Pilot locked out of cockpit before Germanwings crash: Report

Seyne-les-Alpes/Paris: Investigators have retrieved cockpit voice recordings from one of the black boxes of the German Airbus plane that crashed into the Alps, killing everyone onboard, officials said on Wednesday.

The New York Times reported that evidence from the recordings showed that one of the pilots left the cockpit and could not get back in before the flight went down.

The retrieval of the recordings came as French President Francois Hollande, Germany`s Angela Merkel and Spain`s Mariano Rajoy travelled to the crash site in a remote French Alpine region to pay tribute to the 150 victims, mostly Germany and Spanish.

While Hollande promised that authorities would not rest until the causes of the crash were known, France`s BEA air incident investigation bureau said it was still far too early to draw meaningful conclusions on why the plane, operated by the Germanwings budget arm of Lufthansa , went down.

The New York Times quoted a senior military official involved in the investigation as saying the cockpit audio showed “very smooth, very cool” conversation between the pilots in the early part of the flight. The audio then indicated one of the pilots left the cockpit.

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

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve earlier said a terror attack was not the main hypothesis being worked on. Jouty said, however, that no theory could be excluded at this point.

While stressing it was too early to form a clear picture, he ruled out a mid-air explosion having taken place and said the crash scenario did not appear to be linked to depressurisation.

Jouty said the second black box had not yet been found but could not confirm Hollande`s remark that its casing had. Among the new details, he said the airliner had flown in a straight line directly into the mountain – but would not say whether that suggested at the hand of a pilot or auto-pilot.

Germanwings said 72 Germans were killed in Tuesday`s crash, the first major air passenger disaster on French soil since the 2000 Concorde accident just outside Paris. Spanish officials said 51 Spaniards were among the victims.

A tribute ceremony took place on a site with a view in the distance of the mountain against which the Airbus crashed.

Lufthansa said the 24-year-old plane had just on Monday had repairs to the hatch through which the nose wheel descends for landing. A spokeswoman said that was not a safety issue but that repairs had been done to reduce noise.

Police and forensic teams on foot and in helicopters investigated the site about 100 km (65 miles) north of Nice where the airliner slammed into mountains in what aviation officials was a sharp descent but not freefall.

Germanwings said on Tuesday the plane started descending a minute after reaching cruising height and lost altitude for eight minutes. Experts said that while the Airbus had descended rapidly, it did not seem to have simply fallen out of the sky.

The A320 is one of the world’s most used passenger jets and has a good safety record.

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Source:Zeenews