Germanwings’ co-pilot’s mental health scrutinized

MONTABAUR, Germany – The troubled mental condition of German pilot Andreas Lubitz came under sharp examination Friday, as German investigators revealed that he had hidden an illness from his employer and torn up a note from his doctor indicating he was unfit to work on the day he apparently crashed a plane with 150 people aboard in the French Alps.

The Germanwings co-pilot suffered from a “depressive illness” and was experiencing emotional problems after a “relationship crisis” with his girlfriend, friends and investigators in France and Germany told local journalists as they attempted to understand why Lubitz, 27, appears to have locked the chief pilot out of the cockpit and steered the plane into a mountainside.

The disclosures came as accident investigators began the difficult job of building an access road to a ravine at the remote accident site and continued the search for the flight data recorder, as well as the remains of the passengers and crew members of the Airbus A320 that had been bound for the German city of Duesseldorf.

Authorities have said the crash apparently was a deliberate act, but the background of the co-pilot’s apparent psychological problems came into greater focus as investigators said that they had found a doctor’s note for the day of the flight that had been torn up and put in a waste basket at his home.

German officials said he was under treatment for an undisclosed medical problem, and French private television station Metropole 6, citing sources “close to the investigation,” reported that Lubitz had been declared unfit to work March 16-19 because of depression, a condition he is said to have concealed from his employer.

Documents found in a search of Lubitz’s family home here in the western German town of Montabaur, and also his apartment in Duesseldorf, “support the current preliminary assessment that the deceased hid his illness from his employer and colleagues,” Ralf Herrenbrueck, a spokesman for the German prosecutor’s office, said in a written statement.

Lubitz is believed to have taken a six-month leave during his training with Germanwings, a unit of Lufthansa, and though airline officials have not explained the reason for the hiatus, investigators have told European media that it was also because of depression. Part of the training was conducted at a Lufthansa training center in Phoenix, beginning in 2008.