SEYNE, France—One of the two pilots on the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps was locked out of the cockpit before the plane went down, killing 150 people, a source close to the investigation told AFP Thursday.
Cockpit recordings recovered from the crash site indicated one of the seats was pushed back and the door opened and closed. Then knocking is heard, said the source, adding “there was no more conversation from that point until the crash”.
The source said an alarm indicating the proximity to the ground could be heard before the moment of impact.
All those on board were killed when Germanwings flight 4U 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf crashed in remote terrain Tuesday, after an unexplained eight-minute descent in mid-flight.
No distress signal was sent from the Airbus A320 and the crew failed to respond to ground control’s desperate attempts to make contact.
The cockpit recording showed the pilots speaking normally in German at the start of the flight, the source said, adding that it could not be determined if it was the captain or the first officer who left the cockpit.
The New York Times cited a senior military official involved in the investigation as saying the black box data indicated one pilot tried unsuccessfully to bash his way back in to the cockpit.
“The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer,” the investigator told the newspaper. “And then he hits the door stronger, and no answer. There is never an answer.”
He continued: “You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”
In a statement overnight, Germanwings said that “at the moment, we do not have information from competent authorities to confirm this story.”
“We are doing everything to get the most information possible and we are not engaging in speculation.”
Under strengthened security measures introduced after the September 11, 2001 hijackings and attacks, authorization to open a cockpit door can only come from inside and from a pilot.
Authorities have said they have no explanation as yet for the tragedy, but said that the plane was still flying when it crashed into the mountain and did not explode mid-air.
Aviation experts interviewed by AFP suggested several theories. “If the pilots did not stop the airplane from flying into the mountains, it is because they were unconscious or dead, or they had decided to die, or they were forced to die,” one expert told AFP.
Photos of the mangled black box retrieved at the site showed its metal casing torn and twisted by the violence of the impact. The casing of a second black box, the flight data recorder, has been found but not the device itself.
Arrangements were being made for the families of the victims, at least 51 of whom were Spaniards and at least 72 Germans, to gather near the crash site Thursday.