The co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that went down Tuesday “intentionally” crashed the plane into the French Alps, a French prosecutor said today. Brice Robin said that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz’s “intention was to destroy this plane,” though he stopped short of calling it suicide.
On the plane’s black box voice recorder, investigators can hear the captain leave the cockpit, and then find himself locked out, unable to get back in. “The most plausible, the most probably, is that the co-pilot voluntarily refused to open the door of the cockpit for the captain and pressed the button for descent,” Robin said.
Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks to William Langewiesche, an international correspondent for Vanity Fair who has extensive experience writing about airplane accidents, about what we know – and don’t yet know – about the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525.
Guest
- William Langewiesche, author and journalist who was also a professional airplane pilot for many years. He is the international correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine.
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