PARIS, April 3 (Xinhua) -- The second black box of the crashed Germanwings A320 passenger jet has confirmed its co-pilot's intention to deliberately lower the aircraft's altitude, French authorities said Friday.
The French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) confirmed in a press release on its website that the Flight Data Recorder was sent to the BEA office Thursday evening, adding that BEA teams tried to open it immediately upon its arrival.
A preliminary reading showed that the co-pilot in the cockpit used the autopilot to lower the plane to an altitude of 100 feet (around 30.5 meters), and that several times during the descent he changed the autopilot settings to increase the speed of the descending aircraft,the BEA said.
The BEA said it would continue its analysis to determine the specific factual progress of the flight.
The BEA had managed to extract useful data from the first black box, the Cockpit Voice Recorder, which was retrieved last week. The study of the file indicated that the co-pilot deliberately destroyed the aircraft.
The airbus A320, operated by Lufthansa's budget airliner Germanwings, crashed in the southern French Alps on March 24 while flying from Barcelona, Spain to Duesseldorf, Germany, killing all 144 passengers and six crew members on board.
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