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The Associated Press LONDON Airlines and of- ficials around the world on Thursday began requiring two crew members to al- ways be present in the cock- pit, after details emerged that the co-pilot of German- wings Flight 9525 had ap- parently locked himself in the cockpit and deliberated crashed the plane into the mountains below. Leading European bud- get airlines Norwegian Air Shuttle and EasyJet, along with Air Canada, say they will now require a mini- mum of two crew members in the cockpit while a plane is in the air. A group representing Germany's biggest airlines, including Lufthansa and Air Berlin, say they plan similar rules. German Avi- ation Association spokes- woman Christine Kolmar said the plan will be pre- sented to German aviation authorities on Friday and the airlines will implement it "as soon as possible." Canada's government also issued an immediate order requiring two crew members to be in the flight deck at all times. Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said the government is reviewing all policies and procedures and is watching the situation in Europe closely. Following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, U.S. airlines revamped their pol- icies regarding staffing in the cockpit. But the proce- dure is not standard in Eu- rope or Canada. According to U.S. rules, whenever the cockpit door is open, flight attendants create a barrier between the cockpit and passengers. Typically, that is done with a beverage cart but some jets are outfitted with a mesh wire barricade. FLIGHT SAFETY Airlines to require 2 crew in the cockpit By Lori Hinnant and David Mchugh The Associated Press PARIS The co-pilot of the Germanwings jet bar- ricaded himself in the cockpit and intentionally rammed the plane full speed into the French Alps, ignoring the captain's fran- tic pounding on the door and the screams of terror from passengers, a prose- cutor said Thursday. In a split second, all 150 people aboard the plane were dead. Andreas Lubitz's "inten- tion (was) to destroy this plane," Marseille prosecu- tor Brice Robin said, lay- ing out the horrifying con- clusions French investiga- tors reached after listening to the last minutes of Tues- day's Flight 9525 from the plane's black box voice data recorder. German Chancellor An- gela Merkel said the conclu- sions brought the tragedy to a "new, simply incompre- hensible dimension." The prosecutor said there was no indication of terrorism, and did not elab- orate on why investigators do not suspect a political motive. He said they are in- stead focusing on the co-pi- lot's "personal, family and professional environment" to try to determine why he did it. The Airbus A320 was flying from Barcelona to Duesseldorf when it lost radio contact with air traf- fic controllers and began dropping from its cruis- ing altitude of 38,000 feet. The prosecutor said Lubitz did not say a word as he set the plane on an eight-min- ute descent into the craggy French mountainside that pulverized the plane. He said the German co- pilot's responses, initially courteous in the first part of the trip, became "curt" when the captain began the mid-flight briefing on the planned landing. Robin said the pilot, who has not been identified, left the cockpit when the plane reached cruising altitude, presumably to go to the lav- atory. Then the 28-year-old co-pilot took control of the jet as requested. "When he was alone, the co-pilot manipulated the buttons of the flight mon- itoring system to initi- ate the aircraft's descent," Robin said. The pilot knocked sev- eral times "without re- sponse," the prosecutor said, adding that the cock- pit door could only be blocked manually from the inside. The co-pilot said noth- ing from the moment the captain left, Robin said. "It was absolute silence in the cockpit." The A320 is designed with safeguards to allow emergency entry into the cockpit if a pilot inside is unresponsive. But the over- ride code known to the crew does not go into effect — and indeed goes into a lockdown — if the person inside the cockpit specifi- cally denies entry. During the flight's final minutes, pounding could be heard on the cockpit door as the plane's instru- ment alarms sounded. But the co-pilot's breathing was calm, Robin said. "You don't get the im- pression that there was any particular panic, because the breathing is always the same. The breathing is not panting. It's a classic, hu- man breathing," Brice said. No distress call ever went out from the cock- pit, and the control tower's pleas for a response went unanswered. Air traffic control cleared the area to allow the plane to make an emer- gency landing if needed, and asked other planes to try to make contact. The French air force scrambled a fighter jet to try to head off the crash. Just before the plane hit the mountain, passen- gers' cries of terror could be heard on the voice recorder. "The victims realized just at the last moment," Robin said. "We can hear them screaming." The victims' families "are having a hard time be- lieving it," he said. Many families visited an Alpine clearing near the scene of the crash Thursday. French authorities set up a viewing tent in the hamlet of Le