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Andreas Lubitz was the Germanwings co-pilot who officials say locked out Captain Patrick Sonderheimer from the cockpit and deliberately crashed Flight 9525 into the French Alps, killing all 150 people onboard.
French prosecutor Brice Robin said Andreas Lubitz, 28, locked the doors of the cockpit after the captain went to the restroom and sent the plane into descent with 150 people on board on march 24.
Investigators will now pore over Andreas Lubitz’s background to try and ascertain his exact mental state in the days leading up to the plane crash.
Andreas Lubitz lived with his parents at their home in the western town of Montabaur, which has now become a scene of deep media intrigue.
Police officers have been patrolling the quiet town to keep reporters and photographers away from the front door.
Andreas Lubitz first took to the skies as a teenager, at the LSC Westerwald e.V. glider club in Montabaur.
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He learned to fly in a sleek white ASK-21 two-seat glider when he was around 14 or 15-years-old, according to the club’s chairman Klaus Radke.
In 2008, Andreas Lubitz was accepted as a Lufthansa trainee, after obtaining his glider pilot’s license, and enrolled at the company’s training school in Bremen.
In 2014, he joined subsidiary airline Germanwings and began working as a co-pilot. He had flown a total of 630 hours before Tuesday’s fatal crash.
“He was 100% fit to fly without any restrictions or conditions,” Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr told reporters in Cologne.
Those who knew Andreas Lubitz have described him as a quiet but affable character who gave no indications he was harboring any harmful intent.
Klaus Radke told the Associated Press that he saw Andreas Lubitz last autumn, when he returned to the club to renew his glider license.
“He seemed very enthusiastic about his career. I can’t remember anything where something wasn’t right,” he said.
Klaus Radke rejected the prosecutor’s claims that the plane was brought down intentionally. He said: “I don’t see how anyone can draw such conclusions before the investigation is completed.”
Peter Ruecker, a long-time member of club, also insisted Andreas Lubitz seemed “very happy” during their last meeting.
“I’m just speechless. I don’t have any explanation for this. Knowing Andreas, this is just inconceivable for me,” he said.
Prosecutor Brice Robin said there were no grounds to suspect that Andres Lubitz had carried out a terrorist attack. He refused to discuss his religious background.
“Suicide” was also the wrong word to describe actions which killed so many other people, Brice Robin said.
“I don’t necessarily call it suicide when you have responsibility for 100 or so lives.”
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Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of Germanwings flight 4U 9525 that crashed in the French Alps on March 24, appeared to want to “destroy the plane”, officials said.
Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin, citing information from the “black box” voice recorder, said co-pilot Andreas Lubitz was alone in the cockpit.
He intentionally started a descent while the pilot was locked out.
Brice Robin said there was “absolute silence in the cockpit” as the pilot fought to re-enter it.
He said air traffic controllers made repeated attempts to contact the aircraft, but to no avail. Passengers could be heard screaming just before the crash, he added.
Details are emerging of Andreas Lubitz’s past – although his apparent motives for causing the crash remain a mystery.
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Andreas Lubitz, 28, had undergone intensive training and “was 100% fit to fly without any caveats”, according to Carsten Spohr, the head of Lufthansa, the German carrier that owns Germanwings.
Carsten Spohr said Andreas Lubitz’s training had been interrupted briefly six years ago but was resumed after “the suitability of the candidate was re-established”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters that Andreas Lubitz’s apparent actions had given the tragedy a “new, simply incomprehensible dimension”.
The Airbus 320 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf hit a mountain, killing all 144 passengers and six crew, after an eight-minute descent.
“We hear the pilot ask the co-pilot to take control of the plane and we hear at the same time the sound of a seat moving backwards and the sound of a door closing,” Brice Robin told reporters.
He said the pilot, named in the German media as Patrick S, had probably gone to the toilet.
“At that moment, the co-pilot is controlling the plane by himself. While he is alone, the co-pilot presses the buttons of the flight monitoring system to put into action the descent of the aeroplane.
“He operated this button for a reason we don’t know yet, but it appears that the reason was to destroy this plane.”
Andreas Lubitz was alive until the final impact, the prosecutor said.
Brice Robin said “the most plausible interpretation” was that the co-pilot had deliberately barred the pilot from re-entering the cockpit.
He added that Andreas Lubitz was “not known by us” to have any links to extremism or terrorism.
