Co-pilot appears to have crashed Germanwings plane deliberately, prosecutor says

Friday, 27 March 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Reuters: The 28-year-old German co-pilot of the Germanwings airliner that crashed in the French Alps killing all 150 people aboard appears to have brought down the Airbus A320 with the intent to destroy it, a French prosecutor said on Thursday. Andreas Lubitz gained sole control of the aircraft after the captain left the cockpit, refused to re-open the door and appears to have operated controls, sending the plane into its fatal descent, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said. He did this “for a reason we cannot fathom right now but which looks like intent to destroy this aircraft,” Robin told a news conference in Marseille broadcast live on national TV. Describing the final 10 minutes of the passengers on board as the plane hurtled towards a mountain range, Robin said sound recordings from one of its black boxes suggested most of them would not have been aware of their fate until the very end. “Only towards the end do you hear screams,” he said. “And bear in mind that death would have been instantaneous ... the aircraft was literally smashed to bits.” The world’s attention will now focus on the motivations of Lubitz, a German national who joined the budget carrier in September 2013 and had just 630 hours of flying time – compared with the 6,000 hours of the flight captain, named in German media only as “Patrick S.” in accordance with usual practice. A photo on Lubitz’s Facebook page, which was later taken down, shows a smiling young man posing in front of San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge. His list of favourite music includes German electronic band Schiller and French DJ David Guetta. Robin said the conversation between the two pilots started off normally but that Lubitz’s replies became “laconic” as his captain started readying what would have been the normal descent to the airport of Duesseldorf. “His responses become very brief. There is no proper exchange as such,” he said.

Germanwings co-pilot had no terrorism background: German Minister

Reuters: German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said on Thursday that current information suggested that the co-pilot of a Germanwings jet that went down in the French Alps, killing 150 people, had no links to terrorism. “According to the current state of knowledge and after comparing information that we have, he does not have a terrorist background,” he said. A Marseille prosecutor said the co-pilot appeared to have crashed the plane deliberately.