Travellers at Paris airport say Germanwings crash will not stop them from flying

Monday, 30 March 2015 00:30 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Reuters: Travellers at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport said on Friday (27) that the crashed Germanwings flight did not change their travel plans, and that they hoped it would be an isolated incident. After an investigation into one of the plane’s black boxes revealed the co-pilot barricaded himself alone at the controls of the jetliner and crashed it on purpose on Thursday, airlines, including Britain’s easyJet and Air Berlin, rushed to change their policies so a second crew member would be required to remain in the cockpit at all times. Monique, a Paris resident travelling to Israel, said she the measures made sense. “It seems obvious to me, for something as important as this. It’s like with surgeons, a surgeon is never alone. He always has nurses or assistants. It’s true,” she said.

Other travellers like Mireille, a Versailles resident travelling to Japan, said she was not sure how effective the new measures would be. “Having two people (in the cockpit), yeah that’s possible. But then if you always need two people, then the poor hostesses, if they’re called into the aisles because something is wrong, I don’t know. It might be necessary to hire some more people. I don’t know, I don’t know what could happen next, but it’s true that zero risk doesn’t exist. And above all, if an individual loses it all of a sudden, it’s difficult. It’s not always easy to see it,” she said. Among the companies that did not announce such a policy change was Germanwings parent Lufthansa, whose CEO Carsten Spohr said he believed it was unnecessary. French resident, Francoise, travelling to New York, echoed his opinion. “I’m not phobic, I tell myself that this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often, this kind of accident. Because I suppose that you’re referring to the crash that happened a week ago. There will always be other human faults and then we’ll have to find new solutions. It neither reassures nor worries me any more than usual,” she said. Nevertheless, the consensus at Charles de Gaulle seemed to be that travels plans should continue as planned, as Luc, a French student travelling to Canada, said. “Am I afraid to take a plane after this? I don’t think so, it happens very rarely,” Luc said. The plane belonging to Lufthansa’s Germanwings budget airline en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf crashed earlier this week in the French Alps killing 150 people.