German Jet Co-Pilot Repeatedly Accelerated Plane Before Crashing According to Black Box Data
PARIS, FRANCE, April 3, 2015 — Information retrieved from the “black box” data recorder of a doomed German jet shows its co-pilot accelerated the plane over and over again before it slammed into the French Alps, investigators said Friday.
France’s air accident investigation agency, BEA, provided the disturbing new details a day after a gendarme found the blackened data recorder buried in debris scattered along a mountainside ravine.
Based on an initial reading of the recorder, the revelation strengthened investigators’ early suspicions that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz meant to destroy the Germanwings A320.
All 150 people aboard Flight 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf were killed in the March 24 crash. The BEA said the preliminary reading of the data recorder shows that the pilot used the automatic pilot to put the plane into a descent and then repeatedly during the descent adjusted the automatic pilot to speed up the plane.
The agency says it will continue studying the black box for more complete details of what happened. The Flight Data Recorder records aircraft parameters such as the speed, altitude, and actions of the pilot on the commands.
Recording from the plane’s other black box — the cockpit voice recorder — previously indicated that Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the plane, investigators have said.
Mountain officers and trained dogs are continuing to search the crash site. When the terrain is fully cleared of body parts and belongings, a private company will take out the large airplane debris.
Hundreds of victims’ relatives have traveled to the region, officials say.
Lubitz, 27, spent time online researching suicide methods and cockpit door security in the week before crashing Flight 9525, prosecutors said Thursday — the first evidence that the fatal descent may have been a premeditated act.
German prosecutors say Lubitz’s medical records, from before he received his pilot’s license, had referred to “suicidal tendencies.” Lufthansa, Germanwings’ parent company, said it knew six years ago that he had had an episode of “severe depression” before he finished his flight training.
