Australian Airlines Adopt Two-Person Cockpit Rule After Germanwings Crash

New airline safety rules for Australian airlines now require two crew members to be present in a plane cockpit at any time during a flight, following the Germanwings tragedy, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss, said Monday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The rule will cover all Australian operators doing domestic and international flights that carry 50 or more passengers. This includes such operators as Qantas, Jetstar, Virgin Australia and Tigerair Australia.

"The airlines will be acting immediately to implement this change and we'd expect to see this policy in place within hours on our major airlines," Truss was quoted as saying by The Guardian Australia.

On Sunday Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways also announced that they would apply the two-person cockpit rule for their passenger flights, local media reported.

The Germanwings Airbus 320 crashed in Southern France on Tuesday, March 26 flying from Barcelona, Spain to Dusseldorf, Germany, killing 150 people on board.

Thursday last week, a French prosecutor said that the most possible explanation of the tragedy was that the co-pilot locked the pilot out of the cockpit and intentionally crashed the aircraft.

The tragedy pushed a lot of air companies worldwide to review their safety policies, including Lufthansa, Germanwings' parent company. Last week Norwegian, Icelandair, EasyJet (UK), Air Canada, Jetconnect (New Zealand) and some other airlines announced switching to the two-person cockpit rule.