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Reports of pilot locked out of crashed plane

Author
ARN and AAP,
Publish Date
Thu, 26 Mar 2015, 5:33AM
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images

Reports of pilot locked out of crashed plane

Author
ARN and AAP,
Publish Date
Thu, 26 Mar 2015, 5:33AM

UPDATED 2:49pm: There are reports one of the pilots of the doomed Germanwings flight was locked out of the cockpit prior to the plane's descent.

An investigator as told the New York Times that evidence from the cockpit voice recorder indicates one pilot left the cockpit and was unable to re enter.

The audio also suggests there was knocking on the door, which gets louder and louder, but no response from the pilot in the cockpit.

The pilot can be heard banging on the door without any response from the person at the controls.

The Airbus A320 then slammed into the French Alps killing all 150 people on board.

Former NTSB investigator Peter Goelz says French investigators have refused to dismiss the report.

"They said that they'd picked up sounds of voices, of alarms, of sounds within the cockpit but they were very careful."

Aviation Consultant Jim Tilmon says a pilot should never be locked out of the cockpit.

"There are all kinds of protocols to prevent this from ever happening...that door is solid, you can't knock it down, you can't kick it down...it's bulletproof."

Identifying victims will take weeks

Investigators are searching in rugged terrain for the bodies of 150 people, including two Australians, who died when a Germanwings Airbus A320 crashed into the French Alps.

But officials have warned that identifying the victims, potentially using DNA, will likely take weeks.

Local prosecutor Brice Robin on Wednesday said the crash site had been secured and forensic investigators were already "making notes and beginning to identify bodies".

"The priority on the ground is to identify the bodies," he told reporters through a translator.

"We owe that to the families of the victims but ... it will not be done in five minutes.

"It's going to take a number of weeks and everybody should be well aware that we are talking about a long time."

Melbourne nurse Carol Friday, 68, and her son Greig, a 29-year-old acoustic engineer, are believed to be the only Australians killed in Tuesday's crash.

Mr Robin suggested it could days for investigators to search for all the victims "and of course I'm not talking about DNA comparison, which will take (longer)".

After Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was downed over eastern Ukraine in mid-July 2014 it took 10 days before the first victim was identified in the Netherlands.

It wasn't until early December, however, that all 38 Australians killed on the flight were identified.

Mr Robin, speaking in the French Alps, said he would be available to the relatives of the victims who died on flight 4U9525, which was operated by Germanwings, a low-cost subsidiary of Lufthansa.

"We want to be able to bring them the maximum amount of information," he said.

"It is a rather painful and complicated path that they are going to have to carry out in the days and weeks to come."

The Marseilles prosecutor said the reasons for the crash were, at this stage, "completely undecided".

One of the plane's black boxes, which records conversations and noises in the cockpit, is being examined and the first findings could be announced on Wednesday afternoon (Thursday morning AEDT), Mr Robin said.

A second black box, recording flight technical data, has yet to be found.

Officials are hunting for answers as to why the plane entered a fatal eight-minute descent on its route between Barcelona and Duesseldorf.

No distress signal was sent and the crew failed to respond to desperate attempts at contact from ground control.

"It is inexplicable," Lufthansa chief Carsten Spohr said on Wednesday.

"The plane was in perfect condition and the two pilots were experienced."

Germanwings chief executive Thomas Winkelmann on Wednesday said 72 German nationals died in the crash. They included 16 school children.

Spain lost 35 citizens, Mr Winkelmann told reporters in Cologne.

Victims were also confirmed from Argentina, Belgium, Colombia, Denmark, Iran, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States.

"(But) some of the victims' nationalities have not been verified partially because of dual-nationality," the Germanwings boss said through a translator.

British prime minister David Cameron has confirmed at least three Britons were on the flight too.

"It is heartbreaking to hear about the school children, the babies, the families whose lives have been brought to an end," the prime minister told parliament.

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