Killer Co-Pilot
For a year before embarking on a career as a pilot, Andreas Lubitz worked in his local branch of Burger King, serving up french fries. The restaurant – on a busy A3 junction – is a few kilometres outside the small German city of Montabaur where Lubitz grew up. The branch manager, Detlef Aldolf, described Lubitz on Friday as dependable and inconspicuous. He earned €400 (£290) a month, he said, and quit his part-time job to join Lufthansa.
In 2009, however, Aldolf said Lubitz abruptly reappeared. Lufthansa had sent him on a training course, initially in Bremen and then in Phoenix, Arizona, in the US. “I asked him how it was. He replied: ‘Too much stress. I’m going to take a break’,” Aldolf said. The manager added that Lubitz didn’t formulate this stress as depression. But, he said, the future pilot seemed overwhelmed.
For 24 hours French and German investigators had been at a loss: why would a 27-year-old co-pilot deliberately fly his plane with 150 people on board into the French Alps? This, certainly, is where the black box pointed. By Friday there were uncomfortable answers. Lubitz had a history of psychological problems, which he had apparently been concealing from his colleagues and bosses.
State prosecutors in Düsseldorf said medical documents had been retrieved from his flat there, which suggested that treatment for an unspecified illness was ongoing. Investigators found a torn-up current medical certificate. It was dated the day of the crash. “The assumption is that the deceased hid his illness from his employer and his professional circles,” prosecutors said, without specifying whether the illness was mental or physical. They added that no suicide note had been found. Nor were there indications of a “political or religious background”.
Citing police sources, the German media said that Lubitz had broken off his pilot training several times. At one point the Lufthansa flight school in Phoenix designated the man later left in sole charge of Germanwings flight 4U9525 from Barcelona to Düsseldorf as “not fit to fly”. He spent a year-and-a-half receiving psychiatric treatment. In 2009 he was diagnosed with a “severe depressive episode”, according to the German newspaper Bild.
Throughout this difficult period it appeared Lubitz was getting regular medical help. A special coding “SIC” was entered into his pilot’s licence, which means “Specific Regular Medical Examination”, according to Germany’s Federal Aviation Office. It is unclear, though, if this treatment was for episodes of depressive illness or some other complaint. Mental health professionals have urged caution until all the facts are known.
On Thursday, prosecutors in France gave details of the final moments of flight 4U9525, travelling from Barcelona to Düsseldorf. For eight minutes, during which the cockpit voice recorder revealed Lubitz said nothing but was breathing normally, the 27-year-old ignored captain Patrick Sondheimer hammering on the cockpit door and did not respond to increasingly urgent radio calls from air traffic controllers and nearby aircraft. At approximately 10.40am the aircraft smashed into the side of a mountain near the picturesque mountain village of Seyne-les-Alpes.
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