As a frantic pilot pounded on the cockpit door and passengers screamed in panic, the Germanwings co-pilot “intentionally” sent Flight 9525 straight into the side of a mountain in the French Alps, a prosecutor said.
In a news conference in Paris, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin laid out the horrifying conclusions reached by French aviation investigators after listening to the last minutes of the morning flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf.
The Airbus A320 began to descend from cruising altitude after losing radio contact with ground control and slammed into the remote mountain, killing all 150 people on board.
It was the co-pilot’s “intention to destroy this plane,” Robin said.
He said the pilot, who has not been identified, left the cockpit, presumably to go to the lavatory, and then was unable to regain access. In the meantime, co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, a 28-year-old German, manually and “intentionally” set the plane on the descent that drove it into the mountain.
Robin said the commander of the plane knocked several times “without response.” He said the door could only be blocked manually.
The information was pulled from the black box cockpit voice recorder, but Robin said the co-pilot did not say a word after the commanding pilot left the cockpit.
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“It was absolute silence in the cockpit,” he said.
During the final minutes of the flight’s descent, pounding could be heard on the cockpit door as plane alarms sounded but the co-pilot’s breathing was normal throughout the whole time, Robin said.
He said Lubitz had never been flagged as a terrorist and would not give details on his religion or ethnic background.
He said German authorities were taking charge of the investigation into Lubitz.
Source: AP
