Spotlight: Germany shocked, angered when co-pilot found "deliberately" crashes Germanwings plane

The investigation into the crash of Germanwings flight 4U9525 reached an unexpected and mysterious turning point on Thursday as an audio recording from the plane's black box revealed that the German co-pilot deliberately crashed the aircraft into the southern French Alps after locking his captain out of the cockpit.

After analyzing the audio file extracted from the first black box retrieved from the crash site, investigators in France discovered that the captain of the flight left the cockpit with the aircraft on autopilot, said French prosecutor Brice Robin at a press conference in Marseille.

Once alone, the co-pilot, identified as 28-year-old Andreas Lubitz from Germany, deliberately manipulated the controls to gradually lower the altitude of the aircraft from 12,000 meters to 2,000 meters.

Despite the captain's repeated requests and desperate attempts to get back inside the cockpit, the door never opened.

Robin said the co-pilot could be heard breathing normally until the last moment of the crash, showing that he was alive, and yet, "no message of emergency was received by the air traffic controllers" and no words could be heard on the recording in the last 10 minutes of the crashed flight.

"The action of the first officer of the crashed Germanwings' A320 can be analyzed as his intention to destroy the aircraft," he said, adding that the passengers would have had no idea of what was happening until the crash occurred, because screams were not heard until then.

This new development shocked the Germanwings airline and its parent company Lufthansa although on Wednesday they expressed their doubts about the crash of "a technically flawless airplane steered by two experienced pilots."

"We were shocked," said Carsten Spohr, the chief executive of Lufthansa. "We could not imagine that it is even getting worse."

Spohr told reporters at a press conference in Cologne, Germany that the co-pilot started his training in 2008 at an aviation school in Bremen and became a co-pilot for Germanwings in 2013.

His training was interrupted six years ago for seven months, Spohr said, but it continued thereafter.

"It (the interruption) was not uncommon," he said, refusing to disclose any details about the reasons for the break.

According to Spohr, a pilot candidate for Lufthansa and Germanwings must receive a fitness test after a break in training, regardless of the reason, and can only continue if the fitness is established.

The co-pilot of flight 4U9525 passed all flight and medical tests and was "100 percent fit to fly with no restriction," Spohr said.

The pilot-turned CEO revealed that the electronically-secured door of the cockpit could be opened automatically by a special code from outside if there was no answer from the inside, "but the pilot inside the cockpit can prevent it in order to keep the door shut."

He added that it was not clear whether it was because the captain didn't enter the code or the co-pilot barred the pilot's entry from inside, and that more investigation was needed.

Spohr repeated French prosecutor Brice Robin, saying there was no indication that the crash had been an act of terrorism, but he said "if one person kills himself and another 149 persons, then another word should be used, not 'suicide'."

Later on Thursday, German police kept the co-pilot's home in Montabaur, a town about 100 kilometers northwest of Frankfurt, under surveillance.

Policemen accompanied by two investigators were seen by a Xinhua reporter entering the house with cardboard boxes in their hands.

The co-pilot's other residence in Duesseldorf was also investigated, according to media reports.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Berlin that the latest findings about the crash were "inconceivable" and went "beyond every imagination."

Germany, she said, would do everything possible to support investigations into the crash.

Shock and anger spread in Haltern am See, a small town about 80 kilometers to the north of Dusseldorf where 16 teenage students and two teachers had lived before their tragic end on board the ill-fated flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf.

"That makes us angry that a suicide causes further 149 dead," said Ulrich Wessel, head of Joseph Koenig High School where the students and teachers had spent their days.

"I wonder when the nightmare will finally stop," said the town's mayor Bodo Klimpel, adding he was "angry, speechless, and deeply shocked."

Questions remained unanswered: what kind of a person had this co-pilot been? what had he been going through? How did the tragedy happen?

"This man was nothing special, a very ordinary person," said a neighbor of the co-pilot in Montabaur.

In a statement posted by a Montabaur flying club where the co-pilot was a member, he was described as wanting to realize his dream of flying since he was a teenager and began as a gliding student and finally made it to become a pilot of A320.

Spohr admitted that his company conducts regular aeronautical examinations and annual medical check-ups of its pilots, but "there is no regular psychological checks."

However, he insisted that the crash on Tuesday was "an incredibly tragic, individual case," and his company had "firm confidence" in the selecting, training, qualification and work of its pilots. Endit