Did Germanwings pilot use crash to commit suicide?
MONTABAUR, Germany -- The flight into an Alpine mountain began years ago.
Prosecutors in Germany say Andreas Lubitz was treated for "suicidal tendencies" before he got his pilot's license. Last week, when Lubitz strapped into the cockpit on a lonely journey with 149 others, he left behind bottles of antidepressants and a doctor's warning that he should not fly.
A video of Andreas Lubitz learning to fly a glider shows a young man with a dream coming true.
"Why is it so calm today," he asks. "It's unbelievable."
His eventual employers had no way of knowing he would turn his dream into a nightmare.
On Monday, German prosecutor's spokesman Christoph Kumpa said Lubitz had been treated as a suicide risk "for an extended period of time" before he received a pilot's license.
Transcripts of the cockpit voice recorder leaked to a German newspaper quote Lubitz as saying "hopefully" and "we'll see" when asked to go over landing procedures.
The captain takes a bathroom break and comes back to a locked cockpit door.
He knocks, bangs, then shouts: "For God's sake open the door!"
Passengers scream.
An automatic warning sounds: "Terrain. Pull up."
The only sound from Lubitz is normal breathing.
There's a noise like metal scraping a mountaintop, more screams ... then nothing.
Investigators found antidepressants in Lubitz' apartment, along with torn up doctor's notes excusing him from work on the day of the crash.
But, Kumpa said, those notes didn't give any hint Lubitz might be suicidal or aggressive.
German doctors have a list of ailments, including psychological issues, that preclude a pilot from flying. But it's not public and prosecutors say Lubitz hid his condition from his employers anyway.
Pilots undergo rigorous physical exams but psychological testing is limited to self-reporting in the form of a questionnaire.
Lufthansa First Officer Markus Wahl of the German Pilots Association doesn't believe more psychological testing is the answer.
"I don't want that now that each and every cockpit crew will be under sweeping suspicion," he said. "Pilots are part of the security culture, not of the safety problem."
A murder commission of 50 special investigators has been set up and about 100 more police are involved in the effort to identify victims and figure out how and why they died.