Germanwings Crash: Co-Pilot Changed Mind At Last Minute, Tried To Save Plane, New Info Reveals

The co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525, Andreas Lubitz, crashed the plane on Match 24 due to his history of depression and suicidal tendencies, killing 150 people. However, new information shows that the 27-year-old Lubitz may have had a sudden case of cold feet and actually attempted to save the plane in the final 90 seconds before the Airbus A320-200 slammed into the side of a mountain in the French Alps.

The plane was on its way from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, Germany, when Lubitz — according to investigators — locked pilot Patrick Sondenheimer out of the cockpit after the pilot had briefly departed for a restroom break.

Then, as Sondenheimer frantically but vainly tried to break down the door, Lubitz methodically put the Germanwings plane into a controlled but rapid descent, taking the plane from 37,000 feet down to about 6,000, where it crashed into the mountain.

In fact, recent findings showed that on the same plane’s outbound flight to Barcelona in the other direction, Lubitz apparently practiced what he would need to do to crash the plane, setting that plane’s altitude dial to 100 feet when the captain was out of the cockpit, then resetting it before the senior pilot noticed what had happened.

But on the Germanwings flight from Spain back to Germany, newly revealed black box data shows Lubitz apparently tried to override the plane’s automatic pilot and take control of the falling Airbus just 93 seconds before the disastrous, fatal impact.

“One minute and thirty-three seconds before impact the FDR (flight data recorder) recorded a control input of 30 seconds on the right side stick controller, who was not strong enough to turn off the autopilot,” French investigators wrote in a 29-page report released on Wednesday.

“Did [Lubitz] suddenly have a fear of death? Did he panic? Did he want to avoid the crash at the last moment?” wondered German newspaper BILD in a Thursday story on the startling new findings.

A lawyer for victims of the tragic Germanwings flight, Elmar Giemulla, told BILD that Lubitz could have rescued the plane from destruction.

“We will never know what moved him in these seconds. A stronger pressure on the side stick would have meant the autopilot being automatically disabled,” the attorney said.

But not so fast, said a French aviation official. Lubitz was not helpless he said, and if the suicidal co-pilot really wanted to pull the plane out of its descent, he could have done so.

“The evaluated data confirms that the co-pilot was able to act, that all his actions had the same meaning. Namely to crash the plane on the ground,” said Rémi Jouty.

In April, an American aviation executive expressed doubt that the Germanwings co-pilot deliberately crashed the plane, saying that other equally possible explanations, such as tampering with the plane’s electronics by hackers, were not explored by investigators.

[Image: Getty Images]