Germanwings Pilot Locked Out of Cockpit

Photo Credit: Getty Images

A new report says that a pilot of the crashed Germanwings airplane was locked out of cockpit at time of crash.

The tragic crash of a German airplane in the French Alps on March 24 killed 150 people including 16 school children. The Germanwings flight was scheduled to fly from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. It has crash for still unknown reasons in a valley that is difficult to access. While the rescue mission is still going on, the New York Times surprises with a report about the analyses of the cockpit voice recordings.

The New York Times cites a senior military official involved in the investigation who described the cockpit conversation as “very smooth, very cool” between pilots during the early part of the flight. Then he said the recording suggests that one of the pilots has left the cockpit and could not get back in.

“The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer,” the investigator said. “And then he hits the door stronger, and no answer. There is never an answer.” He said, “You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”

The video below demonstrated the reinforced A320 cockpit door. It is not clear if the crashed Airbus A320 had this door installed. This door in the video has an emergency entry code option. The video does though not show the reported ability of the cockpit crew to disable this emergency entry option.

It is unclear why a pilot would have left the cockpit. The flight time is only 2 hours and 15 minutes between Barcelona and Dusseldorf. The 4U9525 flight took off at 9:35am and it crashed at 10:53am.

There is no official confirmation yet about the New York Times leak. It could take still a very long time until the voice recorder is fully analyzed. The new report is though pointing to something unusual going on on the Germanwings flight 4U9525 before it crashed.

The New York Times anonymous source said: “I don’t like it. To me, it seems very weird: this very long descent at normal speed without any communications, though the weather was absolutely clear.” The source cautioned that his initial analysis was based on the very limited information currently available.