Prosecutor Brice Robin, center, with Gen. David Galtier, right, holds a press conference in Marseille on March 26, 2015. Robin said the co-pilot was alone at the controls of the Germanwings flight that slammed into an Alpine mountainside and "intentionally" sent the plane into the doomed descent, killing 150 people. (AP Photo)

(Bloomberg) — The co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps, killing 150 people, appears to have deliberately initiated a fateful descent while the pilot was locked out of the cockpit, French prosecutors found.

Cockpit conversations and sounds of the last minutes of the Barcelona-Dusseldorf flight show the co-pilot took the aircraft out of cruising altitude after the captain left the cockpit and was denied re-entry, prosecutor Brice Robin said at a press conference in Marseille. The co-pilot could be heard breathing and remained otherwise silent right until the plane slammed into a mountain slope at full speed, he said.

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