SILENT ASSASSIN
co-pilot killed all 150 Was called a depressed ‘burnout’
AN EERIE silence descended on the cockpit, interrupted only by the increasingly panicked pounding on the door — and the screams of those about to die.
A suicidal German aviator turned mass murderer at 35,000 feet as he locked the captain out of the cockpit and silently slammed the commercial plane into the French Alps, officials said Thursday.
Deranged co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, 28, remained chillingly quiet, his breathing calm and even, in the minutes before all 150 people aboard Germanwings Flight 9525 were killed on impact.
“It was absolutely silence in the cockpit,” said French prosecutor Brice Robin in explaining the unfathomable end to the doomed flight between Barcelona and Dusseldorf.
Lubitz offered no hints of the macabre ending he had planned for his final flight aboard the Airbus A320, loaded with 144 passengers and five other crew members.
“You don’t get the impression that there was any particular panic, because the breathing is always the same,” Robin said.
The terrified howls of his victims were captured on the cockpit voice recorder just before the Tuesday crash as the passengers realized their ultimate fate.
“The victims realized just at the last moment,” said Robin. “Only toward the end do you hear screams. And bear in mind that death would have been instantaneous.”
The plane was pulverized when it hit the remote mountain after an eight-minute descent.
Investigators searched Lubitz’s family home in Montabaur, Germany, and his apartment in Dusseldorf on Thursday. They were seen removing a computer and laptop from his apartment. A police spokesman said investigators found a “very significant clue to what has happened,” according to the Daily Mail.
Some relatives were brought Thursday to an overlook near the crash scene as investigators repeated the insane details gleaned from one of the plane’s mangled black boxes.
Officials were still hunting for a second black box with flight data.
Lubitz’s while France, was kept separated from the other mourners once word of the murder plot surfaced.
The co-pilot — who was engaged to be married — stopped training six years ago because of “burnout syndrome,” former classmates told German newspaper Der Spiegel.
The disturbing revelation left German Chancellor Angela Merkel, like most of the world, reeling to make sense of it all. “Today, news has reached us that gives this tragedy a new, simply incomprehensible dimension,” she said.
The news also led to a
change in
GETTING TO THE CONTROLS
cockpit policies around the world, with many airlines now embracing the U.S. protocol of two crew members in the cockpit at all times.
Lubitz, left alone inside the cockpit when the captain stepped out apparently to use the bathroom, was able to lock himself inside and keep everyone at bay as he descended slowly into the Alps.
In a bizarre twist, the post-9/11 upgrades to cockpit security — including a fortified door and keypad access — likely aided the suicidal pilot.
Once Lubitz was by himself, the reinforced door — with extra deadbolts inside the cockpit — and the keypad entry system insured no one else could get inside, experts said.
Lubitz was able to override the captain’s access code, leaving his boss to pound madly on the door .
“That’s just not something you can predict,” said retired pilot Capt. Andy Danziger, a 27-year commercial airline veteran. “These are very excellent procedures to prevent hijackings. But this individual gained access to the cockpit because he’s an employee. How can you know he’s mentally deranged?”
Investigators said the last conversation between the pilot and co-pilot was “curt” as the captain gave instructions on their upcoming landing in Germany.
Authorities said 72 Germans and 50 Spaniards were killed in the first major air passenger disaster in France in 15 years. Officials said it could take weeks of DNA testing to identify the remains once they are collected from the far-flung crash site.
Friends and colleagues said there was no indication of the evil that surfaced during what started as a routine flight. They recalled Lubitz as a fun-loving young man with a great reputation as a pilot and a bright future.
His stunned bosses were at a loss to explain why the German national turned the flight into a murdersuicide mission. “We have no indication what could have led the copilot to commit this terrible act,” said Carsten Spohr, CEO of Germanwings’ parent company, Lufthansa.
With News Wire Services