Germanwings co-pilot made ‘deliberate attempt to destroy the aircraft’: French prosecutor

The co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings flight “activated the descent” of the plane when he was alone in the cockpit, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said Thursday.

That can only be done deliberately, he said.

The co-pilot was alive until impact, Robin said, citing the sound of breathing in the cockpit.

There was a “deliberate attempt to destroy the aircraft,” Robin said.

The most plausible explanation of the crash is that the co-pilot, “through deliberate abstention, refused to open the cabin door … to the chief pilot, and used the button” to cause the plane to lose altitude, Robin said.

The co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, 28, was a German national, and not on any kind of terror list, Robin said emphatically.

Families of Germanwings crash relatives have been told all the same information about the co-pilot that reporters were told at the press conference, Robin said.

Lubitz was “fully qualified to pilot the aircraft on his own,” Robin said.

He had only about 100 hours of experience on the type of aircraft he was flying, but he had all the necessary certifications and qualifications to pilot the aircraft alone, the prosecutor said.

Although it seems the co-pilot wanted to destroy the aircraft, as of now, there’s “nothing to allow us to say that it was a terrorist attack,” Robin said.

There was screaming on the doomed Germanwings flight only in the last few minutes, and death was instantaneous when the plane crashed.

Robin said he was not thinking of the crash as a suicide, explaining: “When you are responsible for 150 people, I don’t call it a suicide.”

The plane crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday, killing all 150 people on board.