If you only look at the flight route until shortly before Cologne, you might think it would have been a flight like any other. The Cessna Citation II took off from Jerez Airport in Spain at 2:56 p.m. Sunday and then climbed to an altitude of 36,000 feet as scheduled. The route led over the Iberian Peninsula, France, Belgium and then into German airspace.
But apart from the takeoff, nothing was unusual about the flight, which killed the four people on board. Presumably, the pilot of the business jet no longer responded to radio messages from air traffic control in Spanish airspace. French and German Luftwaffe fighter jets took off and escorted the jet, also to find out exactly what was going on. Investigations into the cause are only just beginning. However, the circumstances of the accident indicate that the pilot and the three other occupants lost consciousness early in the flight, possibly due to a loss of pressure in the cabin. In the end, the autopilot-controlled Cessna, built in 1979 and stationed in Cologne, crashed into the Baltic Sea off Latvia, possibly due to a lack of fuel. So far there is no trace of the inmates.
Extremely rare phenomenon
It is extremely rare for pilots to lose consciousness during flight. According to the aviation safety database Aviation Safety Net, 14 planes have crashed worldwide since 2000 because the pilots were no longer able to control their machines for various reasons. Often they were business jets and in several cases the accident reports have concluded that the pilots lost consciousness due to a defective pressurized cabin. The worst crash of this type involved a Helios Airways Boeing 737 in 2005, killing 121 people.
Normally, air pressure in aircraft cabins is the same as at 10,000 feet. If the system doesn’t work, the air pressure and (low) oxygen supply inside is the same as in the environment. In the case of the Cessna, at an altitude of eleven kilometers, two kilometers higher than Mount Everest.
Impossible to influence what is happening if the pilot is unconscious
If there are technical problems en route, air traffic control and technicians can sometimes advise and help from the ground. But if the pilots are unconscious, it is impossible to influence what is happening. When in doubt, it would then only be a question of minimizing the damage, for example if a damaged aircraft is heading for a densely populated area. The only option then would ultimately be to shoot down the machine in good time, which has never happened.
In Germany, the federal government at the time passed what was known as the Aviation Security Act in 2005, after a motor glider pilot had threatened in 2003 to steer his plane into a skyscraper in Frankfurt’s banking district. Ultimately, the law provided for the use of armed force. However, only a year later the Federal Constitutional Court declared it unconstitutional.
The crashed Cessna was certified for single-pilot operations. The industry is currently considering whether and under what circumstances future generations of larger aircraft could manage with just one pilot. In this context, there is also the question of whether systems could be developed that would make it possible to take over control of the machines from outside in an emergency. But such business games are very controversial, especially in pilot associations and require, among other things, extremely reliable data transfer and a completely new legal debate.