Pilot locked out of cockpit before German plane crash
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 26, 2015
Investigators have retrieved cockpit voice recordings from one of the black boxes of the German Airbus plane that smashed into the Alps, killing everyone onboard, and they expect a preliminary read-out of their content in days, an official said on Wednesday.
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Investigators have retrieved cockpit voice recordings from one of the black boxes of the German Airbus plane that smashed into the Alps, killing everyone onboard, and they expect a preliminary read-out of their content in days. [Photo/Chinanews.com] |
The development came as French President Francois Hollande, Germany's Angela Merkel and Spain's Mariano Rajoy travelled to the crash site in a remote French Alpine region to pay tribute to the 150 victims, mostly Germany and Spanish.
"We have just been able to extract a useable audio data file," BEA director Remi Jouty told a news conference at its headquarters outside Paris.
One of the pilots on the German Airbus plane that crashed in the French Alps, killing everyone onboard, left the cockpit and was unable to return before the plane went down, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing evidence from a cockpit voice recorder.
"The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door and there is no answer," an unnamed investigator told the 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," the investigator added.
As well as Germans and Spaniards, victims included three Americans, a Moroccan and citizens of Britain, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Colombia, Denmark, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Iran and the Netherlands, officials said. However DNA checks to identify them could take weeks, the French government said.
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr described the crash as incomprehensible and said Lufthansa has never lost a plane during the cruise stage of flight.
"This represents the darkest hours in the 60 year history of our Lufthansa group. We are still in a state of shock," he said.
Hollande, Merkel and Rajoy thanked search teams and met residents in the village of Seyne-les-Alpes, where the salvaging operation has been set up.
"Dear Angela, dear Mariano, rest assured ... we will find out everything," Hollande told German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, pledging to get to the bottom of what caused the crash. "France stands by you."
Merkel replied: "It feels good that in a difficult hour like this that we're standing so closely together in friendship. Dear Francois, I'd like to say to you a heartfelt 'thank you' in the name of millions of Germans who are deeply appreciative of this German-Franco friendship."
A tribute ceremony took place on a site with a view in the distance of the mountain against which the Airbus crashed.
Earlier, Lufthansa said it could not explain why the Airbus run by its low-cost Germanwings unit crashed.
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