BOR: Some of his
treating physicians had
recommended that he stop flying,
perhaps enter a hospital,
a psychiatric hospital.
NARRATOR: Investigators
wonder if Lufthansa knew
how serious Lubitz's
mental problems really were.
Airline representatives reveal
they had absolutely no idea.
ROMAIN: You've
never seen this note?
NARRATOR: Lubitz
consulted dozens of doctors.
Many of them
wrote sick leave notes.
But not a single doctor ever
contacted the airline directly
to raise the alarm about the
pilot's spiraling mental state.
ROMAIN: And they
are assuming that
when they provide these
sick leave certificates
the co-pilot will himself
forward those sick leave
certificates to the
authority or to his employer,
and therefore he
will not be flying.
NARRATOR: Then,
after a ten-day search,
one more vital piece
of evidence is recovered
from the mountains.
ROMAIN: It was almost by
chance that we, we found it.
Just going
through all the debris,
and at some point someone found
the flight data recorders.
NARRATOR: The hope
now is that the FDR
can paint a clearer picture of
what the first officer was doing
in the final
moments of the flight.
FO. LUBITZ:
If you need to go to the
bathroom, now's your chance.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Good
idea. I think I will go.
*
*
ARNAUD: One hundred feet.
Right after the captain left,
he set the altitude
to one hundred feet.
NARRATOR: The data confirms
that Lubitz was fully conscious
throughout the descent.
Alone in the cockpit,
he dropped the altitude to
its lowest setting and cranked
the speed dial several times
until it reached
maximum operating speed.
ARNAUD: He was
conscious to the very end.
He was actively
controlling the plane.
*
CPT. SONDENHEIMER:
Open the door! It's locked.
Something's wrong.
[knocking]
Open the door! Lubitz,
what are you doing? Let me in.
*
Open the door! Lubitz!
Lubitz! Open this damn door!
Get me the crash
axe. Open the door!
HANS: There is
always a crowbar or a...
we call it an
emergency axe on the airplane
to gain access to a fire
if the fire is behind panels.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Come on!
Open the damn door! Come on.
Lubitz.
[axe hitting door]
Lubitz. Listen to me!
HANS: The captain
was of course desperate
to get into the cockpit,
and he knew that
this descent was continuing.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Oh God. Open
it! Come on! Open it! Damn it!
Open this damn door!
HANS: The cabin
crew was watching them.
That must be horrible for them,
knowing that they
were going to die.
*
AUTOMATION: Pull up.
Too low. Terrain. Too low.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, come in.
Do you read me?
[passengers screaming]
MARIA: I love you, my darling.
KLAUS (translated): Every
night when I go to sleep,
I see a picture
in front of my eyes.
The three of them are
crashing into a mountain.
This image never goes away.
*
*
[plane descending]
[explosion]
NARRATOR: The terrifying
cause for the loss of 150 lives
has been confirmed.
But investigators
are about to discover
that the tragedy of
Germanwings Flight 9525
has one more dark chapter.
ARNAUD: Let's go
back to the beginning.
NARRATOR: Flight 9525
from Barcelona to Dusseldorf
was Lubitz's
second flight of the day.
His first was in
the opposite direction,
from Dusseldorf to Barcelona.
On that flight, the
captain also left the cockpit.
ROMAIN: From
Dusseldorf to Barcelona,
we realized that at
some point the co-pilot
remained alone in the cockpit,
and during this time he
made some altitude selections.
After the captain stepped out,
Lubitz briefly set the
altitude to one hundred feet.
ROMAIN: Those
altitude selections
went back to normal
before the captain came back.
NARRATOR: It was a dry
run, a quick rehearsal
for a tragedy just hours away.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: Everything okay?
FO. LUBITZ: Yes,
everything's just fine.
ARNAUD: This was no
spur of the moment decision.
This was a carefully
planned murder/suicide.
HANS: He wanted to do that on
purpose, and he had planned it.
He had planned it to
not only kill himself,
but 149 other people with him.
*
KLAUS
(translated): I have to say
it was as bad as learning
about the death of my daughter.
It hit me very deeply. Even
to this day I can't imagine it.
NARRATOR: What exactly
was going on in Lubitz's mind
may never be known.
None of the
doctors who treated him
would speak to investigators.
But experts in the field agree.
Lubitz was likely suffering
from a psychotic
depressive episode.
PROF. BOR: That person is
no longer fully in control
of all of their
cognitive functions.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: Hello. Lubitz.
PROF. BOR: This person
loses a sense of reality.
They become very distracted,
and it's at that level that
things are more concerning,
particularly in aviation.
NARRATOR: A psychotic
pilot somehow ended up alone
in the cockpit of
a passenger plane.
NICOLA: One of the
questions that, you know,
still lingers out there
is, when was the moment
that Andreas Lubitz
could have been stopped?
When was the moment
that this disaster
could have been prevented?
And who could have done so?
