Prosecutor: Germanwings Co-Pilot May Have Crashed Deliberately

The co-pilot of the Germanwings airliner that crashed in the French Alps killing all 150 people aboard appears to have brought the A320 Airbus down deliberately, the Marseille prosecutor said on Thursday.

German Andreas Lubitz, 28, left in sole control of the Airbus A320 after the captain left the cockpit, refused to re-open the door and operated a control that sent the plane into its final, fatal descent, the prosecutor told a news conference.

The French prosecutor said Lubitz was not known as a terrorist and there were no grounds to consider the crash as a terrorist incident. Recordings suggested passengers' screams began just before the final impact, he said.

Earlier, a German state prosecutor had said that just one of the two pilots of the Germanwings airliner was in the cockpit at the time it went down.

Here is what’s known so far about the Germanwings Flight 9525 co-pilot accused of murdering 149 people.

His name is Andreas Lubitz, age 28. According to The Wall Street Journal, he is from Montabaur, near Frankfurt. Lubitz had 630 hours of flight time since he graduated from Lufthansa’s flight school in September 2013. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said there were no indications for concern regarding the co-pilot. Lubitz had interrupted his training six years ago for unknown reasons.

Lubitz was heard breathing normally through the entire descent on flight voice recordings, according to French prosecutor Brice Robin. Lubitz did not respond to any radio messages from air-traffic control, nor did he respond to the pilot’s demands to open the locked cockpit door, Robin said.

A motive is unknown. The French said they see no connection to terrorism.

German prosecutors said Friday morning that Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz “hid” an existing illness from his employer. Prosecutors did not specify what the illness was, but Bild newspaper reported he had a “serious depressive episode” six years ago, citing internal Lufthansa documents. Prosecutors said they found a “torn-up sick note that signed Andreas Lubitz off work on the day of Alps crash,” according to the BBC. No suicide note or claim of responsibility was found.