Germanwings and its parent airline Lufthansa are facing questions over what they knew about the mental state of the co-pilot responsible for the French Alps plane disaster.
Andreas Lubitz, 28, who deliberately crashed the Airbus A320 after locking out his captain from the cockpit, had reportedly been battling mental health and Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr admitted Lubitz had taken a long break in his pilot training.
France’s prime minister has called on Lufthansa to provide all information about Lubitz.
Manuel Valls said that Lufthansa should give the maximum of information “so that we can understand why this pilot got to the point of this horrific action”.
Speaking on French TV Mr Valls said that nothing would be ruled out until the end of a full investigation.
According to German newspaper Bild, Lubitz was going through a “personal life crisis”, while the Der Spiegel newspaper said he had taken a break in training because of “burnout syndrome”.
Matthias Gebauer, chief correspondent for the online edition of German newspaper Der Spiegel, tweeted: “Schoolmates of co-pilot who crashed tell German reporters he took six months break from flight training in 2009 due to burnout syndrome.”
Lubitz had been employed as a flight attendant when he first tried to become a pilot in 2008 after waiting for eight months, but did not start working as a first officer for Lufthansa until September 2013
While the relatives of the 150 people killed in last Tuesday’s crash tried to come to terms with Lubitz’s actions, German police have searched the co-pilot’s home in Dusseldorf and seized material that will now be examined as part of the investigation.
There were also reports that police had removed items from a £400,000 home in Montabaur, a town 40 miles from Bonn, that Lubitz is believed to have shared with his parents.
Outlining evidence from the crashed plane’s black box cockpit voice recorder, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said Lubitz had deliberately put the plane into a descent after the captain left the cockpit,
He had refused to allow him back in and had made no response to calls from the ground or from other planes.
In his startling account of the doomed plane’s final half hour, Mr Robin said: “I think the victims only realised at the last moment because on the recording we only hear the screams on the last moments of the recording.”
He added: “I believe that we owe the families the transparency of what the investigation is pointing to and what is going on, we owe it to them to tell them what happened.
“The families have been informed of everything I just told you.”
Some airlines are changing procedures to ensure two crew members are in the cockpit at all times during flights following the disaster.
The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority said it had contacted all UK operators to urge them to review safety procedures in the wake of the tragedy.
Monarch, easyJet, Virgin Atlantic and Thomas Cook all confirmed they had changed their policies, while Ryanair, Jet2 and Flybe said they already required two crew members to be in the cockpit at all times.
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