By Richard Weiss and Arne Delfs
(Bloomberg) — Investigators probing the Germanwings Airbus crash that killed 150 people on Tuesday are focusing on the role of the pilots after finding that one of them was locked out of the flight deck in the final minutes before impact.
Evidence from a voice recorder indicates only one pilot on the Airbus Group NV A320 jet that came down in the French Alps was at the controls as the aircraft began its descent, according the state prosecutor in Dusseldorf, the destination city for the flight from Barcelona. The prosecutor’s office wouldn’t say which of the pilots had stepped outside.
Germanwings, the low-cost subsidiary of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, said it cannot comment further because the investigation is a matter for the authorities. Lufthansa declined to provide the identities of the two men. France’s BEA air-accident investigator is leading the probe, and the bureau said Wednesday that it had managed to extract the audio file from the voice recorder recovered from the scene.
The recorder indicates one pilot left the cockpit before the plane’s descent and was unable to get back in, the New York Times report earlier, citing an unidentified senior military official involved in the probe of the accident.
Fortified Doors
The pilot can be heard knocking repeatedly on the cockpit door but receiving no answer, and then trying to smash in the door, the report said, citing the official. Investigators don’t yet know why the pilot left the cockpit, the official said, according to the report. France’s Le Monde newspaper reported that the pilot was left inside the cockpit.
Lufthansa, which had operated the aircraft before it was handed over to Germanwings at the start of 2014, said the cockpit had fortified doors with video surveillance to prevent unauthorized entry, a measure that became mandatory after the 9/11 terror attacks in the U.S. While pilots have a security code that lets them open the door from the outside, the person remaining in the cockpit can still deny access.
Absence of pilots from the cockpit during flight is regulated by European Union laws, Spain’s Public Works Minister Ana Pastor today said. Some airlines require two people to remain on the flight deck in the case that one pilot steps out.
Senior Pilot
The captain was “very experienced” and had flown for charter carrier Condor and Lufthansa’s main brand for about 10 years before joining Germanwings in May 2014, the budget airline said. He logged more than 6,000 flight hours.
The first officer, or co-pilot, joined the airline in Sept. 2013 and had 630 flight hours, Germanwings said. The airline declined to provide personal details or the age of the pilots, adding that both were trained “according to Lufthansa standards.”
The Airbus A320 single-aisle airliner had left its cruising altitude before impact, and ground-control authorities sought unsuccessfully to establish contact with the cockpit.
The chief executive officers of Lufthansa and Germanwings will hold a press briefing at 2.30 p.m. local time at Cologne airport today.
Lufthansa shares fell a fourth day in Frankfurt, losing 2.7 percent to trade at 13.01 euros as of 10:17 a.m. The stock has fallen 6.8 percent this week, compared with a 3.2 percent decline in Germany’s benchmark DAX Index.
