Investigators Face Complex Task With Inquiry Into Co-Pilot

Dusseldorf:

As aviation experts in the French Alps piece together the shattered fragments of the Germanwings jetliner that crashed there Tuesday, investigators here are engaged in a task that is at least as challenging: trying to understand what drove Andreas Lubitz, who was at the controls, to the apparent decision to fly the plane into a mountainside.

In what amounts to one of the most high-profile cases to date of forensic psychiatry, French and German investigators must not only piece together the strands of Lubitz's professional and personal lives, they must also try to determine what was going on inside his head before and during the fateful flight Tuesday.

Five days after the crash, the investigators have three main lines of inquiry: his apparent depression; a problem with his eyesight that might have compromised his ability to continue flying; and his personal relationships, including one with his longtime girlfriend. His personal writings, found at the scene, suggested a confused young man who feared failure and was scared he was going to lose his job because of his vision and mental health problems, an official said.

How those elements fit together - and the relative weight each should be assigned - would be hard to determine under the best circumstances. In this case, it is not clear that it will ever be settled with any great degree of confidence, no doubt frustrating those who want answers, including the families of victims and regulators seeking to ensure it does not happen again.

"In a judicial investigation there are several working hypotheses, and you never discard all of the other hypotheses in one go, in order to give priority to just one of them," Jean-Pierre Michel, the chief French investigator and deputy head of the judicial police for the French Gendarmerie, said at a news conference here Saturday. "Of course, you have to be able to prioritize these different investigations to give yourself the maximum chances of solving the investigation as quickly as possible."

As many as 200 German law enforcement officials have been working on the case, a spokesman for the Dusseldorf police said Sunday. He added that no updates were expected from prosecutors before Monday at the earliest.

They have learned thus far Lubitz, the co-pilot on the flight, was dealing with psychological problems serious enough to require medication, sources with knowledge of the investigation said, which may have dogged him for many years. Antidepressants were found during the search of his apartment, as were notes from multiple doctors, one of which was torn up and thrown in a wastebasket.

Investigators also discovered that Lubitz was having trouble with his eyesight, either as a psychosomatic symptom related to his mental-health issues or as a separate physical malady that could have depressed his mood further. The young man's identity was tied to his dream of becoming a pilot from an early age, at least since he began flying gliders as a 14-year-old.

To acquaintances and colleagues, Lubitz was personally polite and professionally accomplished, a co-pilot crisscrossing Europe for Germanwings, a loyal son who spent much of his time in his hometown Montabaur with his parents, and the long-term boyfriend of a woman he had known since before entering pilot training. In the past few weeks he had purchased two new cars, according to German news reports, presumably one for him and one for her.

"He was a colleague like every other," Frank Woiton, a fellow pilot for Germanwings, told German television after the plane crash. "We sat together in the cockpit. We talked about his plans for the future. He said he wanted to fly long haul flights. He was not someone who said, 'I want to end my life.'"

But his private papers indicated a fragile mental state. A high-ranking investigator, speaking with the newspaper Die Welt, characterized Lubitz's writing as a window into the dark world of illness the co-pilot had skillfully concealed from outsiders.

There have also been reports, largely from anonymous sources, that his personal life had become complicated. Germany's highest circulation newspaper, Bild, published an interview Saturday with a flight attendant who also claimed to be his girlfriend. The woman, speaking under an assumed name, said that Lubitz was mentally unstable, screaming at night, at one point locking himself in a bathroom and complaining bitterly about how he was treated at his job.

The woman said that he told her he would someday "do something that will change the entire system and everyone will know my name and remember it," which she in retrospect interpreted as an oblique reference to crashing a plane, despite the fact that it was a broad comment open to wide interpretation.

In its Sunday edition, the paper reported that his long-term girlfriend, who teaches math and English at a school in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, was pregnant.

The authorities close to the investigation said Friday they had already questioned the co-pilot's girlfriend, whom they described as someone he had shared his life with for many years, including up to the day of the crash. The woman, who has not been formally identified, is believed to have shared a top-floor apartment with Lubitz in a residential Dusseldorf neighborhood surrounded by a forest where neighbors have reported that the avid jogger often went for runs.

Another question that has defied easy answers is whether Lubitz might have acted impulsively after being left alone in the cockpit or could have planned such a move in advance and waited for an opportunity. Nothing like a suicide note or other indication was found in his apartment to suggest premeditation.

Bild also claimed to have quotes from the cockpit recording. During the flight when the captain asked his co-pilot to prepare for the landing, Lubitz replied "hopefully" and "we'll see," according to the newspaper. When the captain returned from a bathroom break he found the door to the cockpit locked. As the plane began to descend, the pilot could be heard banging and yelling, "For God's sake open the door."

The passengers had begun to scream. Then metal clanging on the door was audible, followed by the automatic warning: "Terrain. Pull up. Pull up."

At that point the pilot yelled, "Open the damned door."

Martine del Bono, the spokeswoman for the French Bureau of Investigations and Analyses, which is charged with the technical inquiry into the crash separate from the French criminal probe, condemned the leaking of the transcripts of the voice recorder that have appeared in the German media.

"We are shocked by these leaks, which constitute a complete lack of decency for the families of the victims," Del Bono said.

Heinz Joachim Schottes, a spokesman for Germanwings in Cologne, declined to discuss details of Lubitz's past medical exams performed by Lufthansa's medical services bureau, nor could he confirm German media reports that the co-pilot had been due to face his next annual medical exam in June. He said that all of Lubitz's personnel and medical records held by the airline had been turned over to investigators.

Forensic experts in France are attempting to identify the remains of victims and have thus far isolated DNA from 78 different people found at the mountainous crash site, leaving 72 victims unaccounted for, the French prosecutor Brice Robin told the Agence France-Presse news agency Sunday. He added that workers were building an access road to aid in the removal of larger pieces of the aircraft, work that could be completed by as soon as Monday night.

While investigators are focusing on the assumption that Lubitz crashed the plane on purpose, Michel, the chief French investigator, said, "We have no right today to rule out other hypotheses, including the mechanical hypotheses, as long as we haven't proved that the plane had no problems."

An official in the French National Gendarmerie press office said that Michel and two investigators from the Air Transportation Gendarmerie arrived in Germany on Friday to "coordinate the action of the French investigators with what was being done in Seyne-les-Alpes, and to ensure that this work was being coordinated with the Germans."

Michel later returned to France, leaving his colleagues to work with their counterparts "as long as the mission requires it," said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.