(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.

The new findings point to a deliberate destruction of the Airbus A320 aircraft rather than a technical fault, in what is the worst aviation accident yet for Deutsche Lufthansa AG and its Germanwings low-cost subsidiary. The co-pilot was named by Robin as Andreas Lubitz, a 28-year-old German citizen. Germanwings had only identified him as a junior pilot who had logged 630 flight hours since joining the airline in late 2013.

The crash on Tuesday has mystified investigators because the plane had flown in normal daylight conditions and had undergone routine checks. The second flight recorder, which stores data parameters from the plane’s performance, has not yet been recovered from the field of debris, Robin said.

Fortified Doors

Salvage crews on site have begun recovering bodies from the wreck, which was largely pulverized because of the severity of the impact. Robin said the aircraft hit the ground at a speed of 700 kilometers an hour (435 miles). All bodies won’t be recovered until the week after next, he said, calling the crash an “individual fault.”

Germanwings said it cannot comment further because the investigation is a matter for the authorities. France’s BEA air-accident investigator is leading the probe, and the bureau said Wednesday that it had managed to extract the audio file from the voice recorder recovered from the scene.

Lufthansa, which had operated the aircraft before it was handed over to Germanwings at the start of 2014, said the cockpit had fortified doors with video surveillance to prevent unauthorized entry, a measure that became mandatory after the 9/11 terror attacks in the U.S. While pilots have a security code that lets them open the door from the outside, the person remaining in the cockpit can still deny access.

Senior Pilot

Some airlines require two people to remain on the flight deck in the case that one pilot steps out, though Lufthansa said there is no uniform rule on this.

The captain was “very experienced” and had flown for charter carrier Condor and Lufthansa’s main brand for about 10 years before joining Germanwings in May 2014, the budget airline said. He logged more than 6,000 flight hours.

Germanwings declined to provide personal details or the age of the pilots, adding that both were trained “according to Lufthansa standards.”

Lubitz came from Montabaur, a small city about an hour north of Frankfurt, according to the local mayor’s office. There were 144 passengers on board the plane and six crew. Lubitz had been part of the local aviation club, which said on its website that it’s been “horrified” to learn that one of its members is among the dead in the French crash.

The chief executive officers of Lufthansa and Germanwings will hold a press briefing at 2.30 p.m. local time at Cologne airport today.

Special Reports /

Cockpit recording suggests Germanwings co-pilot deliberately crashed plane

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