Among new clues about co-pilot: Reports of ‘pressure,’ vision problems
Among new clues about co-pilot: Reports of ‘pressure,’ vision problems
(about 2 hours later)
MONTABAUR, Germany — One year before he made the cut for Lufthansa’s elite flying school, Andreas Lubitz worked at a Burger King behind a car wash, flipping Whoppers and frying fries and talking to co-workers about his dream.
MONTABAUR, Germany — One year before he made the cut for Lufthansa’s elite flying school, Andreas Lubitz worked at a Burger King behind a car wash, flipping Whoppers and frying fries and talking to co-workers about his dream.
One day, he told them, he would be a pilot.
One day, he told them, he would be a pilot.
That dream finally started to come together in 2008, when Lubitz would leave for Bremen, Germany, and then travel to Phoenix to attend one of the industry’s most rigorous commercial pilot-training programs. But by 2009, Lubitz had walked out of the program he had fought so hard to attend, taking several months off and coming back to his home town. During that hiatus, Detlef Adolf — general manager at the Burger King here and Lubitz’s former boss — remembers his former employee stopping by the restaurant, buying a meal and sharing his distressing news.
That dream finally started to come together in 2008, when Lubitz would leave for Bremen, Germany, and then travel to Phoenix to attend one of the industry’s most rigorous commercial pilot-training programs. But by 2009, Lubitz had walked out of the program he had fought so hard to attend, taking several months off and coming back to his home town. During that hiatus, Detlef Adolf — general manager at the Burger King here and Lubitz’s former boss — remembers his onetime employee stopping by the restaurant, buying a meal and sharing his distressing news.
“He had come back because he said the pressure was too great,” Adolf said Saturday.
“He had come back because he said the pressure was too great,” Adolf said Saturday.
Investigators now believe that Lubitz, 27, deliberately flew an Airbus A320 with 150 people on board into a remote corner of the French Alps on Tuesday, provoking a search for answers that is increasingly centering on his health, and his mental health in particular. One official familiar with the investigation said that German authorities, in their searches of Lubitz’s homes and belongings, had found prescription medications that showed he was being treated for psychological problems, including depression. They also found “some writings” that further confirmed he was in a deeply depressed state of mind, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
Investigators now believe that Lubitz, 27, deliberately flew Germanwings Flight 9525 with 150 people on board into a corner of the French Alps on Tuesday, provoking a search for answers that is now focused on his mental health. One official familiar with the investigation said that German authorities, in their searches of Lubitz’s homes and belongings, had found prescription medications that showed he was being treated for psychological problems.
The picture emerging of Lubitz is one of a man haunted, whose ambition to fly brought him both pleasure and torment. Authorities have found doctors’ sick notes stating he was unfit for work, including on the day of the crash. On Saturday, Germany’s Bild newspaper quoted an interview with a former girlfriend of Lubitz’s who described a man who suffered from vivid nightmares and delusions of grandeur.
They also found “some writings” that further confirmed that he was in a deeply depressed state of mind, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
In addition, one fellow pilot recalled, the rugged zone of the crash site was long familiar to Lubitz — he had overflown the same mountainous region with members of his local flight club years before.
Indeed, five days after the crash, the picture emerging of Lubitz is one of a haunted man, whose ambition to fly brought him both pleasure and torment. Authorities now believe he was hiding a long-term psychological illness. They have found sick notes from doctors, torn up and rumpled, stating he was unfit for work, including on the day of the crash.
On Saturday, Germany’s Bild newspaper quoted an interview with a former girlfriend of Lubitz’s. She described a man who suffered from vivid nightmares and delusions of grandeur.
“At night, he woke up and screamed: ‘We’re going down!’ because he had nightmares,” the former girlfriend told Bild. “He knew how to hide from other people what was really going on with him.”
“At night, he woke up and screamed: ‘We’re going down!’ because he had nightmares,” the former girlfriend told Bild. “He knew how to hide from other people what was really going on with him.”
She added that last year he had warned, “One day I will do something that will change the whole system, and then everybody will know my name and remember it.”
She added that last year he had warned, “One day, I will do something that will change the whole system, and then everybody will know my name and remember it.”
Bild and the New York Times reported Saturday that Lubitz was seeking treatment for vision problems, though it remained unclear whether the issue was real or perhaps psychosomatic. Such concerns could have led Lubitz to worry that he would permanently lose his medical certification to fly.
