likelihood of this plane being put into that descent accidentally? what scenario could have given us an accidental descent like that? there is no real scenario. this is a very prescribed descent rate. 3500 to 4,000 feet per minute. the speed looks the same across the ground. it s a consistent descent track. the fact that this airplane didn t stair step down, it was on a continuous descent path, that was programmed into the flight management system. if the pilot was incapacitated that remained in the cockpit, then the door should have been accessible to the pilot on the outside. there are protocols for access and entry through that cockpit door. while the pilot in the cockpit can control in various levels, the security of that door, under normal conditions, there was
utilized, but if the door is placed into what is known as override, that prevuds the code from being entered at the door and it makes sure that the door in fact stays locked. now, to lester s point earlier. to get the airplane to descend into an airbus a-320, it s a matter of selecting a descent note, open descent or vertical speed. in the case of vertical speed you rotate a knob and you select a given descent rate. in this case it looks like it s 3,500 feet per minute and the airplane will maintain that until it strikes the ground. it s doing what it s commanded to do so lester you re right on point. we re getting in this first look at pilot. 28-year-old andreas lubitz. german newspapers reporting this is a picture of him from social media. john, to lester s point this is an issue of mass murder. we can look at issues of training and how long he had worked for this particular airline, and if he was trained,
could literally lean on the joy stick and be unconscious and the plane would go into a desscent or does that seem highly unlikely to you? well, it s certainly possible except for one thing. the airplane continued to fly on its track and the desscent rate is constant on the way down. in the cases where you have somebody manually flying the airplane or more importantly, the autopilot not flying the airplane, you get a more erratic flight path. so right now the evidence seems to indicate that the airplane maintained its track, which says that the flight management computer was flying the was commanding the autopilot which was flying the airplane and descent rate was a commanded descent rate probably using the vertical speed mode. but that s where you could get this consistent flighting profile that we see based on the information we have so far. so isn t that also debunked a bit by the fact that john cox and tom, you were also saying
point where we had our last contact with the aircraft. that s not being talked about at this point in time probably because that information isn t quite available for the public. but that being said something caused this airplane to come out, to leave cruise altitude. and i have a feeling, my gut says the crew was compelled because of an energy situation. what that emergency situation was, i don t know. it wasn t fast enough to do an emergency descent, which you would find in explosive depressurization. that s the thing. this was an 8 minute descent. not exactly plummeting or anything like that. this is a descent rate that may be a little bit steeper than normal but not really a whole lot. i ve done this rate of descent on a normal approach or a normal descent rate into hee hethrow. we know nothing about it. the attack we don t know if
i ve done this rate of descent on a normal approach, or a normal descent rate into heathrow. we know nothing about it. the attack, we don t know if that was a factor. that s a scary factor but we don t know. let s not put too much emphasis on that certainly at this point in time. deborah, if it were some sort of omechanical issue one of the biggest question ss if it was problem specific to this aircraft for this e fleet, this a-320 fleet in general. that s right. and investigators are going to be looking very closely at that. one of the reasons why they really want to get those reporters as fast as possible is because they re trying to figure out if there s an air worthiness issue not just for this specific airplane but for the fleet. if there are larger