Just FYI if you load the original page (http://www.lefigaro.fr/assets/marignane/) you can see the video reenactment and a comparison of essentially before and after of the cockpit.
I don't know for sure if it truly was their plan but it was later revealed that their goal was either to crash the plane on the Eiffel Tower or on an other tall building of Paris.
I wonder why Google translated "huis-clos" to "camera" in the header text. Best I could find is that Sartre's Huis Clos was originally called "in camera" which means: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/in_camera.
Intense situation. It's remarkable that in the end there were so few casualties.