By Anthony Faiola,
BERLIN — The co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 used the onboard autopilot to put the plane into a descent and repeatedly increase the speed of the Airbus A320 as it headed straight for a mountainside, according to an initial assessment of data recovered from the aircraft’s second black box.
The readings, announced by French investigators Friday, appeared to add to the growing body of evidence indicating that Andreas Lubitz, the 27-year old German who co-piloted the plane, deliberately locked its more senior pilot out of the cockpit before crashing the jetliner with 149 other people on board.
On the first black box, the voice data recorder recovered last week, the pilot is heard desperately trying to reenter the cockpit after he had briefly left for what appeared to be a bathroom break. There are also sounds, investigators say, of the pilot trying to break down the door while calling Lubitz’s name.
But investigators have been waiting for further confirmation of the events on board that could only be provided by the second black box, the data recorder found Thursday by a ravine and buried under debris. A preliminary review, French investigators said, shows that from a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet, Lubitz appears to have adjusted the autopilot, putting the plane into a descent to 100 feet. At various times, he accelerated the plane using the plane’s autopilot settings, building up speed as the craft approached a part of the French Alps where the co-pilot is known to have spent past vacations.
The information gleaned so far is still preliminary, and investigators are hoping a more detailed review will shed more light on the events that transpired in the cockpit. Data recorders capture a vast array of systems information, including more than 500 parameters on speed, altitude and the pilots’ actions at the controls.
Although the device found Thursday was badly charred from fire, its condition, officials said, still offered reasonable hope for substantial data retrieval.
Yet even the initial information from the recorder seemed to confirm evidence that Lubitz actively endeavored to crash the plane, adding to a picture of a troubled man who may have committed premeditated mass murder on the March 24 flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf.
On Thursday, German investigators said they found evidence that Lubitz had been trawling the Internet for ways to commit suicide and information about the safety mechanisms on cockpit doors.
German officials said Lubitz had used a tablet computer between March 16 and 23 to search for information on “ways and implementation possibilities of killing himself,” as well as other unspecified “medical treatment methods.” On at least one day, investigators said, his browsing history showed that he had spent “several minutes” on a site that explained the workings of cockpit locks and security systems.
German authorities did not provide details about which Web sites Lubitz had visited or what search terms he had used. Investigators were still combing through items seized from Lubitz’s two homes, in Montabaur and Düsseldorf, including an iPad and a laptop computer.
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