The captain of the Germanwings plane yelled “Open the damn door” at his colleague who had locked him out of the cockpit just moments before the doomed aircraft slammed into a mountain in the French Alps, a German newspaper reported Sunday.
Bild newspaper said it had read the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), the black box, which revealed how Patrick Sonderheimer had desperately tried to get back into the flight deck for eight minutes after his junior colleague, Andreas Lubitz, 27, apparently deliberately put the aircraft into descent.
Bild says passengers can be heard screaming in the background as Sonderheimer shouts: “For God’s sake, open the door!” The captain is then heard trying to smash through the heavily reinforced door while shouting: “Open the damn door!” Moments later the aircraft ploughed into a mountain ravine between Digne-les Bains and Barcelonnette in the southern French Alps, exploding and instantly killing all 150 people aboard — 144 passengers and six crew.
