'Co-pilot deliberately crashed Germanwings plane'

The co-pilot of the Germanwings A320 appears to have deliberately crashed the aircraft killing 144 passengers and six crew members on board, the French prosecutor said on Thursday.

The action of the first officer, Andreas Lubitz, of the crashed Germanwings' A320 "can be analysed as his intention to destroy the aircraft", said Brice Robin at a press conference held on Thursday in Marseille, Xinhua news agency reported citing BFMTV.

Robin said that the 28-year-old first officer appears to have deliberately refused to open the cockpit door for the captain.

The co-pilot was alive till the last moment before the crash, the prosecutor said, adding no words were spoken in the last 10 minutes before the plane crashed around 11 a.m. on Tuesday in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence in the southern French Alps.

There was no contact between either the captain or the first officer, and air traffic control in the last eight minutes.

According to Robin, at this moment, there is no indication that the Germanwings plane crash was an act of terrorism.

Meanwhile, another Xinhua report from Berlin citing N-TV said that a spokeswoman of Germanwings' parent company, Lufthansa, stated earlier on Thursday that the co-pilot had been working for Germanwings since September 2013 and had completed 630 flying hours. - IANS