Vanity Fair International Correspondent William Langewiesche has investigated a number of high-profile plane crashes. A pilot himself, Langewiesche spoke with about the unfolding investigation regarding a Germanwings flight that crashed on Tuesday en route from Barcelona to Düsseldorf. On Thursday, a French prosecutor said evidence suggests that the co-pilot intentionally downed the plane after effectively locking the pilot out of the cockpit.

__ Is it unusual for an investigator or prosecutor to make such a bold announcement so soon after a crash?__

Yes, it’s unusual, and, in a way, it’s a little inexplicable. The French system is different from the American system. It’s quite good, but it divides into two parts. There’s the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses (B.E.A.), which is the technical investigators—the equivalent of our N.T.S.B. They’re very cautious, when it comes to releasing information—too much so. But there’s also always, in France, a parallel criminal investigation, because deaths are involved, and a Napoleonic mindset requires this.

That’s who this prosecutor in Marseille is. These are not people who are experienced with airplane accidents. The quality of these criminal investigations varies, depending on the quality of the consultants they bring in. Sometimes they’re quite good, even better than the B.E.A. In this case, I don’t know.

Were this an N.T.S.B. investigation, we would see a very different kind of information release. I would expect that we would see a neutral release of what we found in the recorder, and not pointing the finger at the co-pilot. You can include that we heard breathing, and the pilot hammering on the door, and that the cruising altitude was reselected, but leave it at that at for a few days. Let others point fingers, I say.

Prosecutors said it appears the co-pilot may have locked the cockpit door, with the pilot on the other side. What do you make of that?

It’s an override. There’s a keypad, which is not on the door itself, but right beside the toilet. Normally, of course, when the door shuts, it locks. You just go to the keypad, enter the code, and you go back in. But there’s a part of it that goes off in the cockpit that indicates that somebody is about to come in. The man in the cockpit could reach down and throw a switch on the central pedestal, locking the door from the inside. All that does is override the outside keypad, and it seems that’s what happened here. It’s assumed the outside keypad didn’t work. But it’s speculation: Why didn’t it work? We don’t know.

The prosecutor seems convinced that the pilot manually pushed a button that set the plane on its descent.

The airplane could be flown in many different ways. I don’t know how he flew it—the flight-data recorder would show that information, if they ever get to it. You can either select a lower altitude on the autopilot, and start the airplane’s descent, or you can certainly turn off the autopilot and hand fly the aircraft.

We’ve seen this in the case of EgyptAir Flight 990 in 1999, where the co-pilot turned off the autopilot and pushed the stick forward. The Airbus is a little different, but you can definitely do any of these things. Do they know that the descent was flown on autopilot? Do they know that perhaps it was flown [by hand]? I have no idea.

Is there a prior plane crash that this incident most reminds you of?

The profile to look for is: pilot action—taking the airplane down. And yes, there are a handful of incidents. Of course, there’s EgyptAir 990, in 1999. The co-pilot did it, in that case. He waited until the pilot left to relieve himself. If you intend to crash an airplane, and you’re in a two-pilot crew, you have to deal with the other guy. The easiest way to deal with the other guy is to let him excuse himself to go to the bathroom.


We know in the case of EgyptAir, that the pilot got back into the cockpit, and a fight broke out between the two pilots. Basically, the co-pilot won, and everyone died.

The other one, of course, to look at—though it’s very speculative at this stage—is Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. It’s widely believed, by me, and others in the industry, that this was an intentional act. We know nothing other than that, really. But somebody did that, on purpose, for whatever unknown reasons. Whoever it was—also unknown—dealt with two pilots who were in that cockpit. If it was one of the pilots, was the other one disabled? Or did the other just go to the bathroom?

What are the key questions investigators will look to answer in the coming months?

To the extent that the technical information points toward an intentional act, obviously motive would be a major question. That’s where the criminal prosecution system may be better than the technical investigation. They’re more used to dealing with motives.

Again, that’s a little premature. The professional investigators, at this stage, are not unaware of these things and the possibility of these things, but they’re not just going to be pursuing that. They’re going to look at the full range of options. How were the systems operating? As far as I know, the data recorder has not been found, and may not have survived the accident. They’re not built to survive any accident.

Do you have any impression that all of this attention and the investigation might lead to some changes in policy or procedure?

Oh, probably. If the conclusion is that this guy acted intentionally, then the easiest solution is to always have another person in the cockpit. It’s an easy solution, but it’s not a perfect solution. It’s a lot harder to do something like this if there are two people in the cockpit. It’s not impossible, but it’s harder.

In the United States, pilots are never left unattended or alone in the cockpit anymore. If a pilot leaves, a flight attendant goes in. But in Europe, of course, they don’t follow that procedure. You can’t really say that’s a dangerous thing to do, because it’s so rare, but it’s dangerous when a guy with murderous intent is flying.

Vanity Fair’s International Correspondent William Langewiesche is an author, a pilot, and an award-winning journalist who has written extensively about aviation for Vanity Fair and The Atlantic. Langewiesche details the Virgin Galactic disaster in V.F.’s latest issue.

Read more of Langewiesche’s aviation reporting: