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Updated 3.13 pm
THE CO-PILOT believed to have deliberately crashed a Germanwings plane was treated for suicidal tendencies “several years ago”, before he received his pilot’s licence.
The revelation was made today by Ralf Herrenbrueck of the German prosecutor’s office as investigations continue into the crash that killed 150 people. He added that Andreas Lubitz had shown no such signs recently.
Herrenbruec commented while in the western city of Duesseldorf:
In the ensuing years and up until recently, he had doctors’ visits and was written off sick but showed no sign of suicidal tendencies or aggression towards others.
DNA strands recovered
Investigators picking through the wreckage of the passenger jet that crashed on a remote Alpine mountain said they had found DNA from more than half of the victims, as more details emerged concerning the doomed flight’s last minutes.
Forensic teams announced they had isolated almost 80 distinct DNA strands from body parts at the Germanwings crash site in the French Alps, as recovery personnel continued their grim task following last week’s tragedy.
French officials say the plane’s black box voice recorder indicates that Lubitz, 27, locked the captain out of the cockpit of the Airbus jet and deliberately crashed Flight 4U 9525, bound for Duesseldorf from Barcelona.
Investigators have described the difficulty searching for bodies and a second black box as “unprecedented” due to a combination of mountainous terrain and the violence of the impact.
A daunting task
The plane is said to have crashed at a speed of 700 kilometres per hour, killing all 150 on board instantly.
Prosecutor Brice Robin, one of the lead investigators, said an access road was being built to the site to allow all-terrain vehicles to remove some of the larger parts of the plane and help transport bodies.
He said forensic experts had identified 78 different DNA strands.
“We haven’t found a single body intact,” said Patrick Touron, deputy director of the police’s criminal research institute.
We have slopes of 40 to 60 degrees, falling rocks, and ground that tends to crumble.
Some things have to be done by abseiling. Since safety is key, the recovery process is a bit slow, which is a great regret.
Most body parts were being winched up to helicopters and transported to a lab in the nearby town of Seynes, where a 50-strong team of forensic doctors, dentists and police identification specialists is working.
Between 400 and 600 body parts were being examined, Touron said.
“In catastrophes, normally around 90%of identifications are done through dental records,” he added, but in the case of flight 9525, DNA was likely to play a greater role than normal.
Once DNA samples have been taken, they are sent to another lab outside Paris where they are compared with samples taken from family members this week.
Final moments
Captain Yves Naffrechoux, a mountain ranger, said finding the second black box — the flight data recorder which logs all technical data — was a priority.
Germany’s Bild newspaper reported more details on Sunday about the flight’s final moments, which CNN has published a translation of.
It said the captain, which it identified as Patrick S, shouted at the co-pilot to “open the damn door” as he desperately tried to get back into the locked cockpit after leaving to use the toilet.
The Bild tabloid and the New York Times have reported that Lubitz had sought treatment for problems with his sight.
Police have found a number “of medicines for the treatment of psychological illness” during a search at his Duesseldorf home, Welt am Sonntag newspaper said.
It added that the Germanwings co-pilot was suffering from stress and severe depression, according to personal notes found.
German prosecutors revealed on Friday that searches of Lubitz’s homes netted “medical documents that suggest an existing illness and appropriate medical treatment”, including “torn-up and current sick leave notes, among them one covering the day of the crash”.
- © AFP 2015.
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He is entitled to take this coarse of action, if it was my son I’d want to find out the truth aswell, the airline industry has a vested interest here and it suits the multitude to blame this on a sole individual.
I’m not sayin he didn’t do it either though, I’d say 95% he did.
@Philip McLoughlin: I think the father is looking for alternative facts.
@Philip McLoughlin: agree 100% having seen the film sully and how the aviation industry tried to blame the pilot for compo reasons it wouldn’t suprise me
@Les Boyd: Yes Les – that factual move Sully was an eye-opener. The initial findings were completely wrong – and the pilot (who luckily survived the incident) has to spend a long time arguing his case, even though there were no casualties. Because of his good judgement!
@Les Boyd: In the film about Sully the investigation wasn’t accurately portrayed. In fact they found that landing at an airport wasn’t guaranteed in the real investigation. Because of this, Sully requested that the names of the investigators in the film were changed from the real names.
@Fank Pulman: Hollywood is a great source of fantasy & drama nothing more. I saw a film once where……. doesn’t do much for credibility.
@SteoG: This was a virtual documentary – where the hearings, testimony and statements were a matter of public records. Most on US TV – not a place for porkies…
@SteoG: Did you see it?
@Fank Pulman: If you mean the film drama “Sully” starring Tom Hanks and directed by Clint Eastwood, yes I did see it. It is still a drama where artistic licence is used to stir the emotions of the audience. I knew the man was a hero without seeing it. Still you cannot use it as an example, it is secondhand information manipulated by the master artist Eastwood. Great movie. Drama based on fact is still fantasy.
Of course a carbon monoxide leak is possible in theory, but the flight data apparently points to a deliberate downing, i.e. there were inputs to the controls which lead investigators to eliminate such a theory of incapacitation, which was surely on the table at some point.
I feel sorry for the father, who must be as heartbroken as the other families, or even more so because of this painful burden which he now seems to painfully wish to discard of.
@Mick Tobin: One another thing to consider is that he did a test run of setting the autopilot to a controlled descent on the outbound flight while the captain went to the toilet.
