Suicide or mass murder?
Germanwings Flight 9525
It now appears beyond all reasonable doubt that first
officer Andreas Lubitz deliberately flew the Airbus A320 into the side of a
mountain in the French Alps killing all 149 other souls on board.
Marseille Prosecutor
Brice Robin, in charge of the investigation, confirmed reports that the captain
left the cabin minutes before the crash and was unable to get back in, during a
special press conference yesterday.
Robin told the assembled journalists that pounding could be
heard on the door during the final minutes of the flight as alarms sounded to
signal that the aircraft was too close to land.
The black box recording showed that the captain and co-pilot
talked normally and "courteously" for the first 20 minutes of the
flight after it took off from Barcelona. Already that morning that had flown
the aircraft together, with no incidents reported or mentioned.
"Then we hear the pilot ask the co-pilot to take the
controls and a seat being pulled back and a door closing. We can assume he left
to answer nature's call," said Robin. "The co-pilot is left alone at
the controls. We hear several calls from the pilot asking for entry into the
cockpit. There is no response from the co-pilot."
“The co-pilot did not say a word once the captain left the
cockpit and his breathing was normal throughout the final minutes of the flight.”
Robin said. Hauntingly he confirmed that screams of passengers could be heard
in the last final moments of the recording before the aircraft hit the ground.
More focus is now being spent on the mental state of
co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, who lived with his parents in the small western German
town of Montabour. He had qualified as a pilot at the Lufthansa training centre
in Bremen, he then started flying for low-cost subsidiary, Germanwings, shortly
after completing the course in 2013. At
the time of this final flight, Lubitz had accumulated just over 630 hours of
flight experience, according to a Lufthansa spokeswoman.
Lubitz was an avid runner who
often took part in local races and was a member of a private flying club in
Montabour, where he was described as upbeat - "He was happy he had the job
with Germanwings and he was doing well. He was very happy. He gave off a good
feeling.”
German investigators have confirmed that evidence retrieved
from Lubitz’s Dusseldorf flat indicate the young pilot was suffering from an
unspecified mental illness. Lubitz. German media is reporting that the pilot
took a six-month break from flight training in 2009 due to ‘burnout-syndrome’
and that he had continued to have “specific and regular medical treatment” ever
since that bout of depression.
Carsten Spohr, CEO of Germanwings’ parent company Lufthansa,
had already told the media that Lubitz took a "several-month gap" six
years ago. However, he said: "I am not able to state the reasons why he
took the break." Lubitz later resumed training and passed all his tests,
including psychological and medical exams, Spohr said, adding that the co-pilot
was deemed “100 percent fit to fly without any restrictions”.
“We can only speculate what might have been the motivation
of the co-pilot," Spohr added. "In our worst nightmares we could not
have imagined that this kind of tragedy could happen to us".
According to German media reports, the Germen investigators
have found a torn up ‘sick note’ excusing Lubitz from work on the day of the
crash.
