Germanwings Airbus Crash: Why 8 Minutes Of Radio Silence So Puzzling

According to French officials, there was radio silence from the crew of the Germanwings Airbus A320 aircraft for the last 8 minutes of the plane's flight before it crashed into a small alpine village in the southern French Alps. What is puzzling to many - including crash experts - is why no disaster or mayday communication was made by the crew in those 8 minutes since it is so easy for pilots to transmit a distress signal by radio or other means. According to unconfirmed flight tracking reports the plane was descending at a rate that was significantly faster than a normal rate of descent but not so fast as to appear to be totally out of control as, for example, a vertical dive would have indicated.