article_snippet.sent: (CNN)The flight voice recorder aboard Germanwings Flight 9525 reportedly captured blaring cockpit alarms, warning co-pilot Andreas Lubitz to "pull up" and that "terrain" was ahead.
article_snippet.sent: But that was not enough to stop the aircraft from slamming into the French Alps.
article_snippet.sent: With reports that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz apparently ignored those warnings, there are new calls from aviation experts to develop and deploy enhanced crash avoidance software that could take control of an aircraft away from a pilot and steer plane to a safe altitude.
article_snippet.sent: If a pilot is incapacitated or ignores audible warnings, plane's flight guidance software could take over and plot a course to a safe altitude‎.
article_snippet.sent: In fact, more than 10 years ago, following 9/11, Airbus, the manufacturer of the doomed aircraft, was working to d‎evelop aircraft crash avoidance software with tech giant Honeywell -- in part to prevent jetliners from being flown into large buildings or mountains.
article_snippet.sent: Former Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo says pilots, regulators and the traveling public have, so far, not bought into claims that computers can do it better.
article_snippet.sent: However, Former Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo adds, in the case of the Germanwings crash, "this technology, I believe, would have saved a safe flight.
article_snippet.sent: Not only would a safe flight have saved this flight and the Germanwings passengers, a safe flight would also save lives in situations where it is not a suicidal, homicidal pilot.
article_snippet.sent: The formal National Transportation Safety Board report on the Germanwings crash said the main thing that contributed to the survivability of the accident was "the decision-making of the flight crewmembers and the flight crewmembers crew resource management during the accident sequence.
article_snippet.sent: Pilots say if a computer had taken over after a computer sensed the plane was headed for water, the outcome could have been very different.
article_snippet.sent: In systems like this ... the control cannot be taken back from the aircraft.
article_snippet.sent: Or, indiscriminately the aircraft could be taken over on just a normal flight and they (cockpit crew) wouldn't be able to get control back.
article_snippet.sent: But in an incident like the Germanwings tragedy, where a pilot is being blamed for the crash, Schiavo says there must be additional safeguards and that the technology would be a start.
article_snippet.sent: Most of the major commercial jetliner crashes in the last two or three years could have been saved with an override.
highlights_snippet.sent: Autopilot could have taken control of Germanwings flight and flown plane to safe altitude .
  