Chilling Internet searches
Officials say the German copilot explored suicide and cockpit security systems
BERLIN — The copilot of Germanwings Flight 9525, believed to have intