The horror scenario at the Germanwings Airbus A320 could not have happened in a Finnair plane, the company’s communication manager reveals. Picture: Seppo Sirkka EASTPRESS/Finland Today
“Barcelona is so beautiful Laura.”
This is the last message through WhatsApp from Ayleen, a tenth grader, on her way from Barcelona to Germany on the Germanwings flight number 4U9525, before the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, 27, suspectedly, deliberately crashed the plane into the mountains in the French Alps killing all 150 on board on Tuesday.
The cockpit voice recorder revealed that Lubitz stayed quiet and was breathing normally while Captain Patrick Sonderheimer hammered the cockpit door and desperately tried to open it during the 8-minute-long descent.
Captain Sonderheimer had left for the toilet and Lubitz had locked the door and even overridden the emergency code (a security measure to prevent a terrorist hijack), which allows crew to enter the cockpit in case of an incapacitated pilot.
This scenario could not have happened on a Finnair plane.
Mari Rouvi, the communications manager at Finnair, said that as a safety measure “a rule of two” is followed on Finnair’s planes.
If the captain leaves the cockpit, another person from the crew will enter the compartment while the captain visits the toilet, which is the most common reason to leave the cockpit.
According to Carsten Spohr, CEO of Lufthansa, there are only a few airliners in the world which follow this rule.
But now there will be more.
Following the tragedy, several air carriers announced that they would follow as fast as possible in Finnair’s footsteps.
On Wednesday evening, Laura kept posting tweets of her lost friend.
“You’re my angel now,” Laura wrote.
“Rest in peace Ayleen. I will always love you.”
