Andreas Lubitz ( Germanwings 4U9525)Tagesschau 26. März 2015 14:00

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• published: 26 Mar 2015
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Alps Crash Co-Pilot 'Wanted To Destroy Plane' Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz DELIBERATELY crashed plane into French Alps FRANKFURT—Andreas Lubitz, the 28-year-old co-pilot who a French prosecutor has said appeared to fly Germanwings Flight 9525 intentionally into the French Alps, was a member of a German flying club that said he joined the group as a youth to “fulfill his dream of flying.” In a news conference Thursday, the French prosecutor in charge of the crash probe named Mr. Lubitz as the co-pilot, and said he appeared to have locked himself into the cockpit, preventing his more-experienced pilot to re-enter, after the pilot had briefly left the cockpit. The 28-year-old co-pilot of the Germanwings flight which crashed in the Alps appears to have brought down the plane deliberately. (Sky News) The co-pilot of a plane which crashed in the Alps activated the descent button and refused to open the cockpit door to the pilot. Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin says the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, 28, was alone at the controls of the Germanwings flight and "intentionally" sent the plane into the doomed descent. He said that the crew member - who won a Federal Aviation Authority award in 2013 - wanted to "destroy the plane". He said: "We assume the (captain) went to the loo or something. The co-pilot is on his own in charge of the plane, and it is while he is alone that he uses the flight monitoring system which starts the descent of the plane." The flight monitoring system cannot be accidentally triggered, he added. "We hear several cries from the captain asking to get in. Through the intercom system he identifies himself - but there is no answer. He knocks on the door and asks for it to be opened - but there is no answer." The plane ploughed into the side of a mountain at around 430mph, killing all of those on board instantly. "I think the victims only realised at the last moment because on the recording you only hear the screams literally on the last moments of the recording." Mr Robin said Mr Lubitz was a German national but does not know his ethnicity or religion. He said there is nothing to indicate that this was a terrorism-related event. He said he would not speculate on whether the co-pilot had committed suicide. He said the families are in a "state of shock" and "can't believe what has happened". Mr Lubitz is understood to have joined the airline in 2013 straight after training. Breathing could be heard from the cockpit and was normal, which has led investigators to believe he was conscious at the time. There was no contact made with air traffic control in the final eight minutes of the flight. Some 500 people are now working on the investigation, which is hampered by the remote location of the crash. Each body must be removed by helicopter as the mountainside is very steep. The recovery process is expected to take a week. Aviation security expert Chris Parratt told Sky News: "When you become a pilot, it's not a job you choose overnight. "It costs a lot of money, a lot of time spent, it costs a lot of money. This is an extraordinary occurrence." (Global and Mail) The co-pilot of a Germanwings flight that crashed in southern France, killing 150 on board, appears to have crashed the plane deliberately and deliberately refused to open the cockpit door, a Marseilles prosecutor said Thursday. The statement came after the New York Times reported that “black box” recordings showed one of the pilots had left the cockpit and could not get back in before the plane crashed. WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR •How many on board? Two pilots, four flight attendants and 144 passengers •Type of plane: Airbus A320 •Flight number: 4U 9525 •Where was it going? Left Barcelona at 9:55 a.m. local time and was supposed to land in Dusseldorf two hours later •Where did it crash? Near Méolans-Revel, France, a remote region on the foothills of the Alps THE PILOTS: 'ONE WAS IN THE COCKPIT AND THE OTHER WASN'T' Earlier Thursday, a German state prosecutor confirmed that just one of the two pilots was in the cockpit at the time it went down. “One was in the cockpit and the other wasn’t,” Christoph Kumpa at the prosecutors’ office in Duesseldorf told Reuters by telephone, adding that the information came from investigators in France. The plane's voice recordings did not make clear why the pilot left the cockpit or why he could not regain entry as the plane operated by budget airline Germanwings steadily descended toward a mountain range in a remote area of the French Alps on Tuesday. “The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door and there is no answer,” an investigator described only as a senior French military official told the New York Times, citing the recordings. “And then he hits the door stronger and no answer. There is never an answer.” video footage caught on tape cellphone camera surveillance raw dash cam air live on tv share comment like most popular