By Tim Hepher and Jean-Francois Rosnoblet
PARIS/SEYNE-LES-ALPES (Reuters) - A young
German co-pilot barricaded himself alone in
the cockpit of Germanwings flight 9525 and
apparently set it on course to crash into an
Alpine mountain, killing all 150 people on
board including himself, French prosecutors
said on Thursday.
They offered no motive for why Andreas
Lubitz, 27, would take the controls of the
Airbus A320, lock the captain out of the
cockpit and deliberately set it veering down
from cruising altitude at 3,000 feet per minute.
German police searched his home for evidence
that might offer some explanation for what
was behind Tuesday's crash in the French
Alps.
The scenario stunned the aviation world.
Within hours of the prosecutors'
announcement, several airlines responded by
immediately changing their rules to require a
second crew member to be in the cockpit at all
times. That is already compulsory in the
United States but not in Europe.
Canada said it would now require it of all its
airlines. EasyJet, Norwegian Air Shuttle and
Air Berlin were among other carriers that
swiftly announced such policies.
Among those that didn't was Germanwings
parent company Lufthansa, whose CEO said
he thought it was unnecessary. But the airline
came under swift pressure on social media to
make such a change and later said it would
discuss it with others in the industry.
French and German officials said there was no
indication Lubitz was a terrorist but offered
no rival theories to explain his actions.
Acquaintances described him as an affable
young man who had given no sign of harmful
intent.
Lubitz acted "for a reason we cannot fathom
right now but which looks like intent to
destroy this aircraft", Marseille prosecutor
Brice Robin said.
Setting the plane's controls for rapid descent
was an act that "could only have been
voluntary", Robin said. “He had... no reason to
stop the pilot-in-command from coming back
into the cockpit. He had no reason to refuse to
answer to the air controller who was alerting
him on the loss of altitude."
The captain, who had stepped out of the
cockpit, probably to use the toilet, could be
heard on flight recordings trying to force his
way back in. "You can hear banging to try to
smash the door down," Robin said.
Most of the passengers would not have been
aware of their fate until the very end, he said:
"Only toward the end do you hear screams," he
said. "And bear in mind that death would have
been instantaneous...the aircraft was literally
smashed to bits."
FlightRadar24, an online air tracking service
that uses satellite data, said it had found
evidence the autopilot was abruptly switched
from cruising altitude to just 100 feet, the
lowest possible setting. The plane crashed at
about 6,000 feet.
"Between 09:30:52 and 09:30:55 you can see
that the autopilot was manually changed from
38,000 feet to 100 feet and 9 seconds later the
aircraft started to descend, probably with the
'open descent' autopilot setting," Fredrik
Lindahl, chief executive of the Swedish
tracking service, said.
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said its air crew
were picked carefully and subjected to
psychological vetting.
"No matter your safety regulations, no matter
how high you set the bar, and we have
incredibly high standards, there is no way to
rule out such an event," Spohr said.
Attention was focused on the motivations of
Lubitz, a German national who joined the
Lufthansa-owned budget carrier in September
2013 and had just 630 hours of flying time -
compared with the 6,000 hours of the flight
captain.
"SUICIDE" THE WRONG WORD
"Suicide" was the wrong word to describe
actions which killed so many other people,
Robin, the French prosecutor, said: "I don't
necessarily call it suicide when you have
responsibility for 100 or so lives."
The family of the co-pilot, whose age was
earlier misstated as 28, arrived in France for a
tribute alongside other victims. They were
being kept apart from the others, Robin said.
Police searched the co-pilot's home in
Montabaur, Germany, leaving with large blue
bags of evidence and a computer. A man was
led out of the building, shielded by police
holding up jackets.
Acquaintances in the town said they were
stunned.
"I'm just speechless. I don't have any
explanation for this. Knowing Andreas, this is
just inconceivable for me," said Peter Ruecker,
a long-time member of the local flight club
where Lubitz received his flying license years
ago.
"He was a lot of fun, even though he was
perhaps sometimes a bit quiet. He was just
another boy like so many others here."
A photo on Lubitz's Facebook page, which
was later taken down, shows a smiling young
man posing in front of San Francisco's Golden
Gate bridge.
Investigators were still searching for the
second of the two black boxes on Thursday in
the ravine where the plane crashed, 100 km
(65 miles) from Nice. This box would contain
data from the plane's instruments.
Under German aviation law, pilots may
temporarily leave the cockpit at certain times
and in certain circumstances, such as while
the aircraft is cruising.
Cockpit doors can be opened from the outside
with a code, in line with regulations
introduced after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in
the United States, but the code can be
overridden from inside the cockpit, making the
door impenetrable.
Germanwings said 72 Germans were killed in
the first major air passenger disaster on
French soil since the 2000 Concorde accident
just outside Paris. Madrid revised down on
Thursday the number of Spanish victims to 50
from 51.
As well as Germans and Spaniards, victims
included three Americans, a Moroccan and
citizens of Britain, Argentina, Australia,
Belgium, Colombia, Denmark, Israel, Japan,
Mexico, Iran and the Netherlands, officials
said. However, DNA checks to identify them
could take weeks, the French government said.
The families of victims were being flown to
Marseille on Thursday before being taken up
to the zone close to the crash site. Chapels
had been prepared for them with a view of the
mountain where their relatives died.
(Additional reporting by bureaus in Paris,
Berlin, Frankfurt and Madrid; Writing by Peter
Graff; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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