Co-pilot hid sick note for crash day
GEOFFREY THOMAS AVIATION EDITOR
The West Australian and AFP
March 27, 2015, 11:23 pm
The co-pilot thought to have deliberately crashed his Germanwings jet into the French Alps, killing all 150 aboard, kept secret the fact he was written off sick on the day, German prosecutors say.
Searches of Andreas Lubitz's homes had netted “medical documents that suggest an existing illness and appropriate medical treatment”, including “torn-up and current sick leave notices, among them one covering the day of the crash”, they said totay.
Copilot Andreas Lubitz, 28, lived with his parents and had begun flying as a teenager. Picture: Twitter/Facebook Source: Supplied
This “backs up the suspicion” that the co-pilot, who reportedly suffered from severe depression, “hid his illness from his employer and his colleagues”, said prosecutors in the western city of Duesseldorf in a statement.
They said “interviews on this subject and the evaluation of medical records will take several more days”, and that the outcome would be made public “once reliable evidence is available”.
Authorities did not find a “suicide note or a confession”, or any evidence that the co-pilot’s actions may have been motivated by “a political or religious background”.
Officers had on Thursday combed through a flat Andreas Lubitz kept in Duesseldorf as well as the house where he lived with his parents in the small western town of Montabaur.
At a press conference last night, French prosecutor Brice Robin said co-pilot Lubitz 28, was alone in the cockpit and had locked out the pilot.
“The co-pilot is alone at the controls,” prosecutor Brice Robin said today, recounting information gathered from the “black box” recorder.
“He voluntarily refused to open the door of the cockpit to the pilot and voluntarily began the descent of the plane.”
The victims of the crash were unaware until “the very last moment”, he added.
Mr Robin said Mr Lubitz was not listed as a terrorist.
He said the co-pilot was “not known by us” to have links to terrorism or extremists, and that German authorities were expected to provide additional information on his background and private life later today.
The co-pilot turned the “flight monitoring system” button to initiate the plane’s descent and spoke “not a single word” during the last 10 minutes before the plane crashed.
The passengers were unaware of their imminent demise “until very last moment” and “died instantly”, the prosecutor said.
He said screams could be heard on the recording only in the final seconds.
Lubitz was a life-long flying enthusiast who had passed all the airline's psychological tests and had no known terrorist links.
He had flown for Lufthansa's low-cost subsidiary for nearly two years and had belonged to a flight club since childhood.
German authorities and Lubitz's employers and neighbours said they had no idea what might have led him to bring down a plane with 149 other people on board in the French Alps on Tuesday
The head of Lufthansa, parent company of Germanwings, told a news conference that there wasn't “the slightest indication what might have led” to his actions.
"In our worst nightmares we could not have imagined that this kind of tragedy could happen to us here at the company,” Carsten Spohr said
Debris from crashed Germanwings Airbus A320 are seen in the mountains, near Seyne-les-Alpes. Photo: Reuters
The flight recording showed that the pilot and co-pilot talked normally and “courteously” for the first 20 minutes of the flight after it took off from Barcelona.
“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,” Mr Robin said.
“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.”
Rescue workers work at the Germanwings passenger plane crash site near Seyne-les-Alpes, France, Thursday. Source: AAP
Mr Robin said there were “normal” breathing sounds from Mr Lubitz throughout the rest of the flight that indicated he was conscious.
A French military source said an alarm indicating the proximity to the ground could also be heard.
No distress signal was sent from the Airbus A320 and the crew failed to respond to ground control's desperate attempts to make contact.
If suicide is the cause it will be the seventh pilot suicide in the past 30 years that has taken an airliner down.
Investigators have said the plane was still flying when it smashed into the remote mountainside, with the force of the impact leaving only small pieces of debris scattered over a wide area.
The revelation came after French investigators said they had extracted "usable data" from the first black box recovered.
Remi Jouty, head of French air crash investigation agency BEA, said there was still not "the slightest explanation" at this stage on the reasons for the crash.
* Identifying victims will take weeks
"We have just succeeded in extracting usable data from the cockpit voice recorder," he said, referring to the black box that records sounds and conversations from the cockpit.
But he said the data had only been retrieved in the last few minutes before his press conference, and investigators had not yet analysed the recordings.
He ruled out the possibility of an explosion, saying "the plane was flying right to the end," but could not put forward any other theories.
Debris from crashed Germanwings Airbus A320 are seen in the mountains, near Seyne-les-Alpes. Photo: Reuters "At this stage, clearly, we are not in a position to have the slightest explanation or interpretation on the reasons that could have led this plane to descend... or the reasons why it did not respond to attempts to contact it by air traffic controllers," said Jouty.
Police officers enter a house in Montabaur, Germany, in connection with the investigation into the Airbus A320 crash. Source: AAP
He said he was optimistic that the second black box, which records technical flight data, will soon be found given that the debris is spread over a relatively limited area.
French President Francois Hollande said earlier that the casing of the second black box had been found, but not the box itself.
AFP
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