Germanwings pilot was trying to smash the cockpit door down!

This could be in short what happened to Germanwings flight 4U 9525 that crashed on the way from Barcelona to Duesselorf. One pilot on a restroom break, the other asleep, 150 killed as a result? Is a simple missing safety policy on German Lufthansa responsible for 150 dead?

Other than on U.S. registered airlines German Lufthansa may have not felt the same safety policy was important. Could this have caused 150 human lives?

Non-US standards on Lufthansa or Germanwings may have been the reason for yesterday’s Germanwings crash in the French Alps killing all 150 onboard. According to an article just published in the New York Times, a senior military official involved in the investigation described a “very smooth, very cool” conversation between the pilots during the early part of the flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf. Then the audio indicated that one of the pilots left the cockpit and could not re-enter.

Doors are opened during restroom and meal breaks, and some carriers may have less stringent policies than others on visits from outsiders.

Here is scenario based on this statement. One of the two pilots left the cockpit on a restroom break, but did not invite a flight attendendant to take his place in the cockpit. In the United States of America and on a US flag carrier this would have been standard procedure.

Once this pilot left the cockpit, only the other remaining pilot in the cockpit would have been able to open the door. According to an expert eTN talked to, this door has to be opened from the inside. Was there a situation, a loss in cabin pressure, or unexpected medical condition preventing the remaining pilot to open the cockpit door? Was the other pilot simply asleep when the first pilot tried to come back into the cockpit?

The data from the voice recorder had no indication of the condition or activity of the pilot who remained in the cockpit. The descent from 38,000 feet over about 10 minutes was alarming but still gradual enough to indicate that the Airbus A320 aircraft had not been damaged catastrophically.

It is standard for US flag carriers to always have two people in the cockpit. So yes, when a pilot uses the bathroom, a flight attendant will go in. This is to be able to open the cockpit door if the remaining co-pilot becomes incapacitated.

eTN was unable to confirm if yet with Lufthansa or Germanwings. From personal observations by this writer, it is most likely not the case at Lufthansa.

One pilot unconscious and the other unable to re-enter the cockpit would have put the plane on auto pilot and on a crash course. According to the statements based on observations after listening to the voice recorder, the locked out pilot tried to open the cockpit door with force, but without success.

The investigator told the NY Times: “The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door and there is no answer,” the investigator said. “And then he hits the door stronger and no answer. There is never an answer.”

He said, “You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”

A second scenario assuming a terror attack and based on the cockpit voice recordings could have developed like this:

The aged Germanwings A320 did not install what would be the most effective protection: A set of double doors that would allow pilots to come in and out of the cockpit but keep it sealed off from the cabin.

Different from US-registered airlines, flight attendendants are not securing the space between the cabin and the kitchen galley leading to the cockpit.

Did hijackers managed to gain access to the cockpit and kicked out the pilots?

There is more chatter on ISIS friendly twitter accounts mentioning Germanwings. One recent posts said: “We will be your nightmare. We are IS army.”

While the audio seemed to give some insight into the circumstances leading up to the Germanwings crash, it also left many questions unanswered.

Was Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, too fast to characterized the crash as an accident. The German airline has not disclosed the identities of the pilots, except to say that the captain was a 10-year veteran with more than 6,000 hours of flying time in Airbus A320s.

eTN readers tweeted: If true & copilot lockout, then the names of pilots, history, need to be released. “