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26 Mar 2015

Germanwings crash: co-pilot ‘wanted to destroy the plane’

Police start searching properties in Dusseldorf after French authorities describe how Andreas Lubitz “refused to open” the cockpit door of the Airbus A320 and accelerated its descent “intentionally”.

Andreas Guenter Lubitz, a 27-year-old German co-pilot, was alone at the controls of the flight that crashed into an Alpine mountainside and “intentionally” sent the plane into the doomed descent, French prosecutor Brice Robin said.

The Airbus 320 from Barcelona to Dusseldorf hit the mountain at 700 km/h (435mph) on Tuesday after a rapid eight-minute descent.

Death was instant. However Mr Robin was careful to state that there was yet no indication of a “terrorist attack”.

Final moments

The information was pulled from the black box cockpit voice recorder and formed the chilling testimony delivered by the Marseille prosecutor on Thursday morning.

Mr Robin explained how the journey, which started normally, took a dark turn. Lubitz’s responses, initially courteous in the first part of the trip, became “curt” when the captain Patrick Sondenheimer began the mid-flight briefing on the planned landing.

Later Mr Sondenheimer left the controls, apparently to use the bathroom. “It was while he was alone that the co-pilot manipulated the flight monitoring system to action the descent of the plane,” Mr Robin said. Unconfirmed reports suggest the autopilot mechanism may also have been tampered with to prevent any intervention.

“The action of selecting the altitude could only have been done voluntarily,” Mr Robin said.

During the final minutes of the flight’s descent, pounding could be heard on the outside of the cabin door as alarms sounded. Passengers could be heard screaming as Mr Sondenheimer tried desperately to re-open it from the outside.

Homes searched

Describing the last 10 minutes experienced by passengers as the plane hurtled towards a mountain range, Mr Robin said recordings suggested most would not have been aware of their fate until the very end.

“Only towards the end do you hear screams,” he said. “Bear in mind that death would have been instantaneous. The aircraft was literally smashed to bits.”

Lufthansa said Lubitz joined Germanwings in September 2013, directly after training. He had flown for at least 630 hours and had been with the airline since May 2014. The German public prosecutor in Dusseldorf later confirmed that police were searching Lubitz’s home. Police were seen walking out of his house with cardboard boxes.

I’m speechless. Knowing Andreas, this is just inconceivable. Peter Ruecker

In a press conference Lufthansa’s Chief Executive Carsten Spohr said the event was “the most terrible in our company’s history”. Training and pilot screening procedures will now be reviewed.

Responding to Channel 4 News’s Jonathan Miller, Mr Spohr said that the events of 9/11 had seen massive reinforcements to cockpit doors such that they could not be opened unwillingly “even with weapons”.

Read more: Germanwings: why didn't aviation rules prevent this crash?

Unlike in the US, European regulations do not insist on two people being in the cockpit at all times. Lufthansa does not voluntarily implement such a protocol, and Mr Spohr said that he was not aware of any of the company’s competitors that have such a procedure.

Airlines reviewing policy

But within hours that was already changing. The UK low-cost airline EasyJet said it was changing procedures immediately so that two crew members would be in the cockpit at all times. The decision, active from Friday, was taken in consultation with the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.

Air Canada became the first national carrier to adopt the policy earlier this afternoon, while Norwegian Air Shuttle, Europe’s third largest budget airline, has also adopted the measures.

They will be implemented “as soon as possible”, a spokesman said.

Lubitz ‘was happy and doing well’

But who was Lubitz? The German national, a relative rookie flying commercial planes, was from Montabaur, a small town in Rheinland Pfalz, near Frankfurt. The city’s mayor Gabriele Wieland said he lived there with his parents and also had a residence in Dusseldorf, where the Germanwings flight was heading before it crashed.

Those who knew him said he showed no signs of depression when he was seen last year renewing his glider pilot’s license. His Facebook profile has been taken down – but had included dance music and flying as his hobbies.

Read more: What do we know about Andreas Lubitz

“He was happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well,” Peter Ruecker, who watched him learn to fly at the same glider club in which he trained, told the Associated Press. “I’m just speechless. I don’t have any explanation for this. Knowing Andreas, this is just inconceivable.”

German security officials said Lubitz had “no indications of any kind of terrorist background”. Lufthansa told them that regular security checks also turned up nothing untoward on him.

However, it has emerged that he “interrupted” his pilot training for six months in 2009. No official explanation why has yet been given.

Matthias Gebauer, chief correspondent for the online edition of German newspaper Der Spiegel tweeted: “Schoolmates of co-pilot who crashed tell German reporters he took six-months break from flight training in 2009 due to burnout-syndrome.”

Meanwhile, Germanwings has responded on Twitter to the comments from the morning’s developments:

The world responds

Downing Street said David Cameron was being kept up to date with the latest developments and an Air Accidents Investigation Branch official was heading to France.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the developments gave the tragedy a “new, simply incomprehensible dimension”. “Something like this goes beyond anything we can imagine” she said, insisting the country’s authorities will do “everything imaginable to support the investigations”.

The US has supported the suggestion that there is no link to terrorism. “Based on what we know, there is not a nexus to terrorism,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he was “shocked by the latest details” and sent “an emotional embrace to the families” of those who died in the tragedy.

Ulrich Wessel, headmaster of Joseph Koenig High School in Haltern, which lost 16 students and two teachers in the crash, said he was informed this morning that the cause “was without a doubt suicide”. He and his colleagues were “stunned”.

Something like this goes beyond anything we can imagine - Angela Merkel

“It doesn’t make the number of dead any worse, but if it had been a technical defect then measures could have been taken so that it would never happen again.”

Engineer Esteban Rodriguez, an engineer in Sant Cugat, near Barcelona, lost two friends in Tuesday’s air crash. Of today’s revelations he said: “One person can’t have the right to end the lives of hundreds of people and families.”