Germanwings tragedy: Shocking phone video shows final minutes of passengers before they plunged to death

A video purportedly showing the final seconds inside the cabin of the ill-fated Germanwings airliner minutes before it crashed emerged on Tuesday, with two European media claiming to have seen the footage.

One sequence reportedly shows a chaotic scene with passengers screaming “My God”.

French magazine Paris Match and German daily Bild said the authenticity of the video filmed on a mobile phone is “unquestionable” and that it had been retrieved from the wreckage of last Tuesday’s crash.

A senior official involved in the recovery operation, Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Marc Menichini, denied that any mobile phone footage had been found by investigators at the site. But Paris Match said the footage, thought to have been filmed from the rear of the plane, was found ‘among the wreckage by a source close to the investigation’, Daily Mail said in a report.

The recording lasting just a few seconds showed that passengers knew what was happening to them before the plane crashed into the French Alps, instantly killing all 150 people on board, according to the reports.

“The scene was so chaotic that it was hard to identify people, but the sounds of the screaming passengers made it perfectly clear that they were aware of what was about to happen to them,” said Paris Match, adding that people were heard crying “My God” in several languages.

It added that “metallic banging” could be heard more than three times - possibly the attempts of the pilot to open the cockpit door with a heavy object.

Investigators evaluating voice recorder data say co-pilot Andreas Lubitz allegedly locked his captain out of the cockpit and crashed the plane.

AFP