Air Inter Flight 148
Air Inter Flight 148 was a scheduled passenger flight from Lyon–Saint-Exupéry Airport to Strasbourg Airport in France. On 20 January 1992, the Airbus A320 operating the flight crashed in the Vosges Mountains, France, near Mont Sainte-Odile, while circling to land at Strasbourg Airport. Eighty-seven of the 96 people on board were killed, while the remaining nine were all injured. Aircraft. The aircraft, an Airbus A320-111, registration F-GGED, serial number 15, first flew on 4 November 1988, and was delivered to Air Inter on 22 December 1988. At the time of  the accident the aircraft had accumulated a total of 6,316 airframe hours. Accident. Flight 148, commanded by 42-year-old Captain Christian Hecquet and 37-year-old First Officer Joël Cherubin, departed Satolas Airport in Lyon, France. While being vectored for a VOR/DME approach to runway 05 at Strasbourg Airport, it crashed at 19:20:33 CET in the mountains at an altitude of . The Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) found that Flight 148 crashed because the pilots left the autopilot set in Vertical Speed Mode instead of Flight Path Angle Mode and then set "33  for 3.3° descent angle", resulting in a high descent rate of per minute into terrain. The pilots had no warning of the imminent impact because Air Inter had not equipped its aircraft with a ground proximity warning system (GPWS). It is speculated that this was because Air Inter—facing ferocious competition from France's TGV high-speed trains—may have encouraged its pilots to fly fast at low level (up to below , while other airlines generally do not exceed ), and GPWS systems gave too many nuisance warnings. The accident occurred at night, under low cloud and with light snow . Emergency response was slow and journalists were the first to find the crash site over four hours later. Aftermath. Accident investigators recommended 35 changes in their report. Airbus modified the interface of the autopilot so that a vertical speed setting would be displayed as a four-digit number, preventing confusion with the Flight Path Angle mode. The flight data recorder was upgraded so that it was able to withstand higher temperatures and for longer. The report also recommended that pilot training for the A320 should be enhanced and that ground proximity warning systems should be installed on them. Air Inter  equipped its aircraft with ground proximity warning systems before the investigation was completed. Dramatization. The story of the disaster was featured on the ninth season of Cineflix television show "Mayday" in the episode entitled "The Final Blow" (also known as "Air Crash Investigation" as episode entitled "Crashed and Missing" or "Doomed to Fail" (S09E07)).