Germanwings Flight 9525 Deliberately Crashed By Co-Pilot, Investigator Claims

The fatal crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 that killed all 150 people onboard was in all likelihood a deliberate act, a new report says. According to the New York Times, a German prosecutor heading the crash investigation said that there is increasing evidence that point towards the possibility that Flight 9525 was crashed deliberately by the co-pilot of the plane.

According to Brice Robin, the prosecutor who made this startling discovery, the investigating team is now treating this as a case of voluntary manslaughter. Earlier, the Inquisitr reported that the pilot of the ill-fated aircraft was locked out of the cockpit soon after the plane reached its cruising altitude. It is now being reported that the pilot could have been deliberately locked out of the cockpit. Earlier reports also talked about the noise of heavy pounding on the cockpit doors — which would have been caused by the pilot trying to get into the cockpit after being locked out.

Brice Robin went on to add that the co-pilot started to make a sharp descent soon after the pilot left the cockpit. However, they have no answers yet as to why the co-pilot decided to deliberately crash Flight 9525 and kill hundreds of innocent people onboard.

Meanwhile, investigators are still scouring the crash site for clues that could shed more light on the causes that brought Flight 9525 down. The flight, which was operated using an Airbus A320 aircraft, was traveling from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, Germany, on what was to be yet another routine flight. Minutes after it took off and reached its cruising altitude, the plane began to descend quickly and continued to do so for the next 10 minutes. The plane soon went off radar screens and crashed into a mountain in the French Alps. The impact of the crash was so severe that the plane disintegrated into small pieces; the largest piece was the size of a small car.

After the crash, investigators managed to retrieve one of the cockpit voice recorders on the plane and made a shocking discovery. The evidence from the voice recorders onboard Flight 9525 pointed towards the chance that the pilot had gone out of the cockpit and was unable to get back in. New regulations post 9/11 warranted that the cockpit doors remain locked at all times — except when the one of the pilots wishes to go into the cabin to relieve himself. In such a scenario, the co-pilot has all the control and can lock the cockpit and bar access to someone waiting outside. Unfortunately, it seems these regulations did not take into consideration a scenario where a pilot himself turns suicidal and acts in a manner that could kill the passengers on board.

As investigation on the cause behind Flight 9525’s crash continues, the families of the victims aboard the plane are on a visit to the site of the crash. Lufthansa is flying several of the relatives on two separate flights from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. Another group of relatives, who did not wish to fly, left Barcelona on a bus to Dusseldorf.

The crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 is the worst aviation disaster since the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in 2014.

[Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images]