German jetliner en route from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, Germany, plunged from the sky on Tuesday and slammed into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board. Helicopters and rescue personnel swarmed for rescue operations. The authorities and executives of the airline have no immediate explanation for the cause of the crash. Officials said that they have recovered one of the jet’s black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder, which captures up to two hours of the pilots’ conversations as well as other cockpit noises, including any alarms that would have sounded as the plane descended.

The audio of the cockpit voice recorder showed one of the pilots left the cockpit and could not get back in before the plane went down. "The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door and there is no answer," an unnamed investigator told. "And then he hits the door stronger and no answer. There is never an answer." "You can hear he is trying to smash the door down," the investigator added.

"We have just been able to extract a useable audio data file," BEA director Remi Jouty told a news conference. "We have not yet been able to study and to establish an exact timing for all the sounds and words heard on this file," he said.

By Premji