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‘One day everyone will know my name’

The Germanwings co-pilot who crashed his Airbus in the French Alps, killing all 150 aboard, reportedly told his ex-girlfriend “one day everyone will know my name”.

The 26-year-old flight attendant known as Maria W has told German newspaper Bild Andreas Lubitz last year said to her: “One day I’m going to do something that will change the whole system, and everyone will know my name and remember.”

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Who was Germanwings copilot Andreas Lubitz?

Germanwings copilot crashed deliberately: prosecutor

The plane’s black box voice recorder indicates Lubitz, 27, locked his captain out of the cockpit on Tuesday and deliberately flew Flight 9525 into a mountainside, French officials say, in what appears to have been a case of suicide and mass killing.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls says all signs “point towards an act we can’t describe: criminal, crazy, suicidal”.

German prosecutors say searches of Lubitz’s homes netted “medical documents that suggest an existing illness and appropriate medical treatment”, including “torn-up and current sick leave notes, among them one covering the day of the crash”.

They have not specified the illness.

According to Bild, Maria W flew with Lubitz on European flights for five months in 2014, during which time they are believed to have been romantically involved.

If Lubitz did deliberately crash the plane, “it is because he understood that because of his health problems, his big dream of a job at Lufthansa, as captain and as a long-haul pilot was practically impossible”, she told the paper.

The pair separated “because it became increasingly clear he had a problem”, she said, adding that at night he would wake up and scream “we’re going down” and was plagued by nightmares.

Bild earlier reported that Lubitz sought psychiatric help for “a bout of serious depression” in 2009 and was still getting assistance from doctors.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said Lubitz had suspended his training, which began in 2008, “for a certain period” before qualifying for the Airbus A320 in 2013.

Germanwings said on Friday it had offered victims’ families “up to 50,000 ($A69,565) per passenger” towards immediate costs.

It says the assistance, which the families would not be required to pay back, is separate from the compensation it will likely have to pay.

Lubitz lived with his parents in his small home town of Montabaur in the Rhineland and kept an apartment in Duesseldorf.

Prosecutors said the evidence found in the two homes “backs up the suspicion” he “hid his illness from his employer and colleagues”.

They said they had not found a suicide note, confession or anything pointing to a “political or religious” motive but it would take “several days” to evaluate everything.

Lubitz locked himself in the cockpit when the captain left to use the toilet, then refused his desperate entreaties to reopen the door, French prosecutor Brice Robin said.

According to Bild, the captain even tried hacking through the armoured door with an axe.

* Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467.

 

 

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