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[h=4]Prosecutor: Co-pilot deliberately crashed Flight 9525[/h]The families and friends of passengers on the crashed Germanwings plane were due to arrive in southern France on Thursday, after media reported that evidence from one of the black boxes indicates one pilot left the cockpit before the plane began its descent and was unable to get back in.
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Questions remain as French investigators uncover a cockpit voice recorder belonging to the Germanwings flight that crashed killing 150 people Tuesday. Meanwhile, cities across Europe mourn the victims. (March 25) AP
Search and rescue workers at the crash site of the Germanwings Airbus A320 in the French Alps.(Photo: Guillaume Horcajuelo, EPA)
The co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps locked the pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately worked to destroy the plane, a French prosecutor said at a news conference Thursday in Marseille.
"This was voluntary, this was deliberate," prosecutor Brice Robin said. "He refused to open the cabin door in order to let the pilot back in. I repeat. He refused to let the pilot back in. He is the one who pressed the button that allowed the plane to begin descending and lose altitude."
The information was obtained from the cockpit voice recorder of doomed Flight 9525, which took a sudden, steep, eight-minute descent before smashing into the mountains Tuesday. The data recorder has not yet been found.
The co-pilot said nothing after the pilot left the cabin and was alive until the plane crashed, Robin said, adding that authorities can't call it a suicide mission at this point.
Robin said the co-pilot, identified as German national Andres Andreas Lubitz, 28, was not on a terror watch list. Robin said Lubitz said nothing during the descent, but could be heard breathing until the crash.
"The co-pilot is the only one in the cockpit,' Robin said. "While he is alone he somehow manipulated the buttons on the flight monitoring system. He was alone at the helm of this Airbus 320."
Robin stressed that the actions were deliberate.
USA TODAY
Co-pilot in Germanwings crash was not on terror watch list
"We start hearing banging, someone actually trying to break the door down," Robin said. "That's why the alarms were let off -- because these were protocols that were put in place in case of any terror attack."
Robin said the plane apparently glided until it crashed into the ravine, a sound heard on the voice recorder.
"Again, no distress signal, zero, no 'help me' or SOS," he said. "Nothing of this sort was received by air traffic control."
Robin said the voice recorder indicated dialogue between the pilot and co-pilot was normal.
He said he told the families, and that they were in shock.
German carrier Lufthansa, which owns the low-cost airline, offered special flights from Barcelona and Dusseldorf to Marseille, so that those close to the victims can be near the scene of the search and recovery efforts in the French Alps.
USA TODAY
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Lufthansa said Lubitz joined Germanwings in September 2013, directly after training, and had flown 630 hours.
The Luftsportclub Westerwald, an aviation association, said Lubitz was a member of the organization and had dreamed of being a pilot since he was a teen. "He was able to fulfill his dream, a dream so costly now that he has paid with is life."
Officials have not identified the pilot, the airline said he had more than 6,000 hours of flying time and had been Germanwings pilot since May 2014, having previously flown for Lufthansa and Condor.
The German publication Bild identified him as "Patrick L." The publication said he had flown for Lufthansa and Germanwings for more than 10 years and had completed more than 6,000 flight hours on the A320. Bild said he is the father of two children.
USA TODAY
Virginia mom, daughter killed in German airline crash
All 150 passengers and crew aboard the Germanwings Airbus A320 flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf were killed, including three Americans. Two were identified as Yvonne Selke, a contract worker for Booz Allen Hamilton, and her daughter, Emily Selke, a 2013 graduate of Drexel University, both from Nokesville, Va. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki confirmed an additional American fatality but did not identify the victim.
A moment of silence was held Thursday at Joseph-Koenig High School in Haltern Am See in west Germay, which lost 16 10th-graders and two teachers in the crash.
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Samuel Goldschmidt on Twitter
Among the victims confirmed by the airline were 72 Germans and 35 Spaniards. There were two victims each from Australia, Argentina, Iran and Venezuela. One each came from Britain, the Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Denmark, Belgium and Israel.
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