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[h=4]Co-pilot in Alps crash was not on terror watch list[/h]A French prosecutor said the co-pilot, who appears to have deliberately crashed a Germanwings airliner into the Alps on Tuesday, was a German national who was not on any terrorist watch list.
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A French prosecutor revealed audio from a cockpit recorder shows that the co-pilot intentionally sent Germanwings Flight 9525 into its doomed descent. He is identified as 28-year-old German national Andreas Lubitz. VPC
This image taken from what appears to be the Facebook page of Andreas Lubitz has been circulating across media outlets.(Photo: Mirror.com screengrab)
A French prosecutor said the co-pilot of the Germanwings airliner who intentionally crashed the jet into the Alps Tuesday was a German national who was not on any terrorist watch list.
Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin identified the co-pilot as Andreas Lubitz, 28, in a news conference Thursday. Robin said Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately worked to "destroy" the plane. He wouldn't divulge any information on Lubitz's religion or ethnic background.
Lubitz said nothing after the pilot left the cabin but was alive and could be heard breathing until the plane crashed, Robin said. He stopped short of calling the incident a terror act or suicide mission.
USA TODAY
Officials: Co-pilot deliberately crashed Flight 9525
The information was obtained from the cockpit voice recorder of doomed Germanwings Flight 9525, which took a sudden, steep, eight-minute descent before smashing into the mountains Tuesday, killing all 150 aboard.
Carsten Spohr, CEO of Lufthansa, said there was nothing to cast doubt on Lubtiz's competence or skills, and he has no information about what could have caused the co-pilot to crash the airliner.
"We can only speculate what might have been the motivation of the co-pilot. In a company that prides itself on its safety record, this is a shock. We select cockpit personnel carefully," he said at a news conference in Cologne, Germany.
Lufthansa is the parent company of Germanwings. The company does annual medical checks but does not require psychological assessments after training, Spohr said.
Spohr also stopped short of calling the intentional crash a suicide mission. He also said there was no indication the crash was an act of terror. "If one person kills himself and 149 other people, a word other than suicide should be used," he said.
USA TODAY
Deliberate plane crashes are extremely rare
Lufthansa said Lubitz joined Germanwings in September 2013, directly after training, and had flown 630 hours. Spohr said Lubitz began training in Bremen, Germany, in 2008 and later in Arizona. He said there was a brief interruption in his training in 2009 but that he had completed qualifications for the job. Such a break is not unusual, but the company will be looking into what happened during that time, Spohr added.
"He passed all medical tests, he passed all aviation tests, he passed all checks," Spohr said. "He was 100% able to fly without any limitations, without any reservations. His accomplishments were excellent. Nothing was noticed that wasn't proper."
The captain, who been identified as Patrick Sonderheimer by multiple media outlets, had more than 6,000 hours of flying time and had been with Germanwings since May 2014. He previously flew for Lufthansa and Condor.
USA TODAY
Deadliest air disasters in recent decades
Police keep media away from the house where Andreas Lubitz lived in Montabaur, Germany, on March 26, 2015.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Michael Probst, AP)
The German newspaper Bild reported Lubitz was from Montabaur in western Germany, where he lived with his parents. His parents also have a home in Düsseldorf, where the flight originating in Barcelona was scheduled to land.
An acquaintance in Montabaur told the Associated Press that Lubitz showed no signs of depression when he saw him last fall as he renewed his glider pilot's license.
"He was happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well," said a member of the glider club, Peter Ruecker, who watched him learn to fly. "He gave off a good feeling." Ruecker said Lubitz was a "rather quiet" but friendly young man when he first came to the club when he was 14 or 15.
A deleted Facebook page that appears to be Lubitz's shows a smiling man posing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in California. The page was wiped sometime in the past two days, according to the Associated Press.
The page lists his interests, including German electronica band Schiller, French superstar DJ David Guetta, his local Burger King, 10-pin bowling, aviation humor and a technical website about the A320 model of aircraft he flew into a mountainside.
USA TODAY
Locking the cockpit: How airline security varies
Ruecker identified the Facebook photo as one of Lubitz to the AP. Spohr would not confirm the identity of the man in the photo.
Lubitz is listed on the Federal Aviation Administration's Airmen Certification Database. He received his student pilot's license on June 18, 2010 and his private pilot license on Jan. 6, 2012. The database is for certified pilots who have met or exceeded the high educational, licensing and medical standards established by the FAA, according to the Aviation Business Gazette.
Lubitz belonged to an aviation association, which released a death notice on its website. It was posted before the latest developments.
"Andreas became a member of the club as a youth to fulfill his dream of flying," the Luftsportclub Westerwald said in a statement. "He fulfilled his dream, the dream he now paid for so dearly with his life."
The evidence Lubitz intentionally brought down the plane is likely to renew concerns about suicidal pilots. In 1999, EgyptAir Flight 990 from Los Angeles to Cairo crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 217 people on board.
An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that the Egyptian pilot brought the plane down intentionally. However, the Egyptian Civil Aviation Agency determined that the plane crashed because of a mechanical failure.
Contributing: Jabeen Bhatti
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