Co-pilot seemed to 'want to destroy' plane
The co-pilot of the Germanwings plane that crashed on Tuesday deliberately flew the A320 into the French Alps, killing all 150 passengers and crew.
At a press conference last night, French prosecutor Brice Robin said co-pilot AndreasLubitz, 28, was alone in the cockpit and had locked out the pilot.
“He refused to open the door of the cockpit to the pilot and deliberately began the descent of the plane,” Mr Robin said, presenting information from the black box that records cockpit sounds and conversations.
Friends claim 28yo Lubitz suffered a breakdown or depression in 2009. Passed all medical and psych tests to become co-pilot. #GermanWings
— Hugh Whitfeld (@hughwhitfeld) March 26, 2015
The victims of the crash were unaware until “the very last moment”, he added.
Mr Robin said Mr Lubitz was not listed as a terrorist.
He said the co-pilot was “not known by us” to have links to terrorism or extremists, and that German authorities were expected to provide additional information on his background and private life later today.
The co-pilot turned the “flight monitoring system” button to initiate the plane’s descent and spoke “not a single word” during the last 10 minutes before the plane crashed.
The passengers were unaware of their imminent demise “until very last moment” and “died instantly”, the prosecutor said.
He said screams could be heard on the recording only in the final seconds.
The recording showed that the pilot and co-pilot talked normally and “courteously” for the first 20 minutes of the flight after it took off from Barcelona.
“Then we hear the pilot ask the co-pilot to take the controls and a seat being pulled back and a door closing. We can assume he left to answer nature’s call,” Mr Robin said.
“The co-pilot is left alone at the controls. We hear several calls from the pilot asking for entry into the cockpit. There is no response from the co-pilot.”
Mr Robin said there were “normal” breathing sounds from Mr Lubitz throughout the rest of the flight that indicated he was conscious.
A French military source said an alarm indicating the proximity to the ground could also be heard.
No distress signal was sent from the Airbus A320 and the crew failed to respond to ground control's desperate attempts to make contact.
If suicide is the cause it will be the seventh pilot suicide in the past 30 years that has taken an airliner down.
Investigators have said the plane was still flying when it smashed into the remote mountainside, with the force of the impact leaving only small pieces of debris scattered over a wide area.
The revelation came after French investigators said they had extracted "usable data" from the first black box recovered.
Remi Jouty, head of French air crash investigation agency BEA, said there was still not "the slightest explanation" at this stage on the reasons for the crash.
"We have just succeeded in extracting usable data from the cockpit voice recorder," he said, referring to the black box that records sounds and conversations from the cockpit.
But he said the data had only been retrieved in the last few minutes before his press conference, and investigators had not yet analysed the recordings.
He ruled out the possibility of an explosion, saying "the plane was flying right to the end," but could not put forward any other theories.
"At this stage, clearly, we are not in a position to have the slightest explanation or interpretation on the reasons that could have led this plane to descend... or the reasons why it did not respond to attempts to contact it by air traffic controllers," said Jouty.
He said he was optimistic that the second black box, which records technical flight data, will soon be found given that the debris is spread over a relatively limited area.
French President Francois Hollande said earlier that the casing of the second black box had been found, but not the box itself.
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