Stunning news out of France from the prosecutor, where he states the plane crash was a mass murder-suicide.
The co-pilot of the Airbus A320 that crashed on Tuesday, killing 150 people, appears to have deliberately flown the plane into a mountain after locking the flight commander out of the cockpit.Chilling.During the last eight minutes of the flight, the co-pilot “voluntarily” carried out actions that led to the destruction of the aircraft, Brice Robin, a French public prosecutor, said on Thursday at a press conference in Marseille.
Robin said the co-pilot could be heard breathing right up until the point of impact, at around 700 km/h, suggesting he had not lost consciousness.
However, he failed to respond to increasingly desperate calls from the commander trying to break down the cockpit door, or air traffic controllers.
Robin named the co-pilot as 28-year-old Andreas Lubitz and outlined the last moments of the doomed plane in a chilling account of his actions.
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“Alarms went off signalling the aircraft’s proximity to the ground, and we heard the sound of violent blows as if someone is trying to force the door. Just before the final impact we hear the sound of an impact on the (rock) embankment.
“There was no distress signal, no Mayday, Mayday Mayday, received by air traffic control.”
Robin added: “48 hours after the crash ... the interpretation for us is that the co-pilot deliberately refused to open the door of the cockpit to the flight commander, and pushed the button causing a loss of altitude.”
Update: Here's a video of how the door operating procedure works, if you're wondering.
SEE VIDEO