KLAUS (translated):
There were over 40 doctors
who knew the medical
situation of this murderer,
and not one of
them took measures
to somehow
prevent such a tragedy.
*
MARIA: I love you.
PROF. BOR: And I think
that that is the saddest part.
There was information available
that could have actually
prevented this accident.
NARRATOR: Investigators conclude
that the importance of personal
privacy in German society
likely played a role.
Doctors in Germany
have a very good reason
not to share any
patient information.
NICOLA: In the German system,
doctors can
potentially face prosecution
if they breach their patients'
medical confidentiality.
PROF. BOR: They
were relying upon him
to select himself out of flight.
The fact that he didn't do this
is both a failure of
the individual pilot,
but also a failure
of the medical system.
HANS: In my opinion,
there was too much weight given
to doctors'
confidentiality over safety,
and I think we need to do a
step in the right direction
to have safety first and
confidentiality afterwards.
NARRATOR: In its
final report, the BEA
calls for clear rules
for healthcare providers,
rules that could help
stop the next Andreas Lubitz.
ROMAIN: We recommend to adjust
the line between public safety
and the protection of
personal information.
NARRATOR: They also recommend
more stringent mental health
evaluations for airline pilots.
ARNAUD: We have put together
a set of safety recommendations
that makes the
system less likely
that such an event would
happen again in the future.
*
NARRATOR: The lessons
learned could prevent a repeat
of the Germanwings crash.
But for Klaus
Radner, what's important now
is keeping the memory
of his loved ones alive.
KLAUS (translated): Maria
was a very caring person,
and I want this little
family to be remembered
how they really were:
friendly, honest and happy.
debris litters the French Alps.
HEIKE (Archive):
This is a tragic
moment for Lufthansa,
and it's really a
dark day in our history.
NICOLA: People
want answers quickly.
NARRATOR: The fatal
flight path of Germanwings 9525
seems inexplicable.
ROMAIN: Completely under
control right up until the end.
HANS: What was
the reason for it?
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, this is Marseille.
Come in please.
*
ROMAIN: What's going on?
NARRATOR: Black box data points
to a shocking possibility.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Lubitz!
ROMAIN: As a safety
investigator you, you think:
How could this happen?
CPT. SONDENHEIMER:
Open this damn door!
NARRATOR: One so dark
it's almost beyond belief.
[* theme music ]
[* theme music ]
*
NARRATOR: It's a sunny morning
at Barcelona Airport in Spain.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: After-start
checklist. Anti-ice.
FO. LUBITZ: Anti-ice off.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Rudder trim.
FO. LUBITZ: Rudder trim is zero.
NARRATOR: The crew of
Germanwings Flight 9525
is preparing for departure.
Most of the 144 passengers
are from Germany and Spain,
drawn by the
airline's low fares.
HANS: Germanwings
was founded in 2002.
It's part of Lufthansa Group.
It always has been a low-cost
carrier serving European routes.
NARRATOR: A group of
German high school students
who've just
finished a cultural exchange
is on the flight to Dusseldorf.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT:
Seat forward, please.
CHILD: Mama.
MARIA: Yeah.
NARRATOR: Singer Maria Radner
is traveling with her husband
and young son.
The rising opera
star just completed
a string of
performances in Spain.
KLAUS (translated): I
was very proud of Maria.
It made me so happy that
she had chosen a profession
that she truly
loved, making music
and using her beautiful
voice to bring people joy.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER:
Flight attendants,
please take your
seats for takeoff.
NARRATOR: Captain
Patrick Sondenheimer
is a former
Lufthansa First Officer
who recently
transferred to Germanwings.
HANS: That was a good
opportunity to change from
co-pilot, be upgraded as a
captain and fly for Germanwings
on the European route.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: You have control?
FO. LUBITZ: I have control.
NARRATOR: First
Officer Andreas Lubitz,
who has been with the
airline for just over a year,
will handle the flying.
HANS: As a co-pilot,
you're learning every hour,
every day on every flight.
*
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Cleared
for takeoff zero-seven-right,
Germanwings 9525.
*
FO. LUBITZ: Takeoff thrust.
NARRATOR: It's a routine takeoff
on an ordinary Tuesday morning.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: 80 knots.
FO. LUBITZ: Crosscheck.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: V-1. Rotate.
NARRATOR: Just after 10
a.m., Germanwings Flight 9525
gets airborne.
HANS: Two, three
minutes after takeoff
they must have broken cloud and
been climbing out into the sun.
FO. LUBITZ: Autopilot on?
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Autopilot on.
NARRATOR: They're heading
northeast over the Gulf of Lyon
towards the French Alps.
They should be in Dusseldorf
in just over two hours.
Twenty-seven
minutes into the flight,
the plane reaches its cruising
altitude of 38,000 feet.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER:
Marseille, Germanwings 9525.
I'm at flight level 380.
