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Germanwings crash: second black box found Germanwings co-pilot 'researched suicide methods in days before crash'
(35 minutes later)
The second black box from the Germanwings plane that crashed in the French Alps last week has been found after a nine-day search, prosecutors said on Thursday. The co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 appears to have researched suicide methods and cockpit door security in the days before he flew the plane into the French Alps, killing 150 people, German prosecutors said on Thursday.
Authorities are hoping to unearth more clues about the disaster from the black box after the first voice recorder suggested that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately flew the plane into a mountain. The development came as French prosecutors said the second black box from the plane has been found after a nine-day search.
The second black box records technical flight data that could provide vital insights into the final moments of Flight 4U9525 before it crashed last Tuesday, killing all 150 people on board. Düsseldorf prosecutors said investigators found a tablet computer at co-pilot Andreas Lubitz’s apartment in Düsseldorf and were able to reconstruct his computer searches from 16 March to 23 March.
The first black box, found the same day as the crash, recorded conversations between Lubitz and the pilot and showed that the 27-year-old German was alone at the time of the crash. Related: 'Germanwings passenger video' is authentic, says French magazine
He apparently took advantage of the captain’s brief absence to lock him out and set the plane on a deadly descent into the Alps. Based on information from the cockpit voice recorder, investigators believe the 27-year-old Lubitz locked his captain out of the A320’s cockpit on 24 March and deliberately crashed the plane, killing everyone on board.
The plane smashed into the mountains at a speed of 700 kilometres (430 miles) an hour, instantly killing all 150 people on board – half of them German and more than 50 from Spain. Prosecutors’ spokesman Ralf Herrenbrueck said in a statement that Lubitz’s search terms included medical treatment and suicide methods. On at least one day, the co-pilot looked at search terms involving cockpit doors and their security methods.
According to prosecutors, the voice recorder suggested that the passengers were unaware of what was going to happen to them until the very last seconds, when screams were heard. “[He] concerned himself on one hand with medical treatment methods, on the other hand with types and ways of going about a suicide,” Herrenbrueck said. “In addition, on at least one day [Lubitz] concerned himself with search terms about cockpit doors and their security precautions.”
Rescue workers have since been sifting through the wreckage for days trying to identify body parts and victims via their DNA. German prosecutors said personal correspondence and search terms on the tablet, whose browser memory had not been erased, “support the conclusion that the machine was used by the co-pilot in the relevant period”.
The search for evidence has been hampered by the extremely difficult mountain terrain as well as the force of the crash. French prosecutors, meanwhile, said the second black box from the Germanwings jet – the data recorder that contains readings for nearly every instrument on the plane – had been found.
Investigators were also examining cellphones found in the debris of the jet crash for clues about what happened. A French reporter who says he saw such cellphone video described the excruciating sound of “screaming and screaming” as the plane flew full-speed into a mountain.
No video or audio from the cellphones of the 150 people aboard the plane has been released publicly. On Thursday, Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Marc Menichini told the Associated Press that search teams have found cellphones, but they haven’t been thoroughly examined yet. He would not elaborate.
Questions persist about journalist Frederic Helbert’s reports in the French magazine Paris-Match and in the German tabloid Bild this week about the video that he says he saw. Helbert has vigorously defended his reports.
Special mountain troops continued searching the area on Thursday for personal belongings and the second black box flight recorder.
Helbert said he viewed the video thanks to an intermediary close to the investigation, but does not have a copy himself. The publications chose not to release the video, he said, “because it had no value regarding the investigation but it could have been something terrible for families”.
The video was shot from the back of the plane, he said, so “You cannot see their faces, but you can hear them screaming and screaming.”
“No one is moving or getting up,” he said. “What was awful, what is imprinted in my memory, is the sound.”
“People understand something terrible is going to happen,” he said.
Germanwings, meanwhile, said on Thursday it was unaware that Lubitz had suffered from depression during his pilot training. German airline Lufthansa confirmed on Tuesday that it knew six years ago that Lubitz had suffered from an episode of “severe depression” before he finished his flight training.
Related: Germanwings co-pilot was treated for suicidal tendencies
“We didn’t know this,” said Vanessa Torres, a spokeswoman for Lufthansa subsidiary Germanwings, which hired Lubitz in September 2013.
She couldn’t explain why Germanwings wasn’t aware of the depression when its parent company Lufthansa was.
Germany also announced the creation of an expert task force to examine what went wrong in the Germanwings crash and consider whether changes are needed to cockpit doors or pilot procedures for passing medicals. It will also discuss the question of recognising psychological problems.
Any conclusions will be shared with international air safety organisations. France’s air accident investigation agency has already said it will examine cockpit entry and psychological screening procedures.