With 150 deaths, including an entire group of students from Haltern am See and two babies, the crash of the Germanwings plane in the French Alps on March 24, 2015 is the most serious accident in the history of the entire Lufthansa Group. To this day there is a legal dispute over what many survivors believe was too little compensation from Lufthansa. And especially around the 10th anniversary, outrageous conspiracy theories about the cause of the accident are once again booming, some of which are actively being spread from Austria. In his recently published non-fiction book on the subject, the Austrian specialist journalist Patrick Huber illuminates the background and the course of the accident down to the smallest detail. To do this, he brought in technical experts and commercial pilots, among others, and also conducted interviews with the people involved. His non-fiction book “Germanwings Flight 9525 – Crash in the French Alps” is the first comprehensive work of its kind and is aimed at employees of the aviation industry as well as interested laypeople, the victims’ relatives and, of course, media professionals who need a solid fact-based reference work for their reporting seek.
March 24, 2015 was a beautiful, sunny spring day. 144 passengers wanted to travel from Barcelona to Düsseldorf on Germanwings Flight 9525 that day, most of them Germans. But the Airbus A320-211 with the registration D-AIPX never arrived at its destination airport.
Only around 40 minutes after take-off, the Airbus crashed in the French Alps in beautiful weather. While it was initially suspected that there had been a terrorist attack or a technical failure, the true cause soon became apparent: the seriously mentally ill co-pilot Andreas Lubitz had locked his captain out of the cockpit and then controlled the aircraft in a descent that lasted a good 11 minutes and deliberately counteracted it controlled a mountain range. During the last moments of this flight, which became a horrifying eternity for the people on board, dramatic scenes must have taken place in the cabin that can hardly be described in words.
Because the passengers and crew members not only felt the increasing pressure in their ears due to the strong descent, but also saw without a doubt how Captain Patrick Sondenheimer heroically but unfortunately tried in vain to break open the armored cockpit door, probably with the help of the crash axe, in order to get his plane and save the people on board. In the first rows of the passenger cabin, the bloodcurdling warning sirens and computer voices (“Terrain, Terrain, Pull up, Pull up!”) from the cockpit that announced the imminent crash could most likely be heard. At the same time, the 144 passengers also saw the mountains racing towards them faster and faster through the windows before the jet crashed into the French Alps at 09:41:06 a.m. UTC, which corresponds to 10:41:06 a.m. local time.
The 149 innocent victims of Andreas Lubitz must have suffered unimaginable agony and fear of death. But when it came to compensation payments, parent company Lufthansa was stingy and callous, as survivors criticize. It was often heard that sometimes you had to haggle over every euro. To this day, there is still a pending case in which survivors are demanding additional money. It is also about the question of whether Lufthansa or Lufthansa’s aeromedical service should have prevented the mentally ill first officer Andreas Lubitz from sitting in the cockpit at all. According to the author, Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr declined an interview on the topic.
-With particular meticulousness, the author has reconstructed the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 and the investigation into the accident down to the smallest detail with the support of commercial pilots and technical experts. In two of the 23 chapters of this non-fiction book, the experienced specialist journalist devotes himself to some of the conspiracy theories and other wild speculations circulating about the cause of the crash. The author refutes all of them with sound, precise analyzes and uses undisputed facts to show why there is not the slightest doubt about the guilt of First Officer Andreas Lubitz for the disaster. This unique non-fiction book is rounded off by the 56 photos it contains, some of which are exclusive.
Details about the book
- Release date: January 17, 2025
- Format A5
- 232 pages
- 56 illustrations
- available as hardcover and softcover
(red / PM)
