The flight's crew included four air stewards and the captain, Patrick Sonderheimer, whose attempts to enter the cockpit by hammering on the door and appealing to Lubitz to "open the damned door" were heard on the cockpit voice recorder.
An improvised cardboard sign, scrawled with "La Rochelle, SVP" worked its magic on a trucker named Olivier and I was soon rolling into this sophisticated old port, perched vertiginously in the cockpit of the 18-wheel juggernaut.
She summoned the captain, and Brown, complaining that the staff were rude, hammered on the cockpit door.
Related: Fragmentation games: the return of the portmanteau film One of the portmanteau film's six storylines concerns a man who tricks various people from his life who he feels wronged by – including former employers, classmates and teachers – on to a plane, before locking himself in the cockpit and crashing it.
Others questioned the wisdom of sealing off the cockpit at all.
Industry experts doubted that more intensive and frequent tests would be effective in 100% of cases, arguing that the rule of two", which requires two qualified air crew to be in the cockpit at all times, might ultimately be a better guarantee of safety.
When asked if he had killed from the cockpit, the prince nonchalantly replied: "Yeah, so lots of people have".
I saw the cockpit, which was in front of me.
People assume there is this incredibly hi-tech cockpit that gets me ready, but my routine is distressingly plebian.
"The kneejerk reaction to the events of 9/11 with the ill-thought reinforced cockpit door has had catastrophic consequences," said Philip Baum, the London-based editor of the trade magazine Aviation Security International.
"The flight deck is capable of accommodating three pilots and there shouldn't ever be a situation where there is only one person in the cockpit," said James Hall, a former chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board.
