On 24 March 2015, the aircraft, an Airbus A320-211, crashed 100 km (62 mi; 54 nmi) north-west of Nice in the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board.

[2][3] The crash was deliberately caused by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, who had previously been treated for suicidal tendencies and declared unfit to work by his doctor.

At 10:31 CET, after crossing the French coast near Toulon, the aircraft left its assigned cruising altitude of 38,000 ft (11,600 m) and without approval began to descend rapidly.

[15][16] Radar contact was lost at 10:40 CET; at the time, the aircraft had descended to 6,175 feet (1,880 m),[17] and crashed in the remote commune of Prads-Haute-Bléone, 100 km (62 mi; 54 nmi) north-west of Nice.

[18][19][20][21] A seismological station of the Sismalp network, the Grenoble Observatory, 12 km (7.5 mi; 6.5 nmi) from the crash site, recorded the associated seismic event, determining the impact time as 10:41:05 CET.

[22] The crash site is within the Massif des Trois-Évêchés, 3 km (1.9 mi; 1.6 nmi) east of the settlement Le Vernet and beyond the road to the Col de Mariaud, in an area known as the Ravin du Rosé.

[62][63] Co-pilot Andreas Günter Lubitz,[64] born on 18 December 1987, was raised in Neuburg an der Donau, Bavaria,[65] and Montabaur in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

[76][77][78][79] The following week, Brice Robin, the government prosecutor based in Marseille, announced that the flight data recorder, blackened by fire but still usable, had also been found.

[94] Robin said contact from the air traffic control tower, the captain's attempts to break in, and Lubitz's steady breathing were audible on the cockpit voice recording.

The report stated:[1] The collision with the ground was due to the deliberate and planned action of the co-pilot, who decided to commit suicide while alone in the cockpit.

[73][110][111] The following day, authorities again searched Lubitz's home where they found evidence he suffered from a psychosomatic illness and had been prescribed two antidepressants, escitalopram and mirtazapine, and a sleep medication, zopiclone.

[1] Criminal investigators said Lubitz had then, in the week before, researched online "ways to commit suicide" and "cockpit doors and their security provisions".

[80][81][82] Robin said doctors had told him Lubitz should not have been flying, but medical secrecy requirements prevented his physician from making this information available to Germanwings.

[115][116][120] Motivated by the fear that blindness would cause him to lose his pilot's licence, he began conducting online research about methods of committing suicide before deciding to crash Flight 9525.

[1][60][116][120][121] French Minister of the Interior Bernard Cazeneuve announced that due to the "violence of the impact", "little hope" existed that any survivors would be found.

[122] Then-Prime Minister Manuel Valls dispatched Cazeneuve to the scene and set up a ministerial task force to coordinate the response to the incident.

[130] In the days following the crash, Lufthansa at first said it saw no reason to change its procedures, then reversed its earlier statement by introducing a new policy across its airlines requiring the presence of two crew members in the cockpit at all times.

[131][132][133] In response to the incident and the circumstances of the co-pilot's involvement, aviation authorities in some countries implemented new regulations that require the presence of two authorised personnel in the cockpit at all times.

[134][88][135][136] Three days after the incident, the European Aviation Safety Agency issued a temporary recommendation for airlines to ensure that at least two crew members—including at least one pilot—were in the cockpit for the entire duration of the flight.

[147] Germanwings' parent company Lufthansa offered victims' families an initial aid payment up to €50,000, separate from any legally required compensation for the disaster.

Elmar Giemulla, a professor of aviation law at Technische Universität Berlin quoted by the Rheinische Post, said he expected the airline would pay a total of €10–30 million in compensation.

[152] Victim families sued the Lufthansa Airline Training Center in Arizona to obtain higher compensation, but the case was reverted to German courts in March 2017.

[153] In July 2020, a court in Essen ruled against several victim families, holding that neither Lufthansa nor the training centre in Arizona could be held liable.

[157] The following month, about 1,400 relatives of victims, senior politicians, rescue workers, and airline employees attended a memorial service at Cologne Cathedral.

The timing of the press conference by Lubitz's father, on the anniversary of the crash, was criticised by families of the victims, who were holding their own remembrances on that day.

[164][165][166][167] In an interview with the aviation magazine ‘Austrian Wings’ published on 8 February 2025 and conducted by Austrian aviation expert and author Patrick Huber [168] [169] [170] [171], Düsseldorf public prosecutor Christoph Kumpa explained that the highly controversial private expert report had never been handed over to the Düsseldorf public prosecutor's office by the Lubitz family, contrary to their public announcement at the 2017 press conference that they intended to make it available to the authorities.In the same interview, Kumpa also explained that the Lubitz family had not taken up the opportunity offered to them by the French authorities by goodwill to listen to the cockpit voice recorder recordings.

That is why he then researched the function of the cockpit door mechanism once again and the day before the crash he filled out a living will in which he then added in handwriting that he did not want any life-prolonging measures in the event of blindness.

From this one must draw the conclusion that the co-pilot wanted to end his life by a method that he considered safe and that he chose the instrument at his disposal and under his control, the aeroplane, for this purpose because he knew that he would not survive a crash that he had deliberately brought about with a high descent rate and speed.

In my view, the events of 24 March 2015 have been clarified beyond any doubt.’ [172] The crash was dramatised in season 16 of the Canadian TV series Mayday in an episode entitled "Murder in the Skies".