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| Germanwings Co-Pilot Had Researched Suicide and Cockpit Doors, Prosecutors Say | Germanwings Co-Pilot Had Researched Suicide and Cockpit Doors, Prosecutors Say |
| (34 minutes later) | |
| DÜSSELDORF, Germany — The co-pilot at the controls of the Germanwings airliner that crashed into the French Alps last week had been searching the Internet in the days leading up to the crash for information about how to commit suicide and the security measures for cockpit doors, prosecutors said here on Thursday. | DÜSSELDORF, Germany — The co-pilot at the controls of the Germanwings airliner that crashed into the French Alps last week had been searching the Internet in the days leading up to the crash for information about how to commit suicide and the security measures for cockpit doors, prosecutors said here on Thursday. |
| Investigators found an iPad belonging to Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot, at his apartment in Düsseldorf that included his browser history from March 16 to March 23 — the day before the crash. | |
| “During this time the user was searching for medical treatments, as well as informing himself about ways and possibilities of killing himself,” they said in a statement. | |
| “On at least one day the person concerned also spent several minutes looking up search terms about cockpit doors and their safety measures,” the statement said. | |
| The disclosure came as investigators in France reported finding the second so-called black box from the March 24 crash, which obliterated the Airbus A320 aircraft and killed all 150 people aboard. | |
| French prosecutors say they believe that Mr. Lubitz, 27, intentionally locked the captain out of the cockpit then set a course into the mountainside. The discovery of the second black box, the flight data recorder, should enable them to determine more precisely what actions Mr. Lubitz took to put the plane into its fatal descent and to prevent the captain from re-entering the cockpit. | |
| Prosecutors in Düsseldorf declined to release any information on the exact terms Mr. Lubitz searched for. They said such detail must remain confidential until all the evidence had been evaluated. “Based on the amount of documents and electronic data, no further results are expected in the coming days,” prosecutors said. | |
| They also said they were working together with the local and state police to evaluate the documents and electronic devices found in Mr. Lubitz’s apartment. The police spent several hours searching his home last Thursday, removing two moving boxes and large plastic trash bags full of possible evidence. | |
| Among the items found was the iPad, which prosecutors said contained “personal correspondence and search terms that lead to the conclusion that the device was used by the co-pilot“ in the days before the crash. | |
| The flight data recorder that was recovered from the crash site on Thursday tracks hundreds of performance statistics from the plane, including its position, speed, altitude and direction. Officials said the recorder would be transported to the offices of France’s accidents investigations bureau, near Paris, for analysis. | |
| An official involved in the investigation that the recorder’s protective case did not appear to have been significantly damaged, raising hopes that the data contained on its flash memory card would be successfully retrieved and synchronized with the voice recorder recovered soon after the crash. | |
| The official, who requested anonymity because the investigation is still continuing, confirmed that the flight data recorder was found intact. Last week, searchers recovered a severely damaged device that they initially believed was the flight data recorder’s external case, leading them to conclude – and President François Hollande to announce — that the recorder’s memory card had been dislodged by the force of the crash. However, the official said that device had subsequently been determined to be an antenna. | |
| Investigators are likely to spend the next several weeks conducting a detailed analysis of the two black box recordings in order to assemble a fuller picture of what happened in the flight’s final moments. | |
| The latest discoveries came as a team of German aviation experts and industry representatives planned to examine whether to introduce changes to cockpit door controls and to the medical assessment of pilots because of the crash, Germany’s transportation minister said Thursday. | |
| Investigators believe that Mr. Lubitz prevented the captain from returning to the cockpit by activating security mechanisms, introduced after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that are designed to prevent outsiders from entering and seizing the controls. | |
| A thorough exploration of what changes, if any, could be made to cockpit doors will be one of the first tasks taken up by the German experts, said Alexander Dobrindt, Germany’s transportation minister. He noted, however, that any changes would require consultation with European and international agencies. | |
| Last week, airlines in Germany and elsewhere in Europe rushed to introduce a requirement that two crew members be present in the cockpit at all times, a rule that American carriers have had in place for many years. | |
| Klaus-Peter Siegloch, president of the German Aviation Association, known by its German abbreviation, B.D.L., said the challenge facing the experts would be to weigh the need to act quickly against the risks of shooting from the hip in a bid to allay public concerns about safety. | |
| “It is important that we do not make any hasty decisions,” Mr. Siegloch said. | |
| Medical examinations for German pilots, especially regarding their psychological health, are another issue that the experts are to discuss, Mr. Dobrindt said. Lufthansa has said that Mr. Lubitz informed the airline in 2009 that he had suffered a bout of deep depression, raising the question of whether he ever should have been at the controls. | |
| Germany is also debating whether to systematically require passengers on flights within Europe to show a piece of personal identification in addition to their ticket before boarding plane. The authorities initially struggled to determine exactly who had been on board the flight from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany, when they ran checks on whether any of the passengers had links to terrorism. | |
| “We realized that it was not immediately clear exactly who was sitting in the plane,” German’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, told the German newspaper Bild. | |
| People flying between some European countries, including Germany and Spain, are no longer required to show their passports when crossing borders. This has led some airlines to allow passengers to board a plane only with a valid ticket, without checking it against any proof of identification. |