International airlines are scrambling to introduce rules insisting two crew members are always in a plane cockpit after investigators said a German pilot deliberately plunged an Airbus A320 into a mountain.
All 150 people on board the Germanwings flight were killed in what a French prosecutor is calling a deliberate act.
The only comfort the prosecutor could offer the grieving families of the 144 passengers on the aircraft was they appeared to have been unaware of their impending deaths until the last few seconds.
They and the six crew members were killed instantly when the plane hit the ground and exploded.
Aviation disasters are always high-profile news stories because of the collective number of deaths associated with them.
Last year, in one week, there were three airline crashes.
In Ukraine, the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17 killed all 298 aboard.
The crash of TransAsia Airways Flight 222 killed 48 in Taiwan, and on the following day, Air Algerie Flight 5017 crashed in Mali, leaving at least 116 dead.
Then there is the unexplained loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, with 239 people aboard, in March last year.
Different circumstances surround the crashes, but when more than 700 airline passengers and flight crew lose their lives in the span of 138 days, some travellers may be concerned about the global aviation safety net.
They can be excused for wondering if, statistically, the skies are getting more dangerous.
They may ask themselves whether air travel is trending towards one of the deadliest causes of travel deaths.
Experts say no, do not be nervous.
Just look carefully at the big picture.
Statistics show the world has enjoyed the safest overall period in aviation history, according to safety watchdogs.
The numbers of annual aviation deaths and major plane crashes worldwide has been dropping for decades.
In 2013, 265 people were killed in flight incidents - the safest year in aviation since 1945.
Last year, the worldwide number of aviation deaths more than doubled, but was still relatively low.
There were 761 deaths in 12 commercial aviation accidents in 2014, according to the Aviation Safety Network, one of several organisations tracking the statistics.
Its data - spanning 1946 to the present - includes hijackings, sabotage and shootings.
As airline companies across the world review their safety procedures, Carsten Spohr, the head of Lufthansa, whose low-cost subsidiary Germanwings operated the Barcelona to Dusseldorf route, was blunt.
No security system in the world could stop something like this happening.
It was a tragic, exceptional and isolated case.
Families around the world will be grieving at the latest aviation tragedy, but airline travel still remains a safe option.
And another thing
The change to the royal succession, which came into force in the UK on Thursday, was long overdue.
Royal daughters will now have the same claim to the Throne as sons.
The new legislation applies to New Zealand and 16 realms that share the Queen as head of state.
In many ways, the monarchy - with birth rather than merit determining who will be our Queen or King - is an anachronism in a 21st-century democracy.
What might also be considered anomalous is the fact New Zealand's head of state is from a far-off land that increasingly has less relevance and which increasingly chooses to distance itself from its former dominions.
Nevertheless, this country's constitutional conventions and arrangements work reasonably well.
They provide a continuity and stability that should be valued.
