Grieving father calls on airlines to look after pilots

A child scampers down the aisle Saturday during a special Mass for the victims of the Germanwings crash at the cathedral Notre Dame de Bourg in Digne-les-Bains, France.
A child scampers down the aisle Saturday during a special Mass for the victims of the Germanwings crash at the cathedral Notre Dame de Bourg in Digne-les-Bains, France.

SISTERON, France -- The father of one of the victims of last week's plane crash in the French Alps called Saturday for airlines to take greater care over pilots' welfare.

photo

AP

French Red Cross members join others Saturday in a tribute to the victims of the Germanwings plane crash in front of a stone monument set up at the site of the crash in the French Alps.

Prosecutors say they believe German co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately slammed the Germanwings aircraft into a mountain and that he hid an illness from his employers -- including a sick note for the day of the crash.

"I believe the airlines should be more transparent and our finest pilots looked after properly," said Philip Bramley, from Hull in northern England. "We put our lives and our children's lives in their hands."

His 28-year-old son, Paul Bramley, was one of 150 people killed in Tuesday's disaster.

Speaking near the site of the crash, Philip Bramley said Lubitz's motive was irrelevant. "What is relevant is that it should never happen again; my son and everyone on that plane should not be forgotten, ever," he said.

Germanwings, the Lufthansa subsidiary that Lubitz joined in 2013, declined Saturday to comment when asked whether the company was aware of any health problems he might have had. But it said he had passed all required medical check-ups.

Aviation experts say those checks are stringent, but focus mainly on physical health. Pilots' mental health is usually only assessed once, before companies decide whether to admit them to a training program -- and even then, a determined person could hide a latent problem.

"The test that will get you into a Lufthansa flight training program is a very hard test, and this is why most people who get into those pilot classes will train for those tests," said David Hasse, the editor-in-chief of German aviation website airliners.de.

"There are coaching facilities, companies that are specialized in training people on how to pass those tests, and they will also advise you on how to behave in the psychological tests."

Lufthansa said pilots are required to pass an annual medical test overseen by the German Federal Aviation Office, but the company itself doesn't perform checks on its employees and relies on them to report any problems.

German prosecutors, who have been trying to determine what caused Lubitz to make such a decision, met with their French counterparts Saturday to discuss the preliminary findings of their investigation.

Duesseldorf prosecutors say Lubitz hid evidence of an illness from his employers -- including a torn-up doctor's note that would have kept him off work the day authorities say he crashed Flight 9525.

Searches conducted at Lubitz's homes in Duesseldorf and in the town of Montabaur turned up documents pointing to "an existing illness and appropriate medical treatment," but no suicide note was found, said Ralf Herrenbrueck, of the Duesseldorf prosecutors' office.

An official with knowledge of the investigation said Saturday that the police found antidepressants during a search Thursday of his apartment in Dusseldorf.

Prosecutors didn't specify what illness Lubitz may have been suffering or say whether it was mental or physical. German media have reported that the 27-year-old suffered from depression.

Duesseldorf University Hospital said Friday that Lubitz had been a patient there over the past two months and last went in for a "diagnostic evaluation" March 10. It declined to provide details, but denied reports it had treated Lubitz for depression.

Meanwhile, two officials with knowledge of the investigation said Saturday that Lubitz sought treatment for vision problems.

One person with knowledge of the investigation said the authorities had not ruled out the possibility that the vision problem could have been psychosomatic.

Lubitz was being treated by several neurologists and psychiatrists for his sickness, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing details of the investigation.

Psychosomatic disorders are physical diseases that are thought to have mental reasons such as stress and anxiety.

It appears that Lubitz did not tell the airline about his vision concerns. The European Aviation Safety Agency has vision standards and pilots are tested every year as part of an annual medical exam, a spokesman for the agency said.

A spokesman for the Dusseldorf hospital reached by phone Saturday would not comment on whether he had sought treatment for vision problems, citing patient privacy laws.

Colleagues and acquaintances described Lubitz as an affable man in good physical health who was focused on a career as a pilot.

Detlef Adolf, the manager of a Burger King near Montabaur, said Lubitz worked there as a teenager and was "reliable and punctual."

Frank Woiton, another Germanwings pilot, said Lubitz told him he wanted to become a long-distance pilot and fly Airbus A380 or Boeing 747 planes. Woiton, who like Lubitz comes from Montabaur, said he met Lubitz for the first time three weeks ago when they flew Duesseldorf-to-Vienna and back together.

Woiton told German public broadcaster WDR on Friday that Lubitz "flew well and knew how to handle the plane."

Lubitz also frequented a gliding club near the crash site as a child with his parents, according to Francis Kefer, a member of the club in the town of Sisteron.

Lubitz's parents have left France and will be questioned by authorities when they arrive back in Germany, according to French TV channel i-Tele. They didn't speak to French investigators, the channel reported.

Kefer told i-Tele that Lubitz's family and other members of the gliding club in his hometown of Montabaur went to the region regularly between 1996 and 2003.

The crash site is about 30 miles from the Aero-club de Sisteron glider airfield.

Prosecutors believe, based on their initial findings from the cockpit voice recorder, that Lubitz was alone in the cockpit and barred the captain from re-entering as he flew the Airbus A320 into the mountainside.

The plane shattered into thousands of pieces, and police are toiling to retrieve the remains of the victims and the aircraft from a hard-to-reach Alpine valley near the village of Le Vernet.

From 8:30 a.m. until 6 p.m., helicopters ferry crews into the ravine. It is too steep to land, so the 40 crew members are winched down singly or in pairs. Each investigator is linked to a mountaineer familiar with the terrain and with the skills to keep them safe.

"We have not found a single body intact," Col. Patrick Touron, one of France's leading forensic investigators, said Friday from Seyne-les-Alpes. "DNA will be the determining element that will lead to identification."

Between 400 and 600 biological elements have been retrieved and five scientists are in Seyne-les-Alpes to speed the process, he said. The families that arrived during the week provided objects that belonged to the deceased, and some gave their own DNA samples to help cross-reference the forensic information found in the remains.

The moment a piece of human remains is found, forensic scientists have been taking a DNA sample immediately, from fears it could further decompose, Touron said. Jewelry and dental information also are key to the identification process, he said.

Touron noted the bodies would be returned to the families as soon as possible, but warned it would take time.

Searchers also scoured the debris for the flight data recorder -- important because it tracks changes made by the crew to the controls and could help confirm the voice recorder findings. The plane's first black box, containing the cockpit recordings, was recovered within hours of the crash.

Meanwhile, a special Mass was held Saturday in the nearby town of Digne-les-Bains to honor the victims and support their families.

Lufthansa is providing special flights to the crash site for the victims' families and offering to support them financially. The airline is giving as much as $54,500 per crash victim for families to cover immediate expenses, Germanwings said Saturday. Families don't have to repay that money, and the payments won't affect additional claims that they may have, the airline said.

Germany is planning a memorial service April 17 at the Cologne Cathedral. Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck will be among those attending, Heidi Renz, spokesman at North Rhine-Westphalia state chancellery, said by phone.

Information for this article was contributed by Milos Krivokapic, Frank Jordans, Jill Lawless, David McHugh, Nicolas Garriga, Elaine Ganley, Lori Hinnant, Greg Keller, Laurent Cipriani, Joan Lowy and Thomas Adamson of The Associated Press; by Melissa Eddy, Nicholas Kulish, Nicola Clark and Jack Ewing of The New York Times; and by Nicholas Brautlecht and Andrew Roberts of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 03/29/2015

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