Germanwings crash: recovery effort resumes as Alps disaster remains a mystery

‘French air investigators were urgently examining a black box cockpit voice recorder (CVR) from a Germanwings Airbus A320 as the retrieval effort resumed on the mountainside where the aircraft crashed in the southern Alps, killing all 150 people on board.

Investigators said they were puzzled as to why the crew did not send out a mayday or distress signal as flight U49525 rapidly lost altitude for eight minutes, or why the pilot did not change course to avoid smashing into a rocky ravine at around 430mph (700kmh).

In the last 10 minutes of the flight there was total radio silence from the crew of the Barcelona–Düsseldorf flight operated by Lufthansa’s low-cost subsidiary.’

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