How an unassuming pilot deliberately crashed his plane killing 144 passengers
It is nine years since co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed a Germanwings airliner into the French Alps on March 24 2015.
The crash resulted in the deaths of all 144 passengers, including the six crew members.
The 9525 flight was bound for Dusseldorf, Germany, and was flying from Barcelona, Spain, before it was deliberately crashed by Lubitz 62 miles north west of Nice, France.
While one photo shows Lubitz happily smiling in front of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, beneath the surface it was a different story of psychological turmoil.
In the aftermath of the tragic disaster, investigators uncovered a much darker side to Lubitz.
Who was Andreas Lubitz?
Lubitz lived with both of his parents in a town with a population of 12,500 called Montabaur, near Frankfurt, Germany.
His mother was a church organist and his father worked in banking.
At the age of 14, Lubitz joined the LSC Westerwald glider club in his hometown – his first experience of flying at a young age.
At this time he learnt to fly a white ASK-21 two-seater and went on to obtain a full licence.
He was accepted as a Lufthansa trainee in Bremen, Germany, in 2007, following his graduation from school.
Lubitz had a break from training in 2011 for several months, which was caused by medical problems, according to a final report following the crash.
During that time, he suffered from a serious depressive episode, considered suicide, and went on to have treatment for a year-and-a-half.
His doctor recommended he needed a special regular medical inspection and a note was added to his aviation authority file and pilot’s licence.
Lubitz joined Germanwings in 2013, where he initially worked as a flight attendant and then a co-pilot.
As a co-pilot, his duties included steering the plane during the pilot’s breaks, or if he or she became ill, monitoring instruments, communicating with air traffic controllers, and sharing control of the aircraft with the captain.
From pictures posted on social media, Lubitz was also a keen runner, and would compete in running competitions.
How did Germanwings Flight 9525 crash unfold?
Lubitz had flown for a total of 630 hours before the fatal crash, according to Lufthansa.
Nothing was found when he underwent a regular security check on January 27 and previous checks in 2008 and 2010 also showed no issues.
But Lubitz was declared unfit for work over his suicidal tendencies when he was psychologically assessed and failed to tell this to Lufthansa.
When the flight reached cruise altitude and while the captain was out of the cockpit, Lubitz locked the cabin door and initiated a controlled descent from 38,000ft.
The air traffic controller declared the aircraft in distress after its descent and lost of radio contact.
Attempts by French air traffic control to contact the flight on the assigned radio frequency were not answered and a French military jet was scrambled to intercept the aircraft.
Radar contact was lost at 10.40 CET; at the time, the aircraft had descended to 6,175 feet.
It continued its descent until it hit a mountainside in the commune of Prads-Haute-Bleone.
How many people died in the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash?
All 144 passengers, including the six crew members died in the crash.
Among those were 16 students and two teachers from the Joseph-Konig Gymnasium in Haltern, Germany, who were returning from a student exchange with the Giola Institute in Barcelona.
Haltern’s mayor described the plane crash as ‘the darkest day in the history of our town’.
Bass-baritone Oleg Bryjak and contralto Maria Radner, singers with Deutsche Oper am Rhein, were also on the flight.
The captain was 34-year-old Patrick Sondenheimer, who had 10 years of experience flying planes.
Aftermath of the Germanwings crash
New recommendations from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency were soon implemented by aviation authorities following the disaster.
Most notable of these was the requirement that there should be two authorised personnel in the cockpit at all times.
But by 2017, Germanwings and other German airlines had dropped the rule.
The Lubitz family held a press conference in 2017 in which Lubitz’s father said that they did not accept the official investigative findings that his son deliberately caused the crash.
In terms of compensation, Lufthansa paid €75,000 to the family of every victim, as well as €10,000 in pain and suffering compensation to every close relative of a victim.
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