Co-Pilot Who Put Plane into Descent had Medical Condition
MARSEILLE, France, March 27 (UPI) —Documents found in the home of Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz indicated he had a medical condition allowing him to take time off work, further deepening the mystery surrounding the man accused of crashing Flight 9525 into a French mountainside Tuesday killing all 150 aboard.
Prosecutors said they found a torn doctor’s note in the 27-year-old’s Duesseldorf, Germany home indicating he had an illness that required a medical leave from work. Investigators said he didn’t disclose the illness to Germanwings, its parent company Lufthansa or his colleagues. Investigators did not reveal the nature of the illness.
Lufthansa officials said Lubitz was fit to fly and did not suffer any known psychological issues, but several French media outlets are reporting Lubitz was suffering from depression.
Investigators are continuing their search for clues about Lubitz’s life, who allegedly locked the pilot out of the cockpit and crashed the Airbus A320. At the same time, the company said it will begin to hold briefings on Saturday to provide “psychological assistance” to the families and friends of crash victims.
Our focus in these darkest hours is to provide psychological assistance to the families and friends of the victims of flight 4U9525,” said Thomas Winkelmann, spokesman for the Germanwings Executive Board. “The suffering and pain this catastrophe has caused is immeasurable. No words can express it and no amount of consolation is sufficient but we want to be there for visiting family members and friends if our support is desired.”
Vereinigung Cockpit, the German Airline Pilots Association, criticized the investigation, saying there was not enough information yet to draw such a quick conclusion about Lubitz.
Association President Ilja Schulz told The Independent, “we should not rush to conclusions based upon limited data.
“The reasons that led to this tragic accident will only be determined after all data sources have been thoroughly examined,” he said.
Transponder data shows that the autopilot on Germanwings Flight 9525 was reprogrammed by someone in the cockpit to change the plane’s altitude from 38,000 feet to 100 feet, according to Flightradar24, a website that tracks aviation data.
A French prosecutor said the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 intentionally sped the descent of the aircraft into the French Alps, saying investigators can hear the co-pilot breathing until the last seconds of the flight.
Marseille Prosecutor, Brice Robin, said Thursday morning the co-pilot appeared to want to “destroy the plane.” Robin said the voice recorder from the plane revealed the co-pilot was alive until impact. He said there was a “deliberate attempt to destroy the aircraft.”
Brice said the co-pilot, Lubitz, was a German national and not on any terror list. Brice told reporters, “He was breathing normally, he did not utter a single word” indicating he may not have suffered a medical emergency. The Wall Street Journal reported Lubitz, 28, was a member of a flight club in Germany.
The airline’s CEO revealed today that Lubitz received some of his training in Phoenix. Lubitz started working for Germanwings’ parent company Lufthansa at a flight training center outside of Phoenix in 2008, company officials said.
The facility, called Airline Training Center Arizona, was owned by Lufthansa and is used by its pilots in addition to other training locations in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, officials said.
CEO Thomas Winkelmann said the pilot had some 6,000 hours experience flying the Airbus 320 model and had been flying with Lufthansa and Germanwings for more than a decade. The co-pilot had 630 hours of experience. The last routine check of the aircraft was March 23 in Dusseldorf by Lufthansa technicians. The last major check was in summer 2013.
