Why the Final Moments Inside the Germanwings Cockpit Are Heard and Not Seen

The co-pilot who intentionally crashed a Germanwings flight into a mountainside remained calm during the last 10 minutes of his life. French investigators have described the sound of even breathing on the cockpit audio preserved in the doomed flight's black-box recorder. Accounts of the crash invariably reconstruct those final moments: Andreas Lubitz, the 27-year-old first officer, alone on the flight deck; the captain locked outside, frantically banging on the fortified door as warning alarms sound. Lubitz doesn't speak a word before the deadly crash.

All the information comes from sensitive microphones designed to capture cockpit communications, which accident investigators pair with digital data about the airplane's performance. There's no video footage from inside the cockpit of the Germanwings flight that left 150 people dead—nor is such footage recorded from any other commercial airline crash in recent years. Unlike police cruisers, school buses, ocean liners, Russian taxis, and many other vehicles operating with heightened safety concerns, airline cockpits don't come with video surveillance.