10 things you need to know about Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz

Lubitz has been identified as the co-pilot who crashed flight 4U 9525 into the French Alps. Is there anything in his background that highlights his motivations behind this act

On Thursday, Lufthansa’s budget airline Germanwings flight 4U 9525, which took off from Barcelona for Dusseldorf, crashed in the French Alps, killing all 150 passengers and crew on board. Analyses of the cockpit flight recorder indicate that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed the plane into the mountains. Nothing exceptional in his background seems to suggest that he was motivated by any terrorist ideology. So was he a lone wolf, or just a psychologically troubled individual? Read on to find out more about who Andreas Lubitz was:
 

1. Andreas Lubitz grew up in Montabaur, a town in western Germany which has a population of about 15,000 people. Media reports describe him as “enjoying an affluent upbringing.” His father was a businessman and mother, a piano teacher.
 

2. Lubitz showed a keen interest in flying at the age of 14 and began his career at LSC Westerwald club, a glider club outside his hometown of Montabaur.
 

3. Running was another of his passions; he was often seen by neighbours jogging around the neighbourhood.
 

4. In 2007, he graduated from high school at the age of 20 and enrolled for training as a commercial pilot at Lufthansa’s training school in Bremen. He also trained in the US at Phoenix, Arizona. Lufthansa’s pilots have been trained at Arizona airfields for more than 40 years.
 

5. A report by the New York Times has quoted Carsten Spohr, Lufthansa’s CEO, as saying that Lubitz took a break from training. The reasons are unknown because German privacy rules prevent Lufthansa from sharing these details, but the records will be available to prosecutors.
 

6. However, the German daily, Bild Zeitung, reported that about six years ago, in 2009, Lubitz took a break from training which lasted several months. The paper mentions he suffered a breakdown, which has been described as a burnout. It even mentioned that he underwent psychiatric treatment for 18 months and did not succeed in his pilot training because of depression. However, the newspaper stated this bit of information has not been confirmed by official sources. 

7. Lubitz was allowed to resume his training and he subsequently passed all medical, psychological and flying tests.

8. Despite the interruption in training, Lubitz underwent security checks on January 27 this year as well as in 2008 and 2010 and he was deemed “100% fit to fly without any restrictions or conditions.” 
 

9. Lubitz met and even exceeded the standard of the FAA, a US-based agency, whose parameters are considered the highest in the world. 
 

10. While waiting for a slot to be a pilot after completing his training, he worked as a flight attendant. He became co-pilot for Germanwings in September 2013 and had flown a total of 630 hours at the time of the crash.