Co-pilot ‘deliberately’ crashed German plane

Brice Robin, Marseille public prosecutor, on Thursday said the co-pilot of the ill-fated German Airbus A320 airliner was culpable for the crash.

“Investigations reveal that there was a deliberate attempt to destroy the aircraft but nothing to suggest that it was a terrorist attack,” he said.

“He deliberately locked out the chief pilot and accelerated plane’s descent which caused the plane to lose altitude.”

He added that there was no distress call of any kind from the plane, which crashed on Tuesday, while revealing the identity of the co-pilot as Andreas Lubitz, a 28 year old German.

It was unclear why the chief pilot left the cockpit but he tried to force his way in.

“You can hear he is trying to smash the door down,” Robin added.

According to German aviation law, pilots could temporarily leave the cockpit at certain times and in certain circumstances while the aircraft is cruising.

This could mean that the chief pilot did no wrong in leaving the cockpit.

Lufthansa said that its cockpit doors can be opened from the outside with a code, in line with regulations introduced after the Sept. 11 attacks. However, the code system can be blocked from inside the cockpit which the co-pilot did.

He also confirmed that the chief pilot had over 6,000 hours of flying time, while the co-pilot had 630 hours and had been with Germanwings since September 2013 and were both qualified.

Investigators were still studying the voice recordings from one of the black boxes recovered while the search continued for a second box.