Rehearsed crash on outbound flight
Investigators say Lubitz practiced entering the fatal descent settings on the previous, outbound flight. The changes in autopilot settings, mimicking those which, two hours later, crashed the jet on its way back to Duesseldorf from Barcelona, would barely have been noticeable because the jet was already descending. Investigator:
I can’t speculate on what was happening inside his head; all I can say is that he changed this button to the minimum setting of 100 feet and he did it several times.
Informed flight school of depression
Lufthansa says Lubitz had informed the flight school about his previous mental health issues in 2009. Lufthansa:
In his correspondence, he informed the Flight Training Pilot School in 2009… about a previous episode of severe depression.
‘Co-pilot crashed plane deliberately’
French Prosecutor Brice Robin claims that Lubitz, the co-pilot, crashed the plane deliberately.
While the co-pilot was alone he locked the door and engaged a system which started the descent of the plane. This can only be done voluntarily….The co-pilot didn’t say a single word while he was alone and could be heard breathing normally. It wasn’t the breath of someone who was struggling. He didn’t say a single word, it was total silence.
Flights cancelled
Several Germanwings flights are cancelled after their crews refuse to fly over concerns the crash may have been linked to a repair to the nose-wheel landing doors on Monday, according to an unconfirmed report in Spiegel magazine. Lufthansa denies that there was any link between the repair and the cancelled flights. The airline confirms that the aircraft had been grounded for an hour on Monday for repairs to the nose-wheel landing doors, but insisted the issue was not “safety-related”.
The repair was purely to fix a noise that the door was making, and the aircraft was flying again from 10am on Monday.
Black Box found
French Interior Minister Cazeneuve says a black box has been located at the site in the French Alps where a plane crashed while traveling from Barcelona to Duesseldorf. Investigators described a scene of devastation where the airliner crashed. Aerial photographs showed smoldering wreckage and a piece of the fuselage with six windows. Bruce Robin, prosecutor for the city of Marseille, says he saw the destruction from a helicopter:
We saw an aircraft that had literally been ripped apart, the bodies are in a state of destruction, there is not one intact piece of wing or fuselage.
French police at the crash site said it will take days to recover the bodies due to difficult terrain, snow and incoming storms.
We are still searching. It’s unlikely any bodies will be airlifted until Wednesday