IT WAS DELIBERATE – AT 9:31 A.M. ET:  A French prosecutor announced this morning that the downing of the German airliner two days ago in the French Alps was a deliberate act on the part of the co-pilot.  From Reuters: 

The co-pilot of a Germanwings jet that went down in the French Alps on Tuesday, killing 150 people, appears to have crashed the plane deliberately, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said on Thursday.

The German citizen, left in sole control of the Airbus A320 after the captain left the cockpit, refused to re-open the door and pressed a button that sent the jet into its fatal descent, the prosecutor told a news conference carried on live television.

The prosecutor said that the co-pilot, who he identified as Andreas Lubitz, 28, was not known as a wanted terrorist. Despite the fact that the crashing of the plane appears intentional, the prosecutor said that there was no grounds to consider it a terrorist event.

Asked whether he believed the crash that killed 150 people was the result of suicide, he said: "People who commit suicide usually do so alone....I don't call it a suicide."

Robin said the black-box cockpit recording recovered from the wreckage of the disaster suggested passengers did not realize what was happening until the last moment.

A German state prosecutor said earlier on Thursday that just one of the two pilots of the airliner was in the cockpit at the time it went down.

The statement came after the New York Times reported that "black box" recordings showed one of the pilots had left the cockpit and could not get back in before the plane crashed, killing all 150 onboard.

COMMENT:  That first news report is a bit rudimentary.  We've learned that the steps required to put the plane into a descent could not have occurred accidentally, not could it have occurred as a result of a man collapsing onto the controls.  The steps had to be taken precisely and intentionally.

We do not yet know anything about the co-pilot except his name and age.  We do not know his religion.  We do not know if he was facing any personal challenges.  All the rest is speculation at this point. 

But it was a wilful act. 

The cockpit voice recorder, we learned, picked up the voices of passengers screaming as the plane went into its final descent.

Obviously, we'll be following this story.  When the prosecutor said that there were no grounds for calling the crash a terrorist event, he of course meant that there was no evidence yet of that possibility.

March 26,  2015