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As the doomed Germanwings flight plunged into the French Alps, the captain locked out of the cockpit screamed to his co-pilot to “open the damn door!”
A leaked transcript of Flight 9525’s final terrifying minutes reveal Captain Patrick Sondheimer’s desperate attempts to stop Andreas Lubitz from apparently sending the Airbus A320 into a death-dive killing himself and the 149 people aboard.
The chilling details published in the German newspaper Bild show that before takeoff the pilots had typical conversations as they prepared to depart for Dusseldorf, Germany.
Sondheimer tells Lubitz, 27, he hadn’t managed to use the bathroom in Barcelona, Spain. Lubitz replies he can go anytime. Once the plane reaches a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet, the captain orders Lubitz to prepare the landing.
As Sondheimer discusses plans for their arrival, Lubitz ominously replies “Hopefully” and “We’ll see.”
Lubitz then tells the pilot, “You can go now.”
There is the sound of a seat moving backward. The captain says, “You can take over.”
At 10:29 am, local time, the plane begins to descend.
Three minutes later air traffic controllers attempt to contact the plane and receive no reply. An alarm goes off in the cockpit repeating “sink rate.”
Then, a loud bang. “For God’s sake, open the door!” Sondheimer shouts as passengers scream in the background.
At 10:35 am something metallic repeatedly slams in the background -- possibly Sondheimer trying to bust into the cockpit. The plane has plummeted to 23,000 feet in about six minutes.
Only 90 seconds later, a second alarm warns: “Terrain. Pull up.” The plane is down to around 16,400 feet.
“Open the damn door!" the captain screams. Then, only Lubitz’s breathing.
At 10:40 am, a loud scraping sound -- likely of the plane’s right wing colliding with a mountaintop -- is followed by more screams.
They are the last sounds captured by the voice recorder.
Meanwhile, investigators say they have isolated 78 DNA strands from body parts in the remote area of the French Alps where the Germanwings flight crashed.
The unprecedented tragedy has shocked the aviation world. Several airlines have already responded by changing their rules to require a second crew member to be in the cockpit at all times, a rule that is already in effect in the US, but not in Europe.