But a Germanwings colleague who worked with Lubitz said the co-pilot had recently seemed to be thinking about his long-term future. Frank Woiton, a pilot who three weeks ago flew with Lubitz from Düsseldorf to Vienna and back, told the German broadcaster WDR that Lubitz said he wanted eventually to pilot a massive long-haul jetliner. Such flights on an Airbus A380 or Boeing 747 are normally the domain of pilots who have put in decades with airlines.
Here in his home town in southwestern Germany, a city of 13,000 dotted with traditional houses and well-tended lawns centered on an aging Main Street, the mood shifted between denial and sorrow over its local boy made good. Yet Lubitz was hardly a forceful presence here, and those who knew him described him as friendly, even bland — a non-memorable man who yelled out “Guten Tag!” to neighbors on his morning runs but was otherwise quiet and reserved.
“He wasn’t a person who you thought would commit suicide,” Woiton said. “He seemed very happy and he wanted to become a captain for long-distance flights. He was very good at his job.”
Bild and the New York Times also reported Saturday that Lubitz was seeking treatment for vision problems, though it remained unclear whether the issue was real or perhaps psychosomatic. Either way, such concerns may have led Lubitz to worry that he would permanently lose his medical certification to fly.
A day earlier, the University Hospital of Düsseldorf said that Lubitz had been one of its patients as recently as March 10 and that it was not treating him for depression. A spokeswoman for the hospital declined Saturday to comment about the details of his treatment.
Here in his hilly home town in southwestern Germany, a city of 13,000 dotted with traditional, Germany-style houses and well-tended lawns, the mood shifted between denial and sorrow over its local boy made good.
His public face was that of a healthy young man. A marathon runner and indoor rock climber, he seemed “normal,” many here said, in every way. Indeed, many in this town still refuse to believe the picture being painted of him as a deeply troubled soul who purposely ended his life and those of 149 others.
“It’s not right to say these things about him. He’s dead, he can’t defend himself,” said a woman at the front desk of his gym, Fit-Up Sportcenter.
Bernd Juhn, 50, a sales representative and member of the LSC Westerwald flight club here where the Germanwings co-pilot was also a member, said that Lubitz had joined the group for at least one of its recreational aviation trips to Sisteron, France, in the mid-2000s. The Airbus A320 crashed Tuesday in the same rugged region of the French Aps.
Juhn insisted it was nothing more than a “fatal coincidence.”
“I know him as an absolutely reliable, friendly young man,” Juhn said. “I don’t believe what people are saying about Andreas. Did you hear the original black-box recording? People jump to conclusions too quickly.”
He said he saw Lubitz for the last time last autumn, when he had been at the club’s deep green fields on a patch of land near the edge of town for a test flight with a flying teacher – a regular practice at the club. “He told me that he was working as a pilot now and I was happy for him. He was one of the few young men [at the club], and never stood out in a negative way.”
He said Lubitz wasn’t a big talker. “He was a relatively quiet guy.”
Yet Lubitz was hardly seen as a large presence here, and those who knew him described him as friendly, even bland. He was the kind of guy who would yell “Guten Tag!” to neighbors on his morning runs in the upscale neighborhood in this town where he shared a home with his parents. But his neighbors and others who knew him said they wouldn’t describe him as the chatty type.
“He was inconspicuous, normal, nice,” said Michael Dietrich, the pastor at the Luther Church in Montabaur who taught Lubitz’s confirmation class.
“He was inconspicuous, normal, nice,” said Michael Dietrich, the pastor at the Luther Church in Montabaur who taught Lubitz’s confirmation class.
But on the day Lubitz appeared to fly that Airbus into a chilly French mountainside, he was hiding a potentially deadly secret: a chronic medical condition that a doctor had determined was serious enough to keep him out of the sky.
Lubitz’s father was in shock and grief at a memorial service in France last week, a French official who met him told a French television station Saturday.
Authorities would not reveal the exact nature of Lubitz’s illness. But an official from the German prosecutor’s office in Düsseldorf, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to reveal details beyond an official statement, said earlier that the doctors’ notes were related to a “long-lasting condition.” Asked whether they were also related to psychiatric problems, he said, “Read between the lines.”
“He was collapsed. Completely shot. On his back he’s carrying all responsibility for this drama. This is a man whose life has been shattered,” Bernard Bartolini, the mayor of the French town of Prads-Haute-Bleone, told BFM TV. “He has lost someone dear to him but also because his son is perhaps the cause of this whole tragedy.”