I can understand that the father does not want to accept the fact that his son killed some many ppl but he could make his countercase while trying to respect the families of the dead. I don’t see how is theory can stand up to any logic. We know the co pilot was in control. We know he activated the door override then the captain went to the toilet making it impossible for anyone else to get back into the cockpit. He had no reason to activate it as there is a number code on the door stopping anyone other then the crew getting into the cockpit. He then put the plane into a controlled descent into a mountain. If he had been overcome by fumes he would have passed out. He had passed out on the controls i can’t see the plane making a slow descent in such a controlled manner.
Denial is a powerful thing. One has to feel sorry for them too to a point. But when they start this cracking they need a stern reality check because the shock was so big it didn’t sink in. Look at any court case for murder the family of the murderer talk about the injustice their son could never do such a thing blah blah blah. Simple denial.
@Eye_c_u: Tim van Beveren – an aviation expert/pilot – will present new information and views, with the farther. To ignore this would be wrong.
Expert is such a subjective term. Ever hear of a Dr Andrew Wakefield? He was supposedly an expert too.
@Fank Pulman: He’s a journalist, not an aviation expert/pilot.
The father can’t even accept the fact that his son was suicidal despite a documented medical history of treatment for suicidal tendencies and depression. His grief and denial is at least understandable, it sounds like he might be getting taken advantage of.
@Geoff: A pilot he is – Google is your friend!
If it was carbon monoxide poisoning then who locked the Cockpit door?? Clutching at straws methinks..
Precisely, that too. Incidentally when I learnt of this crash and the locked door, I thought to myself, that’s indirectly another 149 victims of 9/11… :(
@Jason Mcginn: Are not cockpit doors locked by the pilot during flights to prevent anyone of entering and hijacking the plane?
@B9xiRspG: There’s an override code to open it from the outside which had to be manually locked out from inside the cockpit (that’s the anti hijacking precaution).
In addition, Lubitz researched suicide methods and cockpit door security prior to the flight. He practised the control inputs he used to crash the plane on a previous leg of the flight. Claims that it was essentially an accident caused by a person with carbon monoxide poisoning are simply not credible.
This monster killed himself and took 149 innocent souls with him.
His parents should realise this and never defend his horrible actions.
@Richard Moloney:
You obviously know him better than his own father.
@Tommy: His father needs a reality check. His crass remarks and actions are no comfort to the 150 other vistims.
@Tommy: ‘presumably suicidal behaviour’ – said the prosecutor. as there is no tangible/forensic proof, doubts must exist – and the family has the right to bring up more information.
@Richard Moloney: LMAO at you
@Jon Mackey: The father is delusion at best thinking carbon monoxide is the reason why he passed out and 149 others didn’t. He may want to defend his son, but the reality is the investigation found no other possibilities than him killing 149 people.
Have a look at the air crash investigation findings: The collision with the ground was due to the deliberate and planned action of the co-pilot who decided to commit suicide while alone in the cockpit. The process for medical certification of pilots, in particular self-reporting in case of decrease in medical fitness between two periodic medical evaluations, did not succeed in preventing the co-pilot, who was experiencing mental disorder with psychotic symptoms, from exercising the privilege of his licence.
@Richard Moloney: Presumably suicidal behaviour – indicates supposition, and a number of similar investigations have made incorrect conclusion in the past. Has the father not got the right to make his points/raise his doubts?
@Fank Pulman: Of course his father has his right to defend his son.
But have a look through the crash report. He had a bad state of mental illness and his doctor declared him “unfit to work”. He hind it as most as he could from Lufthansa about his mental illnesses and as a result killed himself and another 149 people.
@Richard Moloney: See my post about Sully – a movie about a plane being forced to land in a river. All factual – and, if you watch it, you’ll see the allegations about an experienced/capable pilot which precipitated a completely erroneous initial conclusion.
Well you guys do know sully the movie is not real and the director takes some liberties to make the story more interesting. After the flight it was known he done a great job. Had they died it still wouldn’t be blamed on him. But as he lived they have to question his account to be a million percent sure. Ever go to court? Even the person who was right gets a grilling.
@Eye_c_u: But, as you know (in real life and the movie), the initial conclusion was wrong.
@Richard Moloney:
Why are you labelling him a monster?
The man has every right to establish the facts. If you think Irish governments are all about protecting institutions over the rights of the individual, you ain’t seen nothing like the airline industry protecting its own interests at the expense of any individual.
The conclusions can only point to the most likely scenario. It certainly looks like he did this deliberately, his medical history supports that. I don’t remember any mention of what type of carbon monoxide monitoring was involved, but surely investigators would have looked at and discounted that possibility.
I do agree that vested interests will always try to influence the conclusions and keep pointing at the individual, but a complete coverup, no, that would be impossible to organise and maintain over time. His dad may be acting out of pain and is being fed on conspiracy theory , but he is still entitled to delve as deeply as possible into other proposals.
Carbon monoxide poisoning? What a load of bull. From where does this gas from ? Anyone who knows anything about turbine engines and air conditioning systems on the a320 knows this is impossible. This guy murdered 149 innocent people and German wings let this lunatic alone in the flight deck.
Planes are being hacked too people, maybe the Russians did it.
@cryptoskitzo: CTN.
If he is correct and the suicide story is a cover up then that is disgusting.
The father just doesn’t want to accept that his son could do this evil act .its a bitter pill to swallow and his family must be tarnished in Germany . He defiantly killed everyone on board there’s no doubt about that bar all the investigators are liars
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