Weird. The French authorities are saying they can hear sounds, alarms and voices in the voice recording they have recovered from the crash site. However, they are not revealing what the voices were heard to be saying…..
UPDATE: Woaaah… this is interesting:
Breaking News: One Pilot Was Locked Out of Cockpit Before Crash in Francehttp://t.co/d5ckjtxuTB
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 25, 2015
PARIS — As officials struggled Wednesday to explain why a jet with 150 people on board crashed in relatively clear skies, an investigator said evidence from a cockpit voice recorder indicated one pilot left the cockpit before the plane’s descent and was unable to get back in.
A senior military official involved in the investigation described “very smooth, very cool” conversation between the pilots during the early part of the flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf. Then the audio indicated that one of the pilots left the cockpit and could not re-enter.
“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.” (read more)
(Via The Telegraph) The mystery over the cause of the Germanwings flight 9525 crash deepened today when it was reported that the crew failed to answer three attempts by air traffic controllers to contact them.
The German newspaper Bild claims to have obtained a leaked report from French air traffic controllers, which had been passed to the German authorities, detailing the three unsuccessful attempts to raise the pilots during the aircraft’s eight-minute descent to disaster.
The controllers tried to contact the aircraft on the assigned radio frequency as soon as it went into its unexplained dive, then tried twice on the international distress frequency.
The fact that the pilots did not respond to any of the calls raises the possibility that the crew were either unconscious or the victims of a hijacking, though terrorism has been all but ruled out. (read more)
Associated Press – The U.S. State Department says a third American has been identified as a victim of the plane crash in France that killed a total of 150 people.
The department said it is in contact with the victim’s next of kin but is not releasing the name out of respect for the family.
A person close to the family earlier said American Yvonne Selke and her daughter Emily Selke were also among the victims.
[…] French officials said terrorism appeared unlikely, and Germany’s top security official said Wednesday there was no evidence of foul play.
Remi Jouty, director of the French aviation investigative agency, said some audio had been recovered by Wednesday afternoon, including sounds and voices. He said it was too early to draw any conclusions from the recorder, which takes audio feeds from four microphones in the cockpit and records all the conversations between the pilots, air traffic controllers as well as any noises.
Jouty said the plane was flying “until the end.” He said the final communication from the plane was a routine message about permission to continue on its route. (read more)