NARRATOR: Air traffic control
in Marseille tracks the plane
as it crosses France.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Good morning, Germanwings.
Direct to IRMAR.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Direct to
IRMAR. Merci. Germanwings 9525.
HANS: IRMAR is a well-known
waypoint in the French Alps,
a point you over fly
when you do this route
and then you don't
talk to ATC any longer
until they tell you
to start your descent.
*
FO. LUBITZ:
If you need to go to the
bathroom, now's your chance.
*
NARRATOR: Four minutes later,
the controller in Marseille
notices something odd.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, Marseille.
Confirm what cruising
altitude you're cleared for.
NARRATOR: Flight 9525 is
descending without permission.
HANS: Well if the air traffic
controller sees an airplane
leaving its assigned altitude,
of course he wants to know why,
because he hasn't give
him clearance to descend.
So he of course wants to
inquire, why are you descending?
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, this is Marseille.
Come in please.
We've got a problem here.
Germanwings unresponsive,
descending rapidly.
HANS: It must be a big surprise
seeing this airplane descending
without any communication.
NARRATOR: The plane
is dropping steadily.
In just minutes, it's
lost ten thousand feet.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, come in.
Do you read me?
*
MARIA: Are we landing already?
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: It
seems odd. We shouldn't be.
*
NARRATOR: The control center
is now in emergency mode.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Now approaching 25,000 feet.
HANS: So maybe they need help?
They are in an
emergent descent or something?
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, this is Marseille.
Come in, please.
HANS: But to help the
crew they need to have contact
to the crew.
NARRATOR: The Airbus
is hurtling downwards
at maximum operating speed,
an astonishing 350 knots.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, come in!
Lima-Echo-X-ray
relay from Marseille.
I need you to try and
contact Germanwings 9525.
What is their situation?
HANS: And there was
even another airplane
that tried to relay air
traffic control's requests.
PILOT: 9525, how do you read?
HANS: But there was no answer.
NARRATOR: The plane has dropped
below seven thousand feet.
The towering
mountains loom closer.
It's been ten minutes
with no radio contact,
an eternity for controllers.
HANS: He's powerless. There's
nothing he can do about it.
He just has to watch. It
must be absolutely devastating.
AUTOMATION: Pull
up. Too low. Terrain.
*
AIR TRAFFIC
CONTROLLER: We've lost contact.
NARRATOR: The plane is now too
low to be detected by radar.
AUTOMATION: Pull up. Too low.
[passengers screaming]
[plane descending]
[explosion]
HANS: The airplane really
crashed at a very high speed.
It was very
important that police forces
get access to the
accident site immediately.
NARRATOR: Rescuers
race to find the crash site
of Germanwings Flight 9525.
At the same moment, the
world's attention turns
to these remote
peaks in the French Alps.
NICOLA: The news about this
plane crash spread very quickly
on social media. I
mean Twitter just lit up.
NARRATOR: Nicola Clarke is a
reporter for the New York Times.
NICOLA: Bits and pieces
immediately started coming out,
people asking
questions on social media
almost simultaneous
with the news alerts.
NARRATOR: It takes
an hour for searchers
to spot the first
remains of Flight 9525.
Hope of finding
survivors quickly fades.
NICOLA: The first helicopters
that flew over the site
found just sort of
an aircraft obliterated
and, you know, just shattered
into small bits and pieces.
It was pretty
immediate that they concluded
that there couldn't possibly
have been any survivors.
NARRATOR: Among the
dead, sixteen young students
who will never return
home to their families
in Haltern, Germany.
The death of opera singer Maria
Radner and her young family
is another devastating loss.
KLAUS (translated):
You're overwhelmed by it.
You cannot think about anything
other than the
death of your children.
NARRATOR: The enormity of
the crash quickly sinks in.
It's the worst air
disaster on French soil
in more than three decades.
The aviation
community needs an explanation.
HANS: Was it an
incapacitation of the pilot?
Was it an, a
technical malfunction?
What was the reason for it?
NICOLA: Accidents like
this take on a magnitude
and a life of their own.
People want answers quickly.
NARRATOR: The disturbing
answers will come more quickly
than anyone imagines.
NARRATOR: The medieval
village of Seyne-les-Alpes
has become a
makeshift operations center
for the investigation
into the Germanwings disaster.
Arnaud Desjardin leads the
investigation for the BEA,
the French accident
investigation agency.
ARNAUD: Keep personal effects
separate from the other debris,
please.
ARNAUD: We knew it was
going to be a big job,
big job meaning you
would have to coordinate
not only with Airbus and so
on, but there was going to be
a big political issue, a big
international investigation.
ARNAUD: If there's any sign of
the black boxes, let me know.
NARRATOR: Desjardin hopes
his team can quickly recover
the plane's flight recorders.
They could hold
crucial evidence.
But combing through the
wreckage is proving to be
a heart-wrenching task.
