The chilling final words of a pilot who deliberately crashed a plane into the Alps, killing all 150 passengers on board, as well as the crew, have been revealed.
On March 24, 2015, Germanwings Flight 9525 departed from Barcelona, Spain in what was supposed to be a routine flight to the German city of Düsseldorf.
However, less than an hour after it took off, the plane had crashed into the French Alps at a speed of 430MPH, killing all 150 passengers and crew members on board.
An investigation was launched into the disaster, which concluded that the crash had been caused deliberately by co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, who’d locked the pilot out of the cockpit and overridden a system for the crew to gain access to the flight deck in an emergency.
The plane had departed Barcelona at around 10AM, and first officer Captain Patrick Sondenheimer left the cockpit around an hour later to use the bathroom.
When Sondenheimer left, Lubitz locked the door before changing the selected altitude from 38,000 feet to 100 feet before beginning a rapid descent into the mountains below.
The plane’s last communication with air traffic control came around half an hour after departure, and an investigation into the crash was able to piece together the final moments of the doomed flight using the aircraft’s black box recorder.
According to a transcript from the plane’s black box, Lubitz could be heard telling Sondenheimer that he was ready to take over the controls at “any time”.
Shortly after the plane took off, he then told the captain: “You can go now.”
Before Sondenheimer left, around 28 minutes into the flight, he informed Lubitz that he was in control of radio communications, before the door was then heard closing.
Lubitz then seized the opportunity to immediately change Flight 9525’s altitude before ignoring air traffic control’s desperate attempts to communicate with the aircraft as it rapidly descended.
Lubitz then remained silent for the rest of the flight, while Sondenheimer was heard frantically banging on the door after being unable to access the cockpit due to Lubitz having overridden the emergency access codes to ensure he was locked in alone.
Growing increasingly desperate as the plane plummeted further, Sondenheimer could be heard shouting “open the damn door” as he attempted to break the door down.
The final moments of the recording also captured the harrowing sound of passengers screaming in terror before the plane smashed into the mountainside, killing everyone on board.
The investigation also revealed that Lubitz had been suffering from severe depression and suicidal tendencies, and had been declared unfit to fly by his doctor, but had hidden that information from his employer.
A former girlfriend of Lubitz also revealed he’d chillingly made an apparent warning about the act previously, telling a German newspaper he’d said: “One day I will do something that will change the whole system, and then all will know my name and remember it.”
She added: “I never knew what he meant, but now it makes sense.”
The crash then prompted an overhaul of the rules about pilots being in the cockpit alone to prevent any similar tragedies happening in future.
Lubitz’s family has rejected the notion that he caused the crash deliberately and instead have claimed that he had fallen unconscious prior to the plane crashing.
A documentary into the crash, Germanwings: What Happened on Flight 9525?, is available to stream on SkyGo.