The comments came after Germany’s Bild newspaper reported that Lubitz had been treated for at least one “serious depressive episode” so bad that he had to suspend flight training for several months in 2009. On Friday, the Rheinische Post also reported that the medical notes discovered in Lubitz’s apartment came from at least two doctors — suggesting he may have been searching for a favorable diagnosis and possibly feared losing his medical certification to fly.
Mekhennet reported from Frankfurt and Birnbaum from Düsseldorf. Stephanie Kirchner in Montabaur contributed to this report.
German aviation authorities said that Lubitz’s medical file, tied to his pilot’s license, contained a notation that he was required to have “special regular medical examinations,” but such citations can relate to a wide range of medical conditions.
Yet the prospect that mental-health problems may have figured in the crash of the Germanwings plane additionally shined a spotlight on what critics call flaws in the regular medical checks required of airline pilots, who must pass as many as two exams per year. Such tests, however, are largely geared toward catching physical ailments, such as vision or heart problems, that could impair performance in a cockpit. But mental-health tests in fitness evaluations are often cursory, sometimes amounting to little more than a written questionnaire.
“Typically, there are no tests applied to identify psychological diseases,” said Andreas Adrian, an aviation doctor who evaluates Lufthansa’s and other airlines’ pilots in Bremen, Germany. “Maybe you are giving someone a questionnaire to answer, but of course, you can get a good actor and he can easily hide any issues.”
The debate intensified Friday over whether mental health should be more deeply probed — an effort strongly opposed by some pilot groups and others who say such a policy could add to the pressures of an already high-stress job.
More rigorous mental-health testing could “uncover thousands of people who are going through difficult times in their lives and prevent them flying when they are perfectly capable of carrying out their normal day jobs,” said Philip Baum, editor of the magazine Aviation Security International. “You will have to employ far more pilots, and it would be an additional stress and could make things worse.”
The possibility that Lubitz may have hidden his condition — a task that could have been made easier by strict medical privacy laws in Germany — might help explain how he passed his flight training program. Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr said this week that his company, which owns Germanwings, was never informed of the reason for Lubitz’s medical leave in 2009, a period in which the newspaper Bild said Lubitz was suffering from clinical depression.
Yet, even if he did hide an illness, the fact that Lubitz — who lived here in Montabaur much of the year with his parents — passed muster at Lufthansa’s demanding flight school with what Spohr called “flying colors” raised additional questions. The course is meant to weed out potentially troubled men and women, using role-play scenarios in cockpits to measure reactions to conflict and stress, as well as highly personal lines of questioning to assess psychological balance.
“They have to expect questions about their personal histories,” said Michael Müller, chief executive of ATTC, a company that helps prepare pilot candidates for entering flight schools, including Lufthansa’s. “How did you grow up? Did your parents divorce? How did you feel when they did?”
Under existing aviation laws, any diagnosis of depression or other serious mental illness should have made it difficult for Lubitz to continue flying in Europe, and certainly not without extensive treatment. Even then, certain limitations are placed on pilots who are taking psychotropic medications — such as popular anti-depressants — including a stipulation that they not be alone in the cockpit.
Investigators, meanwhile, sought more answers about the man who German and French investigators believe brought down Flight 9525 on his own.
At Lubitz’s apartment in a leafy middle-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Düsseldorf, neighbors had affixed Germany’s black, gold and red flag at half-staff on a utility pole. Pink camellias bloomed near the entrance to the three-story building, and a small palm tree sat on Lubitz’s balcony.
On the doorbell, the name Goldbach appeared with Lubitz’s. Neighbors said Goldbach was the last name of the woman who lived with Lubitz in the apartment. It was not immediately clear whether they were married.
Lubitz and Goldbach were both reserved but friendly, and Lubitz would from time to time walk along the street in his pilot’s uniform, neighbors said, on at least one occasion stopping to play with a neighbor’s 3-year-old daughter.
A police spokesman outside the building said Friday that investigators had completed their searches a day earlier, spending 3 1/2 hours scouring the apartment and taking away two cardboard boxes and a large bag of Lubitz’s possessions.
The University Hospital Düsseldorf confirmed that Lubitz visited the facility in February and, for the last time, on March 10 for “diagnostic clarifications.” The hospital statement gave no further details, citing medical confidentiality. But it denied German media reports that Lubitz had been treated there for depression.
Its psychiatric and neurologic clinic is a 10-minute drive from Lubitz’s Düsseldorf home, on a rolling campus filled with Italianate buildings.
Mekhennet reported from Frankfurt and Birnbaum from Düsseldorf. Stephanie Kirchner in Montabaur and Karla Adam in London contributed to this report.
