French Alps plane crash : One of the pilots of doomed Germanwings flight was locked out of cockpit before crash

According to new reports based on evidence gathered so far by crash investigators, one of the two pilots flying the ill-fated Germanwings flight was locked out of the cockpit before the aircraft crashed into a remote region of the French Alps on Tuesday March 24th. Investigators said evidence taken from the cockpit voice recorder indicated that one pilot desperately tried to smash down the cockpit door after first knocking lightly on the door and not getting an answer.

This indicates that just one of the two pilots on board was flying the plane - and that the second one became panicked after he was unable to get back into the cockpit. Read full story after the cut...

From NY Times

A senior French military official involved in the investigation described a “very smooth, very cool” conversation between the pilots during the early part of the flight from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany. Then the audio indicated that one of the pilots left the cockpit and could not re-enter.

“The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer,” the investigator said. “And then he hits the door stronger, and no answer. There is never an answer.”

He said, “You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”

While the audio seemed to give some insight into the circumstances leading to the Germanwings crash on Tuesday morning, it also left many questions unanswered.

“We don’t know yet the reason why one of the guys went out,” said the official, who requested anonymity because the investigation was continuing. “But what is sure is that at the very end of the flight, the other pilot is alone and does not open the door.”

The data from the voice recorder seems only to deepen the mystery surrounding the crash and provides no indication of the condition or activity of the pilot who remained in the cockpit. The descent from 38,000 feet over about 10 minutes was alarming but still gradual enough to indicate that the twin-engine Airbus A320 had not been damaged catastrophically. At no point during the descent was there any communication from the cockpit to air traffic controllers or any other signal of an emergency.

When the plane plowed into craggy mountains northeast of Nice, it was traveling with enough speed that it was all but pulverized, killing the 144 passengers and crew of six and leaving few clues.

The French aviation authorities have made public very little, officially, about the nature of the information that has been recovered from the audio recording, and it was not clear whether it was complete. France’s Bureau of Investigations and Analyses confirmed only that human voices and other cockpit sounds had been detected and would be subjected to detailed analysis.

Asked about the new evidence revealed in the cockpit recordings, Martine del Bono, a bureau spokeswoman, declined to comment. “Our teams continue to work on analyzing the CVR,” she said, referring to the cockpit voice recorder. “As soon as we have accurate information we intend to hold a press conference.”

Meanwhile, prosecutors in Marseille, who have been tasked with a separate criminal inquiry into the crash, could not immediately be reached for comment. Brice Robin, the Marseille prosecutor, was due to meet Thursday morning with the families of the crash victims.

At the crash site, a senior official working on the investigation said, workers found the casing of the plane’s other so-called black box, the flight data recorder, but the memory card containing data on the plane’s altitude, speed, location and condition was not inside, apparently having been thrown loose or destroyed by the impact.

The flight’s trajectory ahead of the crash also left many unanswered questions.

Rémi Jouty, the director of the Bureau of Investigations and Analyses, said at a news conference that the plane took off around 10 a.m. local time from Barcelona and that the last message sent from the pilot to air traffic controllers had been at 10:30 a.m., which indicated that the plane was proceeding on course.

But minutes later, the plane inexplicably began to descend, Mr. Jouty said. At 10:40 and 47 seconds, the plane reported its last radar position, at an altitude of 6,175 feet. “The radar could follow the plane until the point of impact,” he said.

Mr. Jouty said the plane slammed into a mountainside and disintegrated, scattering debris over a wide area, and making it difficult to analyze what had happened.

It often takes months or even years to determine the causes of plane crashes, but a little more than a year after the disappearance of a Malaysian airlines jetliner that has never been found, the loss of the Germanwings flight is shaping up to be particularly perplexing to investigators.

One of the main questions is why the pilots did not communicate with air traffic controllers as the plane began its unusual descent, suggesting that the pilots or the plane’s automated systems may have been trying to maintain control of the aircraft as it lost altitude.

One of the two pilots on the doomed Germanwings flight was apparently locked out of the cockpit before the plane crashed in the French Alps.
Cockpit recordings recovered from the site of the crash that killed all 150 people on board indicated one of the seats was pushed back and the door opened and closed.
Knocking can then be heard, said a source close to the investigation, adding "there was no more conversation from that point until the crash".

Rescue workers at the plane crash site near Seyne-les-Alpes, France. Photo / AP

The source said an alarm indicating the proximity to the ground could be heard before Germanwings flight 4U9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf crashed in remote terrain after an unexplained eight-minute descent in mid-flight.

No distress signal was sent from the Airbus A320 and the crew failed to respond to ground control's desperate attempts to make contact.
The cockpit recording of Tuesday's flight showed the pilots speaking normally in German at the start of the flight, the source said, adding that it could not be determined if it was the captain or the first officer who left the cockpit.
The New York Times cited a senior military official involved in the investigation as saying the black box data indicated one pilot was locked out and tried unsuccessfully to smash his way back in.
Photos of the mangled black box retrieved at the site showed its metal casing torn and twisted. The casing of a second black box, the flight data recorder, has been found but not the device itself.
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.
A mountain guide who got near the crash site said he was unable to make out recognisable body parts.
"It's incredible. An Airbus is enormous. When you arrive and there's nothing there ... it's very shocking," said the guide, who did not wish to be identified.

A French army helicopter heads to the Germanwings flight crash site. Photo / AP

The crash site is at about 1500 metres altitude and accessible only by helicopter or an arduous hike on foot.
Arrangements were being made for the families of the victims, at least 51 of whom were Spaniards and at least 72 Germans, to gather near the crash site on Thursday.
Lufthansa, which owns popular low-cost operator Germanwings, announced it would lay on two flights to take the victims' loved ones from Barcelona and Duesseldorf to the southern French city of Marseille.
Helicopters began winching the remains of victims to Seyne-les-Alpes on Wednesday.
Interpol said it had dispatched a team of victim identification experts to the site.
Authorities who had the gruesome task of sifting through the debris called off the search at nightfall on Wednesday. They will resume at dawn.
Weather does not appear to be a factor in the crash and Germanwings had an unblemished safety record.
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel flew over the site to see the devastation on Wednesday. Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy also visited a crisis centre near the scene.
"My deepest sympathies with the families and all my thanks for the friendship of the people of this region and in France," Merkel wrote in a book of condolence.

A rescue worker climbs past debris at the plane crash site near Seyne-les-Alpes, France. Photo / AP

The plane was carrying six crew and 144 passengers, including 16 German teenagers returning home from a school trip.
Bereaved pupils from their high school in the small German town of Haltern wept and hugged near a makeshift memorial of candles as they shared the pain of losing their friends.
"Yesterday we were many, today we are alone," read a hand-painted sign at the school, decorated with 16 crosses.
Those killed - most of them about 15 years old - had reportedly won the trip in a lottery of their classmates.