ARNAUD: The hardest thing
I, I find personally to find
is toys, little dolls,
or teddy bears, you know,
that belonged to a, to a child.
NARRATOR: At BEA
headquarters near Paris,
Romain Bevillard
joins the investigation.
ROMAIN: We need the
weather charts, now.
ROMAIN: My part was
to gather some facts
on the accident itself,
but at the same
time to coordinate
with the judicial authorities,
with our counterparts
from Germany, from Spain.
NARRATOR: It's
standard procedure
to check if weather
conditions might be a factor.
In the Alps, the weather
can change in an instant.
ROMAIN: Southern
Alps, 10:40 a.m.
ROMAIN: At this stage, you're
just trying to understand
what went wrong
and what happened.
NARRATOR: But on this morning
in this part of the range,
flying conditions
were nearly perfect.
ROMAIN: Definitely
not a weather problem.
*
NARRATOR: The investigation
is just hours old,
but Germany's biggest
airline is already under
intense pressure.
HEIKE (Archive): This is a
tragic moment for Lufthansa,
and it's really a
dark day in our history.
NARRATOR: The town of Haltern,
Germany, is in mourning.
MAYOR (Archive, translated):
You can sense a state
of shock all around.
It's pretty much the worst
thing anyone could imagine.
NARRATOR: The deadly
crash comes just two months
after a terrorist killing
spree claims seventeen lives
in and around Paris.
Many now fear that the
terrorists have struck again.
NICOLA: One of the
reasons that people speculated
that this might
be a terrorism event
was simply the
proximity to the attacks
on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper
that left really all of
France in a state of shock.
*
ROMAIN: Is this the radar
track from air traffic control?
Let's get it set up right away.
NARRATOR: Investigators
turn to radar data
in the hope of discovering if a
bomb blast is a possible cause.
ROMAIN: Let's see how
this plane was flying.
NARRATOR: They
study the flight path,
noting altitude,
time and direction.
What they find is a straight,
controlled path downwards.
ROMAIN: Completely under
control right up until the end.
ROMAIN: It was looking
like a normal descent.
It's just that it was
not happening at let's say
the proper time.
NARRATOR: The data
strongly suggests no bomb.
ROMAIN: If we had a
bomb onboard the aircraft,
we would probably have seen
evidence of in-flight breakup
and we may have
lost radar information.
NARRATOR: The
wreckage confirms it.
Recovery crews are finding
thousands of small pieces
in a fairly confined area.
ARNAUD: I don't think so.
NARRATOR: A bomb blast
would send large pieces falling
over a much wider space.
ARNAUD: This is
not a bomb blast.
NARRATOR: Investigators
are desperate for a lead.
They wonder if the Marseille
air traffic controllers
have any information
that might help explain
the strangely
steady flight path.
ROMAIN: A very straight line.
ROMAIN: The ATC controller
is not an eyewitness,
but he may be the last
person who talked to the,
to the crew or who could
notice anything unusual.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, Marseille.
Confirm what cruising
altitude you're cleared for.
Germanwings, this is
Marseille. Come in please.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
I'd never seen that before.
ROMAIN: So after they
confirmed the waypoint,
you never heard from them again?
AIR TRAFFIC
CONTROLLER: Not a word.
NARRATOR: The
controllers are just as baffled
as the investigators.
ROMAIN: They indicated to
us that they tried to call
the Germanwings
flight crew eleven times.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, this is Marseille.
Come in please.
ROMAIN: And they
never got any answers.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, come in.
Do you read me?
ARNAUD: And the fact
that the crew did not respond
to ATC control was intriguing
and it was really unusual.
NARRATOR: Investigators
struggle to understand
Germanwings's mysterious
descent into the mountains.
ROMAIN: Have we got
through to maintenance yet?
They wonder if a mechanical
failure might be to blame.
[explosion]
Something the crew
could not control.
The A320 is one of the
most popular planes in the sky.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Anti-ice.
FO. LUBITZ: Anti-ice off.
NARRATOR:
Investigators worry the Airbus
may have a hidden flaw.
FO. LUBITZ: Rudder trim is zero.
NICOLA: If there is some
kind of a technical problem,
especially an
aircraft like the A320,
they want to know
as quickly as possible
and get that resolved in
order to eliminate that risk
for the rest of
the flying public.
NARRATOR: One theory
fits the strange flight path:
loss of cabin pressure.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
We got a problem here.
Germanwings unresponsive,
descending rapidly.
HANS: When the
airplane depressurizes
and the pilots do
not get enough oxygen,
they will suffer from hypoxia.
In other words, they
will lose consciousness
in a very short time,
depending on the
altitude of the airplane.
At flight level 3-8-0,
they will lose consciousness
within about 10 to 15 seconds.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, come in!
NARRATOR: Hypoxia would
explain the radio silence.
It would not be the
first time it happened.
In 2005, a Boeing 737 ran into
trouble en route to Athens.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Helios 522, do you read?
