The co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 set the plane to go faster before the fatal crash in the Alps.
Bloomberg reported:
The data recorder on Germanwings Flight 9525 shows the co-pilot set the airliner on a descent to an altitude of 100 feet and then repeatedly accelerated the plane, causing the crash that killed all 150 people on board.
Further analysis of the plane’s second black box, known as a flight data recorder, is under way, BEA, the French air accident investigation agency, said in an e-mailed statement Friday. The data recorder, which stores thousands of parameters about the plane’s systems during the flight, was recovered yesterday from the crash site in the Alps and sent to BEA’s offices in Paris.
The initial review appears to back up information from the cockpit voice recorder, found earlier. French prosecutors investigating the March 24 crash have said co-pilot Andreas Lubitz steered the jet into a mountain after locking the captain out of the cockpit.
“An initial reading indicates that the pilot present in the cockpit used automatic pilot to put the plane into a descent toward an altitude of 100 feet, and then several times during the course of the descent, the pilot modified the setting of the automatic pilot to increase the speed of the descent,” BEA said in the statement.
Crazed co-pilot Andreas Lubitz told former girlfriend he was planning a spectacular gesture to change the system.
Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings airliner, competing in a Lufthansa marathon in 2013 (Photo: Wolfgang Nass/BILD)
A close friend of Andreas Lubitz says he was mentally unstable.