Cockpit voice recorder captures dramatic descent of Germanwings flight

GWEN IFILL:

The recovery of bodies and wreckage from downed Germanwings Flight 9525 continued today, as investigators announced a startling finding, that the pilot in control of the plane when it crashed into mountainous terrain did so intentionally; 150 people lost their lives.

Jonathan Rugman of Independent Television News filed this report from near the crash site.

JONATHAN RUGMAN:

Threading their way through alpine pass, these are the relatives of those who died in these mountains two days ago. They want to be close to their loved ones' last living moments, however awful those moments are. The countryside here is remote and splendid, though now scarred by disaster.

And no one here is calling this an accident anymore. This was always going to be really difficult journey for these families to make, made even more difficult by the revelation that the co-pilot appears to have crashed the plane deliberately, killing himself and 149 other people. It was this mangled cockpit voice recorder which gave up his secret. It seems the co-pilot locked the captain out of the cabin and then steered the plane into its final descent.

The prosecutor handling this investigation talking of deliberate intent to destroy the aircraft.

BRICE ROBIN, Marseille Prosecutor (through interpreter):

The most plausible and possible interpretation for us is that the co-pilot refused to open the door to the cockpit to the flight captain and activated the button to start the descent.

JONATHAN RUGMAN:

The prosecutor described the flight's final 10 minutes. He said the captain left the cockpit, perhaps to use the bathroom, leaving the co-pilot alone at the controls to start the plane's descent.

The captain is heard pleading to be let back in, but there is no response, the only cockpit noise, the sound of the co-pilot breathing normally, with passengers heard screaming just before the moment of impact.

The co-pilot was Andreas Lubitz, a 28-year-old German, relatively junior with over 600 hours of flying experience, not on the police radar and, we are told, with no known link to terrorism. Cockpit doors have been strengthened since the September the 11th attacks, but this Airbus video shows how flight crew should be able to open the door from the outside on a keypad, though, crucially, that code can be overridden with a lock switch inside the cockpit for up to five minutes, and that's what experts believe happened on Tuesday morning.

This was as close to the crash site as relatives reached today, the national flags of those killed unfurled in honor of the missing dead.