All radio
contact was lost after
the crew became incapacitated
by a lack of oxygen.
NICOLA: The pilots
never regained consciousness
and that flight
ultimately crashed
when the plane ran out of fuel.
[crash]
*
NARRATOR: Now
investigators want to know
if the same thing
happened over the French Alps.
ARNAUD: Hypoxia was a
very likely possibility.
[plane descending]
[crash]
NARRATOR: Investigators
discover that Germanwings
looked into a
mechanical issue with the plane
the day before it crashed.
Were mechanics
concerned about something
that could have caused
a loss of cabin pressure?
*
ROMAIN: There was a problem,
the left nose gear door.
NARRATOR: They soon
learn the answer is no.
ROMAIN: Nah. That wouldn't have
anything to do with this crash.
HANS:
Faulty landing gear door is
not an issue at all because it's
well outside the pressurized
area of the airplane.
*
ROMAIN: We saw that the
aircraft was maintained
according to a
proper maintenance program.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: V-1. Rotate.
ROMAIN: We were quite confident
that the aircraft was in a,
in a good structural
condition when it took off.
NARRATOR: So far, evidence
has ruled out severe weather
and a midair bombing.
There are no red flags
in the maintenance records.
Investigators are
still in the dark.
ROMAIN: We can't
completely rule out hypoxia.
[cell phone rings]
NARRATOR: But before the first
day of investigation is through,
the team has a new lead.
ARNAUD: We found it.
NARRATOR: Searchers have found
the cockpit voice recorder.
It's in bad shape, but if
the data can be retrieved
it could answer a
lot of questions.
NICOLA: There was
hope that that recording
would reveal something clear
about what actually happened.
*
NARRATOR: Crews
continue the difficult job
of recovering bodies from the
mountains near Seyne-les-Alpes.
*
The local gymnasium
is now a welcome center
for grieving families.
Air crash investigators,
military police and firefighters
all work the crash site.
Their focus is
finding the second black box,
the flight data recorder.
ARNAUD: Literally
dozens of, of people looking.
We had difficulties
in, in locating it.
But we were not going to
leave this accident site
without recovering
the flight data recorder.
[Speaking French]
NARRATOR: French prosecutor
Brice Robin arrives on the scene
to oversee a separate
criminal investigation.
NICOLA: In France, it's a
very different situation.
The French
authorities automatically
open two investigations,
a technical investigation into
the causes of the crash and
a criminal investigation that
ultimately seeks to determine
whether there was any liability.
NARRATOR: The two investigative
teams must work side by side.
For now, neither
can point to a cause.
There simply
isn't enough evidence.
PRESS CONFERENCE
(Archive): We cannot understand
how an airplane which was
in perfect technical condition
with two experienced and
trained Lufthansa pilots
was involved in such
a terrible accident.
ROMAIN: Are we ready?
NARRATOR: Could the
cockpit voice recording
provide new insights?
ROMAIN: Captain is mic
one. First officer is mic two.
ROMAIN: I've
worked for six years
as a flight recorder specialist.
We may not be able to understand
why everything happened
but at least we have
a good starting point.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: After-start
checklist. Anti-ice.
FO. LUBITZ: Anti-ice off.
ROMAIN: Okay. So the captain's
running the checklists.
That means the
first officer is flying.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Rudder trim.
FO. LUBITZ: Rudder trim is zero.
The checklists and taxi to
the runway are all faultless.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: 80 knots.
FO. LUBITZ: Cross checked.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: V-1. Rotate.
NARRATOR: The
takeoff seems fine.
They hear no
hint of any trouble.
*
Twelve minutes later, a
flight attendant requests entry
to the cockpit.
HANS: What you can hear
there is clicks and clacks
of switches being operated.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: I'll let her in.
HANS: You can hear cockpit
doors opening and closing.
So you're... you have a lot of
sounds that can be interpreted.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT:
How delayed are we?
Some of the
passengers are asking.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: Thirty minutes.
We might make some of that
up in the air but not much.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Okay. Do
either of you need anything?
FO. LUBITZ: I'm
getting a bit hungry.
Would you mind
bringing me some lunch?
FLIGHT ATTENDANT:
Okay. I'll be right back.
ROMAIN: There was some general
talking about the flight.
You could tell by
the tone of their voices
that it was like a
normal follow-up of the flight.
FO. LUBITZ:
If you need to go to the
bathroom, now's your chance.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Good
idea. I think I will go.
*
ROMAIN: You can
hear noises of a person
going out of the cockpit,
and from this point the
cockpit gets very quiet.
ROMAIN: The
captain's left the cockpit.
The first officer
is alone in there.
NARRATOR: It is the exact moment
that the plane
starts descending.
*
No voices can be heard in
the cockpit for two minutes.
Then three. Then four.
ROMAIN: The captain is
still in the bathroom.
The first officer
is clearly on his own.
