"It was the darkest day in the history of [the] town", Haltern's mayor, Bodo Klimpel, commented on the crash.

2 years ago yesterday, on March 24th, 2015 at 10:40 AM CET, an Airbus A320 airliner (Registration D-AIPX) with 150 passengers and crews on board plummeted into the side of a massif in the French Alps at a speed in excess of 435 mph (700km/h). There were no survivors.

Among the passengers were sixteen students and two teachers from the Joseph-König-Gymnasium of Haltern am See, North Rhine-Westphalia. They were returning home from a student exchange with the Giola Institute in Llinars del Vallès, Barcelona.
Bass-baritone Oleg Bryjak and contralto Maria Radner, singers with Deutsche Oper am Rhein, were also on the flight.

According to French and German prosecutors, the crash was deliberately caused by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz. Brice Robin said Lubitz was initially courteous to Captain Sondenheimer during the first part of the flight, then became "curt" when the captain began the mid-flight briefing on the planned landing. Robin said when the captain returned from a probable toilet break and tried to enter the cockpit, Lubitz had locked the door. The captain had a code to unlock the door, but the lock's code panel can be disabled from the cockpit controls. The captain requested re-entry using the intercom; he knocked and then banged on the door, but received no response. The captain then tried to break down the door. During the descent, the co-pilot did not respond to questions from air traffic control and did not transmit a distress call. Robin said contact from the Marseille air traffic control tower, the captain's attempts to break in, and Lubitz's steady breathing were audible on the cockpit voice recording. The screams of passengers in the last moments before impact were also heard on the recording.

After their initial analysis of the aircraft's flight data recorder, the BEA concluded that Lubitz deliberately crashed the aircraft. He had set the autopilot to descend to 100 feet (30 m) and accelerated the speed of the descending aircraft several times thereafter. The aircraft was travelling at 700 kilometres per hour (430 mph) when it crashed into the mountain. The BEA preliminary report into the crash was published on 6 May 2015, six weeks later. It confirmed the initial analysis of the aircraft's flight data recorder and revealed that during the earlier outbound Flight 9524 from Düsseldorf to Barcelona, Lubitz had practised setting the autopilot altitude dial to 100 feet several times while the captain was out of the cockpit.

As a tribute to this tragic event, I have recreated the final moments of flight 9525 in 1.5:1

(Special thanks to Team Lyrah for the alpine landscape I used as a backdrop)

Link to project used: http://www.planetminecraft.com/project/pralpes---landscape/


Despite tragedies like this, flying is still statistically the safest way to travel. The engineers working meticulously at Boeing and Airbus, air traffic controllers working tirelessly directing hundreds of aircrafts around the world, And a majority of qualified, responsible, skilled pilots flying thousands of passengers safely to their destinations, these are the people who made flying so safe and accessible today.

Being a pilot is a great responsibility to bear. In the hands of a pilot holds not only a control column, but also hundreds of lives on board.

While the co-pilot on flight 9525 failed to bear that responsibility in his wanton act to end his own life (and everyone's onboard flight 9525), many, if not the vast majority of pilots value the lives of others, sometimes even more so than those of themselves.

The co-pilot on board may have undergone a difficult time in his life, but no amount of hardship he may have had could justify his cruel act that caused even more distress and hardship to the loved ones of the victims.

Let's not forget those pilots who displayed exceptional airmanship despite the most adverse of situations, ones like Chesely Sullenberger of US airways flight 1549, who landed a bird stricken A320 with loss of both engines safely on the Hudson river. He was the last one to leave the A320 after making sure everyone on board has evacuated safely. The "Miracle on Hudson" as some might call it, but without the brave efforts of all crew on board it would surely have ended in a tragedy.

Let's hope similar tragedies will never happen again. Let's hope the lives of everyone on flight 9525 are not lost in vain, and their passing will serve as a lesson of how psychologically unstable individuals could cost lives.

In memoriam,

Germanwings flight 9525

March 24, 2015.

D-AIPX, The airbus A320 involved in the crash.




This project is built to the dimensions provided by this spec sheet, scaled up to 1.5:1.

---

---

Please don't download my works, then re-upload them elsewhere and claim my work as your own!

Being recognized for my work motivates me to continue bringing everyone quality content on PMC, please don't take this motivation away from me!

If I catch you doing this on PMC or elsewhere, I will contact the site moderators and you will be named and shamed on my channel! Just don't do it and life will be easier for everyone here.

Find out how you can properly share my work on PMC and elsewhere below.


The following terms do not apply to pictures and renders shown in this project. You may not duplicate or modify any pictures or renders in this project or any features shown in the pictures or renders aforementioned.

You are free to download my work for personal use ONLY.

You must obtain written consent from me before sharing my work on PMC or elsewhere, under all circumstances.

After I have personally given you consent, you may share my work under these terms and conditions.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.