Ten years have passed since his crash plane Germanwings in the French Alps in 2015 when the co -pilot Facing psychological problems threw it and led 149 people to death.
At 10:41 (12:41 Greek Time) today (24/03/2025) in the morning Hundreds of people, mainly Germans and Spaniards, kept a minute’s silence in the village of Le Verne in the French Alpsby paying tribute to the victims of the Germanwings crashing planewhich happened exactly ten years ago.
It was 10:41, March 24, 2015 when the Airbus A320 of the German Airlines Airline, a subsidiary of Lufthansafell Intentionally on the slope of a mountain in this area by its co -pilot, Andreas Lubic, 27 years old, who was taking antidepressantswho took advantage of the ruler’s temporary absence from the cockpit to choose to commit suicide in this waythus driving In their deaths 149 passengers and crew members.
The plane was traveling from Barcelona to Düsseldorf with six crew members and 144 passengers, from 19 countries, the majority of which Germans (72) and Spanish (50).
“Although 10 years have passed, I feel like it happened yesterday. I lost my daughter in that accident, she was a teacher, “said Engelbert Tigennn, with tears in her eyes, after the memorial service away from the spotlight, with speeches and music, for the approximately 360 relatives of the victims.
His daughter, Stephanie, and another professor were accompanied by 16 students from Joseph-Kunich Gymnasium in Halters, North Rhine-Westphalia, who returned from a school trip to Spain.
A memory ceremony also took place at school at the same time: at 10:41 hundreds of students and teachers gathered in the courtyard holding a minute’s silence in front of the commemorative plate, where many flowers and 18 candles were placed in memory of the victims.
“I’ve come here every year since it happened,” said Zabine Hezogentraht. In the air tragedy, the 59 -year -old German lost her brother, sister -in -law and nephew. This moment of reflection has been shown “very important. Without her, I don’t know how I could deal with mourning. We share it with other people, with whom we are almost like a family. “
After the ceremony, some went to pay tribute to the adjacent monument or the cemetery of Le Verne, the village closest to the site of the crash, where the remains of corpses were buried that was not possible to identify. Earlier, French, German and Spanish officials, as well as the leader of Lufthansa, laid wreaths there.
Some, despite the cold and cloudy sky, crossed a path that leads to the Mario passage, at an altitude of 1,500 meters, opposite the point of crash on a platform where a five -meter -diameter monument has been erected under the name “Sonnenkugel”.
“Our thoughts are close to relatives and friends of the victims, whose pain and sadness remain huge, even after a decade,” said Lufthansa Group Managing Director Carsten Sport.
After the tragedy, the air industry imposed the obligation to always have two people at the same time. An obligation that was eventually abandoned because it was deemed ineffective. After the accident, medical and psychological monitoring of pilots has increased and more sophisticated prevention and detection systems have been imposed.
In March 2022, French justice closed the investigation into the crash without any prosecution, considering the “suicidal” action of the co -pilot.
Intentional accidents involving aircraft pilots remain extremely rare in recent Civil Aviation history. In March 2022, 132 people died in the deliberate crash of a Boeing 737-800 in China.
The most prolific accident of this type of recorded occurred in October 1999 when a Boeing 767 of Egyptair crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Massachusetts in the northeast US, shortly after taking off from New York to Cairo 217.