The cockpit
microphone picks up the sound
of the first officer breathing,
evidence that the plane
did not suffer a
fatal depressurization.
*
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, Marseille.
Confirm what cruise
altitude you're cleared for.
Germanwings, this is
Marseille. Come in please.
ROMAIN:
He's not starved for oxygen.
No loss of cabin pressure.
Why isn't he answering ATC?
*
NARRATOR: The strange
silence in the cockpit
mystifies investigators.
The search for an explanation
will lead them down
a very troubling path.
*
NARRATOR: Investigators hear the
captain trying to regain access
to the cockpit of Flight 9525.
HANS: The pilot could
reenter by pressing a buzzer.
Then the other pilot
can watch on the camera
if he has the right
to enter the cockpit.
NARRATOR:
All he has to do is flip a
switch to unlock the door.
[knocking]
But there's no
response from Lubitz.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, this is Marseille.
Come in please.
ROMAIN: What's going on?
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, do you read me?
Come in.
ROMAIN: Why isn't
he unlocking the door?
[knocking]
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Lubitz.
ARNAUD: We could hear
some breathing, but of course
you can breathe
and be unconscious.
So, yes, the
physical incapacitation
was a possibility.
*
ROMAIN: The intercom's working.
We can clearly hear it.
[beeping]
HANS: The buzzer or the
call of course is noticeable,
and it is distinguished to any
other sounds in the cockpit.
So you know that
somebody wants to talk to you
or wants to enter the cockpit.
There's no doubt about that.
NARRATOR: The plane is
now well into its descent,
speeding towards the Alps.
[knocking]
ROMAIN: Why isn't he opening
the door? Is he unconscious?
NARRATOR: The sound of the
banging grows louder and louder.
[captain banging
door and shouting]
ROMAIN: Hearing the banging
on the door is quite disturbing
because it's not what
you're used to listening to
when you listen to CVRs.
*
AUTOMATION: Pull up.
Too low. Terrain. Too low.
[plane descends]
[explosion]
*
ROMAIN: At the end of the
recording we were, you know,
still trying to
understand what had happened.
NARRATOR: There
seems to be no evidence
of a mechanical failure.
No terrorist group has
claimed responsibility.
All
investigators know for certain
is that the first officer
was alone in the cockpit
when the plane
hit the mountains.
ROMAIN: Did he
do this on purpose?
NICOLA: There were really sort
of one of two possibilities.
Either the pilot
was incapacitated
or that this was some
kind of suicidal act.
NARRATOR: They are forced
to consider the unthinkable,
that First Officer Andreas
Lubitz locked his captain
out of the cockpit and
deliberately crashed the plane.
ROMAIN: Pull
everything we've got on Lubitz.
*
NARRATOR: Just three
days into the investigation,
the French prosecutor
makes an unprecedented move.
He speculates publicly
on the cause of the crash.
PRESS CONFERENCE
(Archive, translated):
The most credible,
the most likely
explanation for us
is that the
co-pilot voluntarily refused
to open the cockpit door.
NARRATOR: Though all the
facts still aren't known,
the prosecutor's statement
paints a chilling picture.
NICOLA: It was something
that was not only a shock
to the public at large but
I think particularly a shock
to the aviation community
and to the pilot community.
NARRATOR: Within hours,
several European airlines
vow to make rule changes
requiring two crew members
in the cockpit at all times.
ROMAIN: Hi, hello,
I'm calling from the
Accident Investigation Bureau.
I'm wondering if you
had just a few moments
to talk about your
colleague, Mr. Andreas Lubitz.
NARRATOR: The BEA's
job now is to find out
why a 27-year-old pilot with
a bright future ahead of him
might want to deliberately
crash a passenger plane.
ROMAIN: As a safety
investigator you think,
how could this happen?
ROMAIN: Okay.
Thank you very much.
I just need five
minutes of your time.
ARNAUD: Yes. Hello.
This is Arnaud Desjardin.
ROMAIN: Okay. I understand.
NARRATOR: None of Lubitz's
close friends or family
will speak to them.
ARNAUD: How about
you? Any success?
ROMAIN: No. No one will talk.
NICOLA: There is a very strong
culture of privacy in Germany,
and family members
tend to be quite guarded.
NARRATOR: Reporters
visit his local flying club.
People there remember Lubitz
as an unassuming young man
who loved to fly.
KLAUS (translated):
He was a very calm, responsible
man. It's inconceivable.
NARRATOR: In a
Dusseldorf neighborhood,
the search for
evidence intensifies.
NICOLA: The German police went
to Andreas Lubitz's apartment
and started looking for
any and every bit of evidence
as to what might
have motivated him,
what his mental
state might have been.
NARRATOR: An examination
of Lubitz's personal life
could answer the question now
being asked around the world.
Was there a dark
and dangerous alter ego
hiding behind a calm exterior?
NARRATOR:
As the perilous recovery work
continues in the French Alps,
so does the search for
the flight data recorder,
a key piece of evidence
that could reveal if the plane
was deliberately
flown into the ground.
*
In Paris,
aviation investigators dig
into Andreas
Lubitz's background,
his training and
medical records.
ROMAIN: Okay. Let's
see what we've got.
NARRATOR: They go back
to Lubitz's basic training
at Lufthansa's Flight
Academy in September 2008.
ROMAIN: Just two months
into training he broke it off.
He didn't return
for nine months.
It was for medical
reasons. Depression.
NARRATOR: The
records show that Lubitz
suffered a severe depression
and was hospitalized.
NICOLA: Treatments
included antidepressant drugs,
psychotherapy, and
it emerged as well
that he had actually
had suicidal thoughts.
*
NARRATOR: He later
applied to resume his training
but needed a new
medical certificate.
ROMAIN: He was still on
antidepressants in early 2009.
He had to
provide a doctor's note.
NARRATOR: Lubitz got the
clearance from his psychiatrist.
NICOLA: He had a certification
from his treating doctor
that said that he
was fully recovered.
ROMAIN: He moved to the US
and completed his
pilot training there.
ROMAIN: And after
the end of his training
he ended up
flying for Germanwings.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: I'll let her in.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT:
How delayed are we?
Some of the
passengers are asking.
NARRATOR: Lubitz
received regular medical exams
from company doctors.
His last check-up was
seven months before the crash.
ARNAUD: The medical
examiners that saw him
all thought he was fit to fly,
and as a matter of fact he
flew safely for several years.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: Thirty minutes.
NARRATOR: Even on
the day of the crash,
Lubitz seemed perfectly healthy.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Do
either of you need anything?
FO. LUBITZ: I'm
getting a bit hungry.
Would you mind
bringing me some lunch?
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Okay. No
problem. I'll be right back.
PROF. BOR:
A mental health problem
might not necessarily lead
to significant
changes about their behavior.
NARRATOR: Professor
Robert Bor is a specialist
in aviation psychology.
PROF. BOR: In some cases,
people do put out signs that
they are feeling increasingly
fragile and disoriented
to the extent that they
may be thinking of suicide.
*
But there will
always be those people who
are planning and indeed plotting
their own demise, suicide,
but they will not
communicate it to anyone else.
NARRATOR: Digging
deeper into Lubitz's records,
they learn that in the
months leading up to the crash
he seemed to take a
turn for the worse.
PROF. BOR: He was
convinced that perhaps
he was losing his eyesight,
and yet nothing was found that
was abnormal about his eyesight,
and it does also appear
that he was becoming
increasingly frightened
to the point of desperation
that his career was
going to be disrupted.
NICOLA: He saw something
like 41 different doctors
complaining of the same
symptoms and same issues.
And it's not clear
that any of them knew
how many other
doctors he was seeing,
and it's not
clear how many of them
might have known that
he was airline pilot.
*
NARRATOR: Among the items
found in Lubitz's apartment,
investigators make a
remarkable discovery.
ROMAIN: What have we got here?
*
NARRATOR: A recent doctor's note
advising the
disturbed pilot not to fly.
ROMAIN: This note was issued
just days before the crash.
PROF. BOR: Some of his
treating physicians had
recommended that he stop flying,
perhaps enter a hospital,
a psychiatric hospital.
NARRATOR: Investigators
wonder if Lufthansa knew
how serious Lubitz's
mental problems really were.
Airline representatives reveal
they had absolutely no idea.
ROMAIN: You've
never seen this note?
NARRATOR: Lubitz
consulted dozens of doctors.
Many of them
wrote sick leave notes.
But not a single doctor ever
contacted the airline directly
to raise the alarm about the
pilot's spiraling mental state.
ROMAIN: And they
are assuming that
when they provide these
sick leave certificates
the co-pilot will himself
forward those sick leave
certificates to the
authority or to his employer,
and therefore he
will not be flying.
NARRATOR: Then,
after a ten-day search,
one more vital piece
of evidence is recovered
from the mountains.
ROMAIN: It was almost by
chance that we, we found it.
Just going
through all the debris,
and at some point someone found
the flight data recorders.
NARRATOR: The hope
now is that the FDR
can paint a clearer picture of
what the first officer was doing
in the final
moments of the flight.
FO. LUBITZ:
If you need to go to the
bathroom, now's your chance.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Good
idea. I think I will go.
*
*
ARNAUD: One hundred feet.
Right after the captain left,
he set the altitude
to one hundred feet.
NARRATOR: The data confirms
that Lubitz was fully conscious
throughout the descent.
Alone in the cockpit,
he dropped the altitude to
its lowest setting and cranked
the speed dial several times
until it reached
maximum operating speed.
ARNAUD: He was
conscious to the very end.
He was actively
controlling the plane.
*
CPT. SONDENHEIMER:
Open the door! It's locked.
Something's wrong.
