Germanwings co-pilot 'deliberately crashed Airbus jet'

PARIS — The chief Marseille prosecutor handling the investigation of the crash of a Germanwings jetliner said yesterday that evidence from the cockpit voice recorder indicated that the co-pilot had deliberately locked the captain out of the cockpit and steered the plane into its fatal descent.

“At this moment, in light of investigation, the interpretation we can give at this time is that the co-pilot through voluntary abstention refused to open the door of the cockpit to the commander, and activated the button that commands the loss of altitude,” the prosecutor, Brice Robin, said.

He said it appeared that the intention of the co-pilot, identified as Andreas Lubitz, had been “to destroy the aircraft.” He said that the voice recorder showed that the co-pilot had been breathing until before the moment of impact, suggesting that he was conscious and deliberate in bringing the plane down and killing 144 passengers and five other crew members in the French Alps on Tuesday.

The revelation that one of the pilots of the jetliner was locked out of the cockpit before it crashed, which was first reported in The New York Times, raised new and troubling questions yesterday. Search teams continued to scour the rugged terrain of the French Alps for clues, and several other issues remained unclear on Thursday, including the identity of the captain and why he had left the cockpit.

The inquiry shows that the crash was intentional, Mr Robin said, and he was considering changing his investigation from involuntary manslaughter to voluntary manslaughter.

He said there was no indication that it was a terrorist attack, and added that Mr Lubitz was not known to law enforcement officials. After the news conference, the German interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, told reporters in Berlin that security officials had checked their records after Tuesday’s crash and found no indication that anyone on board had links to terrorism.

An investigation into the background of Mr Lubitz, who was 28 years old and came from the German town of Montabaur, is underway.

Asked if Mr Lubitz had tried to commit suicide, the French prosecutor said, “I haven’t used the word suicide,” adding that it was “a legitimate question to ask.”

The flight, an Airbus A320 operated by the budget carrier Germanwings, a Lufthansa subsidiary, was travelling to Düsseldorf, Germany, from Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday morning when it descended and slammed into the French Alps.

During the descent, Mr Robin said, air traffic controllers repeatedly tried to contact the aircraft but received no response.

“We are horrified that something of this nature could have been taken place,” said Carsten Spohr, the chief executive of Lufthansa, Germanwings’ parent company, and a former A320 pilot, at a news conference in Cologne, Germany, later yesterday. “It is the worst nightmare that anyone can have in our company.” He said Lufthansa staff received psychological and flight training.

As investigators continued to pore over the clues, relatives of the victims were expected to arrive near the site of the crash, where a makeshift chapel has been set up, and where psychologists are available to provide support.

The victims of the crash included many Germans and Spaniards, including 16 German high school students who were returning from an exchange program. Other victims included citizens of Britain, Colombia, Iran, Israel and the United States, among others.

A bus carrying 14 relatives of Spanish victims departed from Barcelona on Wednesday, The Associated Press reported. They apparently did not want to fly. THE NEW YORK TIMES