Co-pilot could have deliberately crashed Germanwings plane

The captain of the Germanwings flight was locked out of the cockpit as the plane went down.

The co-pilot of Germanwings Airbus A320 that crashed in the Alps may have wanted to destroy the plane, as flight recorder data shows that he controlled the plane’s descent until it crashed into a mountain, Brice Robin, the public prosecutor of the city of Marseille, said on Thursday, the BBC’s Russian Service has reported.

According to Robin, the captain of the Germanwings flight, which crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday morning, was locked out of the cockpit as the plane went down.

According to data obtained from the black box flight recorders, the pilot tried desperately to get back into the cockpit, but the door was locked.

"The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door and there is no answer,” the investigator told the New York Times.

“And then he hits the door stronger and no answer. There is never an answer.”

“You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”

In addition, the flight recorders recorded the noise of the ground proximity warning system, which went off just before impact, AFP reports.

The plane was travelling at about 700 miles-per-hour when it hit the mountainside, and all 150 people on board would have been killed instantly, the BBC reported.

However, the plane’s steep dive lasted for eight minutes, and the screams of passengers can be heard in data from the flight recorders before impact, according to some media reports.