Second black box confirms co-pilot deliberately crashed Germanwings plane

Data analyzed from the second black box of the crashed Germanwings Airbus A320 has confirmed that the co-pilot deliberately downed the passenger plane while flying over the French Alps, killing himself along with the other 149 people on board, the French Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA) said on Friday.

The initial reading of the second black box, which contains technical flight data records, revealed that Andreas Lubitz activated the autopilot descent sequence, and then manually adjusted the settings to increase the speed of the plane, Spanish news agency Efe reported citing the BEA.

"A first reading shows that the pilot in the cockpit used the automatic pilot to descend the plane towards an altitude of 100 feet (30 metres). Then, several times during the descent, the pilot changed the automatic pilot settings to increase the aircraft's speed," the BEA said in its statement.

The second black box of the Germanwings Airbus A320 that crashed on March 24 was found on Thursday by French gendarmes and was examined after it was taken to the headquarters of the BEA, which was also responsible for analysing the audio in the cockpit recorded by the first black box.

The BEA said the experts started examining the second black box as soon as it arrived, noting that the analysis was still continuing in order to clarify the sequence of events that took place on the flight, en route from Barcelona in Spain to Dusseldorf in Germany.

The second black box recorded the last 25 hours of technical flight data, such as speed, altitude, and pilot mode.