The pilot of the doomed Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing all 228 people on board was not in the cockpit when the first warning signals sounded, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported Monday.

According to sources cited by the news magazine, France’s BEA civil aviation safety bureau concluded that pilot Marc Dubois was not on the flight deck when the emergency first began.

On flight recordings recovered from the Airbus jet, which crashed on June 1, 2009, while heading from France to Brazil, the 58-year-old can be heard rushing back to the pilot’s seat.

The source added, “He called instructions to the two co-pilots on how to save the aircraft.”

The recordings also show that there was only four minutes from those first warning alerts from the aircraft’s monitoring equipment to the plane smashing into the ocean.

But according to the report, pilot error alone was not solely to blame for the crash, with serious questions raised over how automatic systems on the aircraft reacted to the emergency.

The recorders show the flight team worked hard — successfully at first — to avoid the serious storm front which froze the speed sensors and left them unable to gauge how fast they were going, leading to a “deep stall.”

The report says one theory is that the plane’s computers, and not the pilots, reacted incorrectly to the stall, sealing the plane’s fate.

Airbus has refused to comment on the plane’s flight characteristics while the investigation is ongoing.

Information was downloaded over the weekend from the plane’s black boxes, which were recovered after spending nearly two years submerged in more than 12,000 feet (3,650 meters) of water.

(Source: Newsmax)