Families of the Germanwings crash victims say they are still waiting for an apology from those they believe failed to prevent the crash that claimed the lives of 150 people almost a year ago.
In an interview today with The Associated Press, the father of 33-year-old Hewlett-Packard employee Sven Fischenich, expressed anger at the airline's refusal to acknowledge that it should have stopped a pilot with a history of mental illness from taking control of a plane.
"When something happens in a company, the person at the top is responsible, even if he wasn't directly involved himself," said Juergen Fischenich, 62. "Mr. Spohr or Mr. Winkelmann need to apologize, at least," he said, referring to former Germanwings boss Thomas Winkelmann and Carsten Spohr, the CEO of parent company Lufthansa.
France's air accident investigation agency BEA is releasing its final report on the crash Sunday, a day after briefing relatives in Spain and Germany where most of the victims came from.
A preliminary report published in May found the co-pilot of Flight 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf, Andreas Lubitz, practiced sending the jet into a deadly descent hours before the crash, suggesting his actions were premeditated.
Lubitz had previously been treated for depression and suicidal tendencies, and documents seized by prosecutors show he partly hid his medical history from employers.
Germanwings and Lufthansa have strongly denied wrongdoing, insisting that the 27-year-old was certified fit to fly.
But relatives of those killed have pointed to a string of people they say could have raised the alarm and stopped Lubitz, going back to the days when he began training as a pilot in 2008.
"I think it's extremely negligent that he went to x-number of doctors and none of them were able to say anything," said Fischenich who, like his son, works in the print business. Lubitz interrupted his Lufthansa training for several months but was allowed to return in 2009, having received the "all clear" from his doctors though his aviation record now contained the note "SIC" meaning "specific regular examination." Lufthansa said after the crash that it was aware of the depressive episode, but Germanwings, which he joined in 2013, said it had no knowledge of his illness.
