The French prosecutor is confirming the earlier media reports about the sequence of events.

Did the French prosecutor just give us the cause? FO selecting a descend and keeping the Captain out, flying it in the ground without saying a word.

Pilot suicide taking the rest with him, selfish bugger

French authorities saying FO was on flight deck and commanded the plane do start descent...

Co-pilot crashed the aircraft
 

This is the official statement by "Procurer de Marseille" during the press conference now under way.

Confirmed by BEA: FO has manipulated FMS and he was alive until the end of the Flight.

Live conference now.

Authorities confirm that the copilot was alone in the cockpit and willingly put the aircraft into the ground :mad::mad:

Co Pilot now named as Andreas Günter Lubitz.
Did Germanwings pilot deliberately lock his co-pilot out of cockpit? | Daily Mail Online

French prosecutor: most likely interpretation is deliberate action by the co-pilot.

French press conference going on right now...
 

Official now...

Captain was out of the cockpit and co-pilot starts a descent via autopilot.

Captain tries many times to call co-pilot by interphone and then by knocking on the door without any responses.

ATC calls aircraft without response. ATC even tries to tell pilot to select 7700 on transponder.

CVR picks up breathing from inside the cockpit, then loud banging on the door and then picks up EGWPS call out "TERRAIN, TERRAIN" and then initial impacts.

Press conference BFMTV en Direct: regarder la chaine info en live - BFMTV

They have the last 30 minutes of the flight on the CVR.
Conversation between pilots was normal - "cheerful"
After about 20 minutes, captain runs through landing procedure.
Co-pilot's responses to this are described as "laconic"

The co-pilot was left alone in the cockpit.
Co-pilot heard operating FMS to select altitude - can only be a deliberate act.
Hear captain using the interphone to request access to cockpit.
No response.
Banged on door.
Sound of breathing inside cockpit (continues until the impact).
Marseille ATC calls heard - no response from co-pilot.

Press conference continues...

Question: what do you mean by "laconic"
Answer: the replies by the co-pilot were vey short, would have expected more of an exchange.
No real dialogue at this stage - in contrast to the "cheerful" exchanges earlier.

Single pilot German copilot in control confirmed at live press conference, inclusive actioning descent voluntarily.

Captain requests access after returning from the toilet. No answer from PF.

Completely normal breathing is heard from cockpit till the end.

No comms with Marseille, nor reply to Squawk 7700 request. Other planes also fail to make contact.

Alarms are heard, followed by attempts heard to force the door.

Just before the final impact there is another bang possibly hitting a ridge.

No Mayday was ever sent out, nor was any response given to attempt at radio communications.

He had no reason to initiate the descent, no reason to refuse entry to the captain, no reason to refuse the comms.

What a sad day.

Of the many issues arising here, as a frequently paying passenger, I find that the idea that one of the two pilots on board may be viewed (by his own captain) as being incapable of being left on his own by virtue of his inexperience and inability to be profoundly shocking.

That a sane Captain could profess to preferring to soil himself than to leave an inexperienced first officer alone at the controls is mind-boggling.

With a two-pilot cockpit, surely pax have the right to expect that in the event of a pilot incapacitation, the remaining pilot (whether captain or F/O) will be fully and entirely qualified and capable of safely and competently completing the flight, regardless of weather conditions, and indeed that he would be capable of dealing with any emergency or hazard.

If that is not the case, then surely we have to reintroduce a three pilot cockpit at least every time there is a 'second dickie' with less than a particular level of experience/skill/capability?

And perhaps junior, inexperienced first officers should also only fly within a constituted crew, in which two more experienced pilots would get to know him or her better, and be able to start to form an impression of both skills and psyche?

As an aside, if members feel that postings by non pilots get in the way, or are not worth reading, then perhaps one solution would be for posts by vetted members who can prove themselves to be qualified to whatever level were deemed appropriate to automatically appear in bold, with a particular background colour, to allow the less patient to skim through what they might view as dross, and read only the posts by professional pilots.

Why can't the cockpit door policy be reviewed? How many hi-jacks has it really saved? It seems a classic case of 'create a solution to solve one problem and create another problem in the process.' The second problem may be worse than the first...

What about a finger print or retina recognition key if the door must stay?

Article from 2013 featuring the co-pilot:

FAA recognizes Andreas Guenter Lubitz

Press Conference (Sky News) with the French now confirming it. :sad:

Their words "He voluntarily refused to open door and initiated descent"

There is a balance of risks.
Sadly suicides tend to chose a copycat method and we would appear to be suffering from a spate of these incidents. There are no totally foolproof answers, we need to take a considered and balanced action to alleviate a new risk which is an unintended consequence of the successful locked door policy.

I entirely disagree, the experience of the First Officer seems 100% relevant. Unfortunately it has not made business sense to fail cadets.

Live press conference by French Official now...

Cockpit voice recorder info .... Captain left cockpit. Co Pilot initiated descent by keying attitude selector. Captain called at door, knocked, no response from Co-Pilot. Then noise of human breathing heard... All the way to impact. ATC calls heard several times, no response

Ground proximity alarms heard. Sounds of violent attempts to force door. Just before final impact... Screams and possibly very first noise of impact is heard. Then silence.

Dialogue in cockpit beforehand was entirely normal.

Official is adamant that the descent was a deliberate action by co-pilot.

Questioned about ethnicity of co-pilot. Ans - German, no suspicion of terrorism.

Edit: I'm curious to know how they can be sure he had keyed the altitude command, when they only have CVR ?

Emergency code - door
 

I have flown the A320 in a low cost company in Europe and what struck me during the training is how only few experienced pilot on A320 did know the emergency door access. We tend to remember only the normal code.
If the pilot being outside knew the emergency access code, he should have been able to enter, doesn't he ...

The Press, the thread, and Annex 1
 

A few (succinct) inputs:
1. If the quality of discussion on the forum has declined over the past several years as more posters have shown up lacking any piloting credentials whatsoever, part of the reason for the decline also is, over the same time period, a greater number of individuals have found that posting on internet message boards at all is an interesting and - sometimes - useful thing to do. I can't prove this correlation between SLFs-with-agendas and increased propensities to type on keyboards wired together, but it is true in many other sectors (the rise of internet-based "learning platforms" in higher ed, for example, over approximately the same time period).

2. BEA is part of the system France, as a sovereign State, applies to civil aviation and accident investigations - and the French system includes a much more dominant criminal and prosecutorial element than in the U.S. or U.K. or most all other States. NOT saying this is better, worse, or any thing of the sort - just that the criminal-system element changes the willingness of authorities to disclose to the press, media, public.

3. Talk of imposing tighter and/or more extensive mental health evaluations on flightcrew members - great, please give me the roadmap for how the SARPs would be formulated so as to apply across the many different cultures, traditions, even societal conceptualizations of what is "mental health" in the first place. Annex 1 of the Chicago Convention would authorize ICAO to reform airman licensing so as to include a greater component of mental health screening - but a high degree of skepticism is needed that this could be accomplished in a manner which encompasses the many different social attitudes of the many divergent States which are State Parties to the Convention on International Civil Aviation (the Chicago Convention of 1944).