Vernet for family mem- bers to look toward the site of the crash, so steep and treacherous that it can only be reached by a long journey on foot or rappelling from a helicopter. Lubitz' family was in France but was being kept separate from the other families, Robin said. Helicopters shuttled back and forth form the crash site Thursday, as in- vestigators continue re- trieving remains and pieces of the plane, shattered from the high-speed impact of the crash. The prosecutor's account prompted calls for stricter cockpit rules. Airlines in Europe are not required to have two people in the cockpit at all times, unlike the stan- dard U.S. operating proce- dure, which was changed after the 9/11 attacks to re- quire a flight attendant to take the spot of a briefly de- parting pilot. Europe's third-largest budget airline, Norwegian Air Shuttle, announced Thursday that it plans to adopt new rules requir- ing two crew members to always be present in the cockpit. Neither the prosecutor nor Lufthansa indicated there was anything the pi- lot could have done to avoid the crash. FRANCE Alone at controls, co-pilot 'intentionally' crashed plane LAURENTCIPRIANI—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS A rescue worker is li ed into a helicopter near the crash site near Seyne-les-Alpes, France, on Thursday. By Kevin Freking The Associated Press WASHINGTON Republi- can and Democratic law- makers in the House have found something in com- mon: Many have issues with the Obama administration's new regulations requiring companies that drill for oil and natural gas to disclose chemicals used in hydrau- lic fracturing. Republicans say the new regulations, announced last week, will delay new drill- ing projects and take mar- ginal lands out of produc- tion. Democratic lawmak- ers say the regulations are so mild that they won't change current operating standards. The lawmakers' com- plaints were aired Thursday during a House subcommit- tee hearing called to review the Bureau of Land Man- agement's budget for the coming fiscal year. Bureau Director Neil Ko- rnze said fracking is tak- ing place in 32 states, and the new federal regula- tions were aimed primar- ily at those states with lim- ited or no regulation of the practice. He projected that the new regulations would increase costs by about $11,000 per well. "We think the confidence that this brings to the Amer- ican public, and the protec- tion it brings to groundwa- ter and other resources, we believe it's worth it," Kornze said. The new rule will take ef- fect in June. It also updates requirements for well con- struction and disposal of water and other fluids used in fracking, as the drilling method is more commonly known. The rule has been under consideration for more than three years, drawing criti- cism from the oil and gas industry and environmen- tal groups alike. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R- Colo., said he wished the rule would only have been applied to states that aren't regulating fracking. He said states such as his are al- ready doing a good job of ensuring the environment is not harmed. Lamborn pointed out that the oil and gas indus- try has projected the regu- lations would cost far more to comply with than what the government has pro- jected. Those additional costs will discourage the industry from drilling on federal lands, which would eliminate jobs and drive away federal revenue. The new rule has drawn heavy criticism from some states where fracking is common. Wyoming filed a legal challenge Thurs- day and petitioned the fed- eral district court in Wyo- ming to review the regula- tion and determine whether it should be set aside. The state claimed in its chal- lenge that the rule exceeds the Bureau of Land Man- agement's jurisdiction and unlawfully interferes with the state's hydraulic frac- turing regulations. Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif., said complaints were overblown. If the state laws regarding fracking are stronger than the new fed- eral rule, and many of them are, the state law wins out. He said he would challenge the industry to point to re- quirements in the federal regulation that they don't already have in place. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D- Ariz., said the regulation was so lax it was like re- quiring the auto industry to ensure that every car has a steering wheel and a brake pedal. "This rule does ab- solutely nothing," Grijalva said. Fracking involves pump- ing huge volumes of water, sand and chemicals under- ground to split open rocks to allow oil and gas to flow. Improved technology has allowed energy compa- nies to gain access to huge stores of natural gas un- derneath states from Wyo- ming to New York but has also raised widespread con- cerns about whether it leads to groundwater contamina- tion and even earthquakes. ENERGY AND PUBLIC LANDS Lawmakers from both parties unhappy with new fracking rules DAN JOLING — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE Interior Secretary Sally Jewell speaks in Anchorage, Alaska. it'snot 'sfault byTheShelterPetProject.org Please help sponsor a classroom subscription Call Kathy at (530) 737-5047 to find out how. 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