However, despite two major crashes involving an A320 in the space of just three months, the jet remains one of the world’s safest.

That’s the view of leading aviation expert Neil Hansford who told news.com.au that the plane was so technologically advanced it practically flew itself.

The chairman of Strategic Aviation Solutions, with more than 30 years experience in the industry, said if there was a major design fault in the plane the world would have known about it before now.

His comments comes in the wake of Germanwings Flight 4U9525, which crashed on a remote mountain range in the French alps overnight.

Germanwings Flight 4U9525 was travelling from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, Germany, when at approximately 10.30am local time on Tuesday, the plane lost radio contact.

The flight was just 46 minutes in when trouble struck, plummeting 31,200 feet in 8 minutes.

It is the second major crash involving an A320 in just three months.

AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crashed into the Java Sea in stormy weather on December 28 during what was supposed to be a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.

In 30 seconds, it rose from 32,000 feet to 37,400 feet, then dipped to 32,000 feet, before descending for around three minutes.

The plane’s stall alarms were going off for four minutes before the crash.

In both cases Mr Hansford said he didn’t believe it was a fault of the plane itself which caused them to crash and added investigators couldn’t rule anything out.

“An A320 takes off every two seconds around the world,” Mr Hansford said,.

“The A320 is a sophisticated aircraft which is not flown in the traditional way in that the computer flies the aircraft, the pilot operates the computer.”

Mr Hansford maintained despite the two crashes, the plane remained one of the world’s safest and it was just sheer coincidence and force of numbers that two crashes had taken place in as many months.

He still believed the A320 was the trump aircraft as evidenced by the sheer numbers of them flying popular flight routes including between Paris and London and Sydney to Melbourne.

Mr Hansford said the plane’s hi-tech systems meant if there was a fault in the plane, or if an engine had failed, the pilot would have had time to save it.

He also said the black box would reveal further details which would come to light sooner than in recent crashes including the Air Asia and Malaysian crashes last year.

“Unlike Malaysian and Indonesian authorities however, the French and German authorities and their carriers will be more transparent,” he said speaking of the retrieval of the black box and the release of information.

The A320 remains a popular aircraft among the world’s airlines with a good safety record. Source: AP 

THE A320:

Regarded as a workhorse of modern aviation, similar to the Boeing 737, there are more than 3600 of them in operation worldwide, according to Airbus, which also makes nearly identical versions of the plane, the smaller A318 and A319 and the stretched A321. An additional 2500 of those jets are flying, according to AFP.

The A320 family has a good safety record, with just 0.14 fatal accidents per million takeoffs, according to a Boeing safety analysis.

This particular jet was delivered to Lufthansa — the parent company of Germanwings — in 1991 and had about 58,300 flight hours over 46,700 flights.

The airline is the budget offshoot of major carrier Lufthansa, and this is the first deadly incident in its 13-year history.

This A320 had also passed its last routine check on Monday and its captain had more than 10 years flying experience, Sky News reported.

Airbus is investigating whether a mechanical fault is to blame, however this particular Airbus A320 of Germanwings underwent full maintenance in 2013, according to the head of the company Thomas Winkelmann.

“But we cannot rule out a structural issue: a failure of a part of the structure caused by an absence of detailed maintenance or the wear of a particular element that will become apparent after tens of thousands of flight hours,” the former investigator said.

“In the history of aviation, it’s only when accidents occur that we are able to detect unforeseen weaknesses on parts of a plane where maintenance procedures were not thought necessary.”

LOW COST, LOW SAFETY?:

Xavier Tytelman, an air safety specialist told AFP while this particular plane was 24 years old, that didn’t necessarily mean it was less safe than newer planes.

While new aircraft are more efficient which gave airlines who use them a major cost advantage as fuel can account for a quarter to half of operating costs, it didn’t mean they couldn’t be used by budget carriers.

According to him, new planes can also mean lower maintenance costs. Each four or five years passenger jets require an extensive overhaul, which is both costly in itself and requires taking the plane out of service for weeks.

“Low-cost airlines don’t have any incentive to invest in such maintenance and just before planes arrive at that age they sell them,” Mr Tytelman told AFP.

However the Germanwings A320, was probably in its final years of commercial service and pulling old planes out of service wasn’t an issue of safety but rather economics.

“Low cost, that means less comfort, but not less safety,” Mr Tytelman said.

‘EASY TO BLAME A DEAD MAN’:

Another international aviation expert Arthur Wolk told 3AW Breakfast that the cause of the crash would be determined really quickly.

“If there was not foul play, and that will be determined pretty quickly, it looks like another example of the angle of attack sensors being iced over,” he told the program.

He speculated that “angle attack sensors” at the front of the aircraft may have “iced over”, causing the plane to “pretty much go straight down”, which was the same problem that contributed to the 2009 Air France crash.

“It’s easy to blame a dead man … but this is a problem even the best pilots can’t handle,” he told the radio program.

Two planes of German airline Germanwings are pictured at Cologne/Bonn airport yesterday. Source: AFP 

SOURCE:::: http://www.news.com.au

Natarajan