Germanwings co-pilot was ‘fit for flying without restriction’
The co-pilot, who appears to have deliberately crashed a Germanwings airliner into the Alps on Tuesday, was a German national who was not on any terrorist watch list.
Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said the co-pilot as Andreas Lubitz, 28, locked the pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately worked to ‘destroy the plane’.
Investigators said the co-pilot was ‘not known by us’ to have any links to extremism or terrorism.
He said the co-pilot pressed the buttons of the flight monitoring system to put into action the descent of the aeroplane, adding that this action on the altitude controls can only be deliberate.
In a press conference, Carsten Spohr, CEO of Deutsche Lufthansa AG said that the co-pilot had been ‘fit for flying without restriction’ adding that despite all safety procedures, you can never prevent such an ‘individual event’.
The news conference heard that as part of the regulations brought in post 9/11, pilots can open the locked cockpit door using a code, in case of a co-pilot losing consciousness, but that this can be over-ridden for five minutes from a button in the cockpit.
Spohr confirmed that there is no protocol to have a second member of the flight crew in the cockpit if one of the pilots leave, adding that European regulations do not require it.
Diane
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