Lufthansa has arranged two special flights for families and friends on March 26 – one from Barcelona and one from Duesseldorf – to Marseille, and both groups will travel on by road. Separately, some relatives who did not want to fly are travelling by bus from Barcelona.
The second “black box” – that records flight data – has still not been found.
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According to new reports, one of the two pilots of the Germanwings crashed plane was locked out of the cockpit.
Early findings from the cockpit voice recorder suggest the pilot made desperate efforts to get back in, sources close to the investigation say.
The Airbus 320 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf crashed in the southern French Alps on March 24 after a rapid eight-minute descent.
Relatives of the 150 passengers and crew who died are to visit the site.
Lufthansa, which owns Germanwings, will operate two special flights on March 25 – one from Barcelona and one from Duesseldorf – to Marseille, and both groups will travel on by road.
Germanwings chief Thomas Winkelmann said 72 passengers were German citizens, including 16 high school students returning from an exchange trip.
Spain’s government said 51 of the dead were Spanish.
Other victims were from Australia, Argentina, Britain, Iran, Venezuela, the US, the Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Denmark and Israel.
On March 25, French officials said usable data had been extracted from the cockpit voice recorder but that it was too early to draw any conclusions.
Remi Jouty, director of the French aviation investigative agency, said he hoped investigators would have the “first rough ideas in a matter of days” but the full analysis could take weeks or even months.
However, the New York Times quoted an unnamed investigator as saying that one of the pilots – it is not clear if it is the captain or the first officer – left the cockpit and had been unable to get back in.
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“The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer,” the investigator said, describing audio from the recorder.
“And then he hits the door stronger, and no answer. There is never an answer. You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”
A source close to the investigation told a similar story to the AFP news agency.
An alarm indicating proximity to the ground can be heard before the moment of impact, the source adds.
Remi Jouty said the second “black box” – the flight data recorder – had not been found and he could not confirm an earlier statement by President Francois Hollande that its casing had been recovered.
The investigator said the plane’s last communication was a routine one with air traffic control.
The plane confirmed instructions to continue on its planned flight path but then began its descent a minute later.
Remi Jouty said controllers observed the plane beginning to descend and tried to contact the pilots but without success.
He ruled out an explosion, saying: “The plane was flying right to the end.”
Remi Jouty said: “At this stage, clearly, we are not in a position to have the slightest explanation or interpretation of 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.”
Families and friends of the victims are expected to arrive at the crash site at Meolans-Revels later on Thursday.
Separately, a bus carrying 14 relatives of Spanish victims left Barcelona on March 25 for the crash area, because they did not want to fly.
In France, special teams have been prepared to assist the families during their visit.
On March 25, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy visited the crash site.
Francois Hollande told his counterparts: “The French people are here shoulder to shoulder with you during this ordeal. Everything will be done to find, identify and hand back to the families the bodies of their loved ones.”
Both he and Angela Merkel said they would do everything they could to find out the cause of the crash.
Germanwings is a low-cost airline owned by Lufthansa, Germany’s main carrier.
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Rescue teams have returned to Germanwings flight 4U 9525 crash site in the southern French Alps for search and recovery operations.
The Airbus A320 crashed on March 24 with 150 people on board.
Officials warn the operation could last for days in a remote mountain ravine between Digne and Barcelonnette.
The leaders of Germany, France and Spain are due to visit the crash site.
Germanwings flight 4U 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf crashed after an 8-minute rapid descent, officials say. There were no survivors.
Officials believe 67 of the 144 passengers were German citizens, including 16 high school students returning from an exchange trip.
A day of mourning was being held at the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium school in Haltern-am-See, north-west Germany, where the students were from.
More than 40 passengers were believed to be Spanish and the flight was also carrying citizens of Australia, Japan, Colombia, Turkey, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK.
The plane’s cockpit voice recorder – recovered by a helicopter team on Tuesday – was damaged but could still provide information, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.
Finding the second “black box” – the flight data recorder – will be a key aim of Wednesday’s search operation.
A team of police officers spent the night on the mountain, securing the site.
French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy are expected to visit the crash scene later.
Mariano Rajoy has already declared three days of national mourning in Spain.
Bereaved relatives are also expected to visit the scene on March 25. The mayor of Seyne-les-Alpes, the town nearest the crash site, said local families were offering to host them.
Footage shot from a helicopter on March 24 showed plane parts scattered on the rocky mountainside.
“The site is a picture of horror,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after being flown over the ravine.
“Everything is pulverized. The largest pieces of debris are the size of a small car,” Gilbert Sauvan, president of the general council Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, told the Associated Press.
Germanwings, a low-cost airline owned by Germany’s main carrier Lufthansa, said some crew members were unfit for service on March 25 “due to emotional distress”.
The airline said one flight was being cancelled but remaining flights would be according to schedule.
Lufthansa and Germanwings staff held a minute’s silence on Wednesday morning.
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The “black box” flight recorder of Germanwings plane that crashed in the French Alps with 150 people onboard, has been found, the French interior minister says.
The Airbus A320 – flight 4U 9525 – went down between Digne and Barcelonnette. There are no survivors, officials say.
The German aircraft was on its way from Barcelona to Duesseldorf.
The cause of the crash is not known and the plane did not send a distress signal.
Among the passengers were 16 German students returning from an exchange trip.
Germanwings, a low-cost airline owned by Germany’s main carrier Lufthansa, has an excellent safety record.
A recovery team reached the site, in a remote mountain ravine, earlier on Tuesday. Their work was called off in the evening and will resume at first light on Wednesday, the French interior ministry said.
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Bruce Robin, a prosecutor from Marseille, told the Reuters news agency that he had seen the wreckage of the aircraft from a helicopter.
“The body of the plane is in a state of destruction, there is not one intact piece of wing or fuselage,” he said.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was also flown over the crash site and described it as “a picture of horror”, the Associated Press news agency says.
Most of the dead are believed to be German or Spanish citizens.
The plane began descending one minute after it reached its cruising height and continued to lose altitude for eight minutes, Germanwings managing director Thomas Winkelmann told reporters.
Thomas Winkelmann said the aircraft lost contact with French air traffic controllers at 10:53 at an altitude of about 6,000 feet.
The plane did not send out a distress signal, officials said. Earlier reports of a distress call, quoting the French interior ministry, referred to a message from controllers on the ground.
The White House has said there is no evidence so far of a terror attack. A Lufthansa official said they were assuming for the time being that the crash had been caused by an accident.
Spain’s King Felipe, on a state visit to France, thanked the French government for its help and said he was cancelling the rest of his visit.
The Airbus A320 is a single-aisle passenger jet popular for short- and medium-haul flights.
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A Germanwings Airbus A320 plane has crashed in the southern French Alps between Barcelonnette and Digne, French aviation officials and police have said.
German airline Germanwings is a subsidiary of Lufthansa.
Germanwings flight 4U 9525 had been en route from Barcelona to Duesseldorf with 144 passengers and six crew.
French President Francois Hollande said: “The conditions of the accident, which have not yet been clarified, lead us to think there are no survivors.”
He said the crash was a tragedy, adding that the area was very difficult to access.
President Francois Hollande later called German Chancellor Angela Merkel to express his sympathy, the French presidency said.
Spain’s King Felipe, on a state visit to France, thanked the French government for its help and said he was cancelling the rest of his visit.
The plane issued a distress call at 10:47 local time, the French interior ministry said, although details have not been released.
Search-and-rescue teams are headed to the crash site at Meolans-Revels, said regional council head Eric Ciotti.
French PM Manuel Valls said he had sent Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve to the scene and a ministerial crisis cell had been set up to co-ordinate the incident.
The interior ministry said debris had been located at an altitude of 6,500ft.
Spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told BFM TV that it would be “an extremely long and extremely difficult” search-and-rescue operation because of the remoteness.
Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr tweeted: “We do not yet know what has happened to flight 4U 9525. My deepest sympathy goes to the families and friends of our passengers and crew.
“If our fears are confirmed, this is a dark day for Lufthansa. We hope to find survivors.”
The Airbus A320 is a single-aisle passenger jet popular for short- and medium-haul flights.
Germanwings wrote on its website: “We must confirm to our deepest regret that Germanwings flight 4U 9525 from Barcelona to Dusseldorf has suffered an accident over the French Alps. The flight was being operated with an Airbus A320 aircraft, and was carrying 144 passengers and six crew members. Lufthansa and Germanwings have established a telephone hotline. The toll-free 0800 11 33 55 77 number is available to all the families of the passengers involved for care and assistance. Everyone at Germanwings and Lufthansa is deeply shocked and saddened by these events. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the passengers and crew members.”
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The frozen body of a young climber who disappeared 32 years ago in the French Alps has been discovered by mountain climbers, French media reports say.
Patrice Hyvert was last seen alive on March 1, 1982, when he took a solitary climb in the Mont Blanc mountain range on the French-Italian border.
The 23-year-old did not return after the weather took a bad turn.
Patrice Hyvert was last seen alive on March 1, 1982, when he took a solitary climb in the Mont Blanc mountain range on the French-Italian border
Rescue officials say the mountaineer’s frozen body was found with his ID and all of his ski equipment still on him.
His body was found by two climbers on July 3 on the Talefre glacier at an altitude of 2,687 metres, local newspaper Dauphine Libere reported.
Patrice Hyvert’s father, Gerard, told RTL radio that he had given up hope of finding his son’s body.
“I’m a mountain man, and I would have preferred him to stay up there…He was better on a mountain than in a coffin. He was in his element,” he said.
A tourist train has been derailed by a falling boulder killing two people in the southern French Alps, local officials and firefighters say.
At least nine people were injured.
The train was travelling from Nice to the town of Digne-les-Bains on a line which crosses gorges and viaducts at up to 3,200ft above sea level.
Images from the scene show the two-carriage train dangling from the tracks, the side of one carriage caved in by the rock.
The train was travelling from Nice to the town of Digne-les-Bains on a line which crosses gorges and viaducts at up to 3,200ft above sea level
Local prosecutor Stephane Kellenberger told AFP news agency that one of the dead was a Russian woman, while the other victim came from the Alps region.
One of the injured is said to be in a critical condition, while the others, including the driver, are reported to have sustained lighter injuries.
“A rock the size of a car came off the mountainside and slammed into the first car of the train,” Jean Ballester, mayor of nearby Annot, told BFM television.
There were a total of 34 people on board at the time of the accident, AFP news agency reports.
The agency adds that a total of 110 firefighters and 32 vehicles were deployed from around the region, as well as two helicopters.
They are said to have encountered difficulties in reaching the accident because of heavy snow and the isolated location.
The train travels on track that regularly receives snow and rockfalls, but regional transport official Jean-Yves Petit said that even in winter it is considered safe.
An Indian diplomatic bag has been found on Mont Blanc in the French Alps, close to where an Air India plane crashed 46 years ago.
The jute bag was recovered by a mountain rescue worker and his neighbor after some tourists spotted it on a glacier last week.
The Indian embassy in Paris told the AFP news agency that it would begin efforts to retrieve the bag.
The Air India plane flying from Mumbai to New York crashed in January 1966.
All 117 people on board died.
An Indian diplomatic bag has been found on Mont Blanc in the French Alps, close to where an Air India plane crashed 46 years ago
The bag recovered from the glacier has markings saying “Diplomatic mail” and “Ministry of External Affairs”, as the foreign ministry is called in India.
“Some tourists came and told us they had seen something shining on the Bossons glacier,” rescue worker Arnaud Christmann told AFP.
“We found pieces of the cabin, a shoe, cables – it’s a real dump up there!”
Arnaud Christmann said the diplomatic bag was “sitting as if someone had just placed it there”.
“We were hoping for diamonds or at least a few gold ingots. Instead we got some soaking wet mail and Indian newspapers,” he said.
“It’s not the sort of thing you find very often in the mountains – the mail’s going to arrive 46 years late.”
The bag has been handed over to the police in the town of Chamonix at the base of the mountain.
The Indian embassy in Paris said on Wednesday that it had not been informed of the discovery but officials would be looking into it to recover the bag.
At least six climbers have been killed and eight injured in an avalanche near the French Alpine ski resort of Chamonix, police say.
The alarm was sounded at 05:25 local time by one of the injured on the slopes of Mont Maudit.
Foreigners are thought to be among the victims. The injured were airlifted to a local hospital.
At least six climbers have been killed and eight injured in an avalanche near the French Alpine ski resort of Chamonix
The mountain is known as a popular route for summer tourists heading for the summit of Mont Blanc.
The climbers are believed to have been roped together in several groups when the avalanche struck.
About 28 climbers from several countries are said to have taken part in the expedition, and reports say a number of them are still missing.
Rescue teams are using a helicopter and heat-seeking device to try to locate the missing.
The local authorities described the avalanche as “the most deadly” in recent years, according to the AFP news agency.
Mont Maudit – meaning the cursed mountain – is the third-highest peak in the Mont Blanc massif range, rising to 4,465 m (14,650 ft).
A news conference in Chamonix is expected shortly.