[knocking]
Open the door! Lubitz,
what are you doing? Let me in.
*
Open the door! Lubitz!
Lubitz! Open this damn door!
Get me the crash
axe. Open the door!
HANS: There is
always a crowbar or a...
we call it an
emergency axe on the airplane
to gain access to a fire
if the fire is behind panels.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Come on!
Open the damn door! Come on.
Lubitz.
[axe hitting door]
Lubitz. Listen to me!
HANS: The captain
was of course desperate
to get into the cockpit,
and he knew that
this descent was continuing.
CPT. SONDENHEIMER: Oh God. Open
it! Come on! Open it! Damn it!
Open this damn door!
HANS: The cabin
crew was watching them.
That must be horrible for them,
knowing that they
were going to die.
*
AUTOMATION: Pull up.
Too low. Terrain. Too low.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER:
Germanwings, come in.
Do you read me?
[passengers screaming]
MARIA: I love you, my darling.
KLAUS (translated): Every
night when I go to sleep,
I see a picture
in front of my eyes.
The three of them are
crashing into a mountain.
This image never goes away.
*
*
[plane descending]
[explosion]
NARRATOR: The terrifying
cause for the loss of 150 lives
has been confirmed.
But investigators
are about to discover
that the tragedy of
Germanwings Flight 9525
has one more dark chapter.
ARNAUD: Let's go
back to the beginning.
NARRATOR: Flight 9525
from Barcelona to Dusseldorf
was Lubitz's
second flight of the day.
His first was in
the opposite direction,
from Dusseldorf to Barcelona.
On that flight, the
captain also left the cockpit.
ROMAIN: From
Dusseldorf to Barcelona,
we realized that at
some point the co-pilot
remained alone in the cockpit,
and during this time he
made some altitude selections.
After the captain stepped out,
Lubitz briefly set the
altitude to one hundred feet.
ROMAIN: Those
altitude selections
went back to normal
before the captain came back.
NARRATOR: It was a dry
run, a quick rehearsal
for a tragedy just hours away.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: Everything okay?
FO. LUBITZ: Yes,
everything's just fine.
ARNAUD: This was no
spur of the moment decision.
This was a carefully
planned murder/suicide.
HANS: He wanted to do that on
purpose, and he had planned it.
He had planned it to
not only kill himself,
but 149 other people with him.
*
KLAUS
(translated): I have to say
it was as bad as learning
about the death of my daughter.
It hit me very deeply. Even
to this day I can't imagine it.
NARRATOR: What exactly
was going on in Lubitz's mind
may never be known.
None of the
doctors who treated him
would speak to investigators.
But experts in the field agree.
Lubitz was likely suffering
from a psychotic
depressive episode.
PROF. BOR: That person is
no longer fully in control
of all of their
cognitive functions.
CPT.
SONDENHEIMER: Hello. Lubitz.
PROF. BOR: This person
loses a sense of reality.
They become very distracted,
and it's at that level that
things are more concerning,
particularly in aviation.
NARRATOR: A psychotic
pilot somehow ended up alone
in the cockpit of
a passenger plane.
NICOLA: One of the
questions that, you know,
still lingers out there
is, when was the moment
that Andreas Lubitz
could have been stopped?
When was the moment
that this disaster
could have been prevented?
And who could have done so?
KLAUS (translated):
There were over 40 doctors
who knew the medical
situation of this murderer,
and not one of
them took measures
to somehow
prevent such a tragedy.
*
MARIA: I love you.
PROF. BOR: And I think
that that is the saddest part.
There was information available
that could have actually
prevented this accident.
NARRATOR: Investigators conclude
that the importance of personal
privacy in German society
likely played a role.
Doctors in Germany
have a very good reason
not to share any
patient information.
NICOLA: In the German system,
doctors can
potentially face prosecution
if they breach their patients'
medical confidentiality.
PROF. BOR: They
were relying upon him
to select himself out of flight.
The fact that he didn't do this
is both a failure of
the individual pilot,
but also a failure
of the medical system.
HANS: In my opinion,
there was too much weight given
to doctors'
confidentiality over safety,
and I think we need to do a
step in the right direction
to have safety first and
confidentiality afterwards.
NARRATOR: In its
final report, the BEA
calls for clear rules
for healthcare providers,
rules that could help
stop the next Andreas Lubitz.
ROMAIN: We recommend to adjust
the line between public safety
and the protection of
personal information.
NARRATOR: They also recommend
more stringent mental health
evaluations for airline pilots.
ARNAUD: We have put together
a set of safety recommendations
that makes the
system less likely
that such an event would
happen again in the future.
*
NARRATOR: The lessons
learned could prevent a repeat
of the Germanwings crash.
But for Klaus
Radner, what's important now
is keeping the memory
of his loved ones alive.
KLAUS (translated): Maria
was a very caring person,
and I want this little
family to be remembered
how they really were:
friendly, honest and happy.