Investigators say the evidence points to the pilot intentionally crashing a passenger plane in Africa last month, killing all 33 people on board.  A preliminary report describes a harrowing scene in which the crew desperately tries to get into the locked cockpit to save the plane.

“During these actions you can hear low and high-intensity alarm signals and repeated beating against the door with demands to come into the cockpit,” said Mozambican Civil Aviation Institute (IACM) head Joao Abreu. 

Mozambique Airlines Flight TM470 was scheduled to fly from the capital Maputo to Luanda, Angola.  But it crashed in the swamps of Namibia’s Bwabwata National Park, located in the eastern panhandle (Warning:  Crash site video may be inappropriate for younger or more sensitive viewers).

The flight data recorders showed that Captain Herminio dos Santos Fernandes locked himself inside the cockpit of the Embraer 190, slowed the aircraft, and decreased the altitude on three occasions in the fatal descent – from cruising at 38,000 feet, to dropping to 592 feet, below ground level at the crash site.  Dos Santos Fernandes deployed the landing spoilers, too, and manually held them in position, until the end of the recordings, which proved the throttle was manually controlled.

“All these operations required detailed knowledge of the plane’s controls, and showed a clear intention to crash the aircraft,” said Abreau.

What Abreau lacks is Captain Herminio dos Santos Fernandes’ motive for murdering 33 people by crashing the plane.