“Open the damn door! For God’s sake, open the door!” These were the last words of aptain Patrick Sondheimer, desperately pleading for his silent co-pilot to let him return to the cockpit.
His words are clearly heard on black box recordings, the transcript of which was published in Germany’s Bild newspaper.
Captain Sondheimer was 34 years old, and previously captained long-haul flights for Lufthansa and another of its subsidiaries, Condor, for 10 years. He had more than 6,000 flying hours on A320 aircraft.
In May 2014, the married father of two decided to join Germanwings. With the budget carrier he was able to fly shorter journeys so he could spend more time with his family, as reported in the Duesseldorf Rheinische Post Newspaper.
Captain Sondheimer was a devoted Catholic. At his memorial service Father Karl-Heinz Sulzenfuss said: “We sang and prayed and expressed our sadness before we stood before the cross with a great light dedicated to him. It is very, very difficult for his family to come to terms with the situation.”
A former colleague described Sondheimer as “one of our best pilots.”
“He was very reliable; I am 100 percent convinced that he did all that was possible [to save people on board].”
Many Facebook and twitter users want to remember Captain Partick Sondheimer as the hero on this flight. His friends and co-workers want Sondheimer to be remembered, and with him the 148 other innocent people on board this crashed Germanwings Airbus, and not the one murder pilot responsible for all of it.