Germanwings Flight 9525 crash (2015)
On March 24, 2015, a Germanwings A320 flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf was deliberately flown into the Alps by its first officer: 150 dead. The case shows how airline liability cover responds to a crew member's deliberate act.
Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, March 24, 2015, 10:41 a.m.: the Airbus A320 operating Flight 4U9525 from Barcelona to Düsseldorf hits the mountainside at about 700 km/h. 144 passengers and 6 crew die. The BEA finds that the first officer, alone at the controls after the captain stepped out, locked the cockpit door and set up the descent. The claim is handled first under the 1999 Montreal Convention, which governs this international flight. Up to 113,100 SDR per passenger (the cap at the time), the carrier is liable without fault. Above that, it is liable unless it proves the damage did not result from its own negligence or that of its servants or agents. A first officer is a servant of the carrier: the defense fell away on its own, and liability was in practice unlimited. Lufthansa, the parent company, paid within days an immediate assistance of up to 50,000 euros per victim, an advance credited against the final award. Airline liability policies do not carve out the act of an employee. The only serious question concerned the malicious act paragraph of AVN 48B, which could have pushed the hull loss onto the war policy. Toward passengers, the AVN 52 endorsement writes those perils back in any case. The carrier's insurers reserved about 300 million dollars, hull included. On the regulatory side, EASA recommended on March 27, 2015 that two people be in the cockpit at all times. The rule was relaxed in 2016 in favor of a risk assessment by each airline, and medical and psychological monitoring of pilots was tightened. Not to be confused with loss of license insurance, which pays a pilot declared unfit and plays no part toward passengers.
Textbook case, in numbers. A court assesses the loss of a passenger's dependents at 900,000 euros. The SDR is worth 1.25 euros that day (assumption), so the first tier of 113,100 SDR comes to 141,375 euros, owed without argument. The remaining 758,625 euros fall in the second tier: the carrier cannot prove its employee was not at fault, so it owes them too. The 50,000 euro immediate assistance already paid is credited: the final settlement is 900,000 - 50,000 = 850,000 euros, borne by the passenger liability policy.
Germanwings crash, Flight 4U9525, Germanwings Flight 9525, 2015 Alps air crash
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