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       Report: Black Box Indicates One Germanwings Pilot Had Left Cockpit

   by VOA News

   An investigator looking into Tuesday's Germanwings plane crash in the
   French Alps says evidence indicates that one of the vessel's two pilots
   was shut out of the cockpit when the plane went down, killing all 150
   people on board.

   An unnamed crash investigator has told The New York Times that a
   cockpit voice recording, taken from the so-called "black box" recovered
   at the crash scene, indicates the pilot was attempting to re-enter the
   cockpit when the plane crashed.

   Describing the recording, he said the pilot "is knocking lightly on the
   door [of the cockpit] and there is no answer. And then he hits the door
   stronger and no answer. There is never an answer.''

   The investigator said the pilot could be heard trying to break the
   cockpit door down. The recording left open questions about why the door
   was not opened. He continued, "But what is sure is that at the very end
   of the flight, the other pilot is alone and does not open the door."

   Investigators said Wednesday that they do not believe the plane
   exploded in mid-air, because the wreckage in the rugged terrain of the
   French Alps is confined to a relatively small, remote area.

   The plane went down without issuing any distress signals. Lufthansa,
   the parent company of the budget subsidiary Germanwings, says at
   present it is treating the crash as an accident.

   Earlier Wednesday, the leaders of France, Germany and Spain met in
   somber solidarity near the site where a Germanwings Airbus A320
   crashed.

   French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and
   Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy talked with rescue workers at a
   staging field in Seyne-les-Alpes. It was not far from where the
   aircraft went down Tuesday morning in the ski resort region about an
   hour after it left Barcelona, Spain on a flight to the German city of
   Dusseldorf.

   Chief crash investigator Remi Jouty said investigators have "succeeded
   in extracting usable data" from the badly mangled cockpit voice
   recorder that was recovered hours after the crash, but do not have the
   "slightest explanation" for the crash. The black box is being examined
   in Paris, with authorities listening to the pilots' words in the final
   moments before the accident.

   Jouty said searchers are still looking among the treacherous terrain
   for the second black box. If intact, it would contain crucial flight
   data information. Hollande said that searchers had found the casing of
   the second black box, but not its contents, although Jouty said he
   could not confirm any part of it had been found.

   Meanwhile, dozens of rescue workers combed the crash site --  steep
   mountainsides and a ravine -- as they looked for bodies.

   People from at least 18 countries were aboard the flight, with 72
   Germans and at least 35 Spaniards among the casualties. Among those
   killed were a pair of German opera singers and 16 German teenagers,
   along with two of their teachers, returning from a school trip to
   Spain.
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   wings-pilot-had-left-cockpit/2695014.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/report-black-box-indicates-one-germanwings-pilot-had-left-cockpit/2695014.html