Based on information recovered from the the flight data recorder (FDR) of the Germanwings Airbus A320 that crashed on March 24, French accident investigation agency BEA on Friday confirmed that the aircraft's co-pilot used the autopilot to initiate a descent to 100 feet, changing settings several times to increase speed. In a brief statement issued on April 3, the BEA confirmed initial findings from the FDR, which it delivered to its Paris headquarters late on April 2.

According the French prosecutor handling pending criminal charges, Brice Robin, police recovered the FDR on April 2 on the left side of a ravine that crews had already searched. An unnamed female officer found the FDR and had to dig it out of the mountainside. The recorder’s casing sustained impact and fire damage, but BEA officials managed to retrieve data that could contain more than 500 operational parameters, including the aircraft's speed, altitude, acceleration and direction. It can also confirm the timings of radio transmissions from the cockpit.

At a press conference held in Marseille on Thursday evening local time, Robin said that further evidence from the aircraft' cockpit voice recorder (CVR) established that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz was conscious when he sat alone in the cockpit. He told reporters that Lubitz, who he accuses of deliberately crashing the A320, changed speed settings multiple times to avoid triggering an overspeed alarm. "He corrected the speed at least twice," Robin said, arguing that the evidence proves Lubitz was conscious until the point of impact.