PARIS, April 3: The French air accident investigation agency says the co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings flight repeatedly accelerated the plane as he used the automatic pilot to descend the A320 into the Alps.
The BEA agency said in a statement Friday that investigators have begun studying the black box data recorder from the plane, found at the crash site Thursday.
French investigators: Co-pilot accelerated plane on descent
It says an initial reading of the recorder shows that the pilot used the automatic pilot to put the plane into a descent and then repeatedly during the descent adjusted the automatic pilot to speed up the plane.
Based on recordings from the black box voice recorder, investigators say co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit and intentionally crashed the plane. All 150 people aboard were killed.
