The changes come after 150 died in the Germanwings air diaster, when co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked himself in the cockpit before crashing the plane into the French Alps Airlines are changing procedures to ensure two crew members are in the cockpit at all times during flights following the French Alps plane disaster.
The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority said it had contacted all UK operators to urge them to review safety procedures in the wake of the tragedy, in which 150 people were killed.
Monarch, easyJet, Virgin Atlantic and Thomas Cook all confirmed they had changed their policies, while Ryanair, Jet2 and Flybe said they already required two crew members to be in the cockpit at all times.
British Airways said it did not discuss “issues of security”.
Three Britons were among those on board the Airbus A320 which crashed on Tuesday.
In a dramatic turn of events yesterday, it emerged that black box recordings pointed to the co-pilot deliberately crashing the Germanwings-operated plane into the mountains.
The changes come after it emerged that the co-pilot of the Germanwings passenger jet Andreas Lubitz locked himself in the cockpit.
He then deliberately flew the plane into the ground killing 150 people.
The flight voice recorder, which was recovered by rescue workers, reveals Lubitz and the captain were talking in a “normal fashion” for the first 20 minutes after the plane left Barcelona for Dusseldorf.
In the black box recording, the captain then tells Lubitz that he is leaving the cockpit and that he is now charge.
Lubitz then took the plane into a nosedive, sending it plunging from its cruise altitude of 38,000 feet at a rate of 3,000 feet a minute.
Online web tracking service FlightRadar24 said its analysis of satellite tracking data had found that someone had changed the altitude to the minimum setting possible of 100 feet.
The French Alps crash site’s altitude stands at 6,000 feet.
Fredrik Lindahl, chief executive of the tracking service, said: “Between 09:30:52 and 09:30:55 you can see that the autopilot was manually changed from 38,000 feet to 100 feet and 9 seconds later the aircraft started to descend, probably with the ‘open descent’ autopilot setting.”
FlightRadar24 has confirmed that it has shared its data with French crash investigators at their request.
The horrifying full account of the planes’ final 10 minutes were confirmed by Marseilles prosecutor Bryce Robin at a press conference today.
He told reporters: “We have managed to get the transcript of the last 30 minutes.
“In the first 20 minutes the pilots talk in a normal fashion being courteous with each other like two normal pilots during a flight.
“Then we hear the command asking the co-pilot to take over and we hear the sound of a chair being pushed back and a door closing.
“So we assume that he went to the loo or something.
“So the copilot at that moment is on his own in charge of the plane and it’s while he’s alone… that he uses the flight monitoring system which starts the descent of the aeroplane.
“This action on this attitude selection can only be done voluntarily.”
