Why the Germanwings Plane Crash Seems So Close to Home

The shocking news of the Germanwings plane (flight 9525) crash today over France in the Alps on a flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf with 150 lives lost is resonating far and wide.

This airplane disaster feels very close to home to me.

Just last Thursday I was flying back from Berlin where I spoke at the DPG scientific conference and had flown there from Boston Logan the Saturday before via British Airways. On the latter flight I was seated next to a prep school (Pingrey)  group which was en route to Barcelona. There was also a school group on the Germanwings flight (Germanwings is owned by Lufthansa) that crashed today. On my flight to Boston via Heathrow on British Airways last Thursday we had extra passengers since the Lufthansa pilots were on strike, which I thought strange.

And last summer my husband and I flew via Germanwings from Berlin to Catania (after bailing out of an Air Berlin flight due to an 8 hour delay) and also from Thessaloniki to Gothenburg via Dussledorf. I had conferences to speak at in both Sicily and Greece and was spending time as a Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

I have been seeing lots of press coverage on Professor Arnie Barnett's research in view of this Gremanwings crash. Professor Barnett of MIT is a colleague from INFORMS and is an aviation security and safety expert. USA Today has an article noting his work entitled: Despite flurry of tragedies, air crashes are rare,  We hosted him at the Isenberg School in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speakers Series a while back.


With the black box recovery I hope that the mystery of the cause of this Airbus plane crash is solved.


Our hearts go out to all those who lost family members and friends in this plane crash.

New Isenberg School Website

While I was in Dallas, the Isenberg School of Management (ISOM) at UMass Amherst, where I teach, unveiled its new website. It is larger and easier to navigate than the previous one. Plus, it contains information about both upcoming events and news. We are in the midst of searching for a new Dean and also recruiting new doctoral students so the redesigned website should be helpful in both dimensions. ISOM is a fantastic place to teach and do research. It is located in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, which is home to the Five Colleges and several neighboring colleges. Our students are very bright, hard-working, and very professional. Interdisciplinarity is valued, which makes for a very rich intellectual environment.

This coming Friday, we will be hosting Professor Ellis Johnson of Georgia Tech, who will be speaking in our Spring 2009 Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science. His topic will be major airline challenges, a topic very close to home, especially given the horrific crash of the Continental commuter plane last Thursday in Buffalo. I was flying that day to Dallas through Philly on USAir commuter planes. The first leg was incredibly bumpy and I engaged the stewardess in conversation since I was seated in the first row of the plane. We talked about the USAir plane that landed in the Hudson and the bravery of the pilots and crew and the travelers. She told me how those who were in the back of that plane sustained more severe injuries. Who was to know that that very same day, February 12, 2009, a crash would cost the lives of 49 on the Continental commuter plane from Newark to Buffalo with one life lost on the ground (in the house that the plane crashed into with the wife and daughter escaping). Our hearts go out to all the families of those who lost their lives in such a horrible tragedy. Matt Wald (who happens to be a classmate of mine from Brown University days) reported on the crash for the New York Times, from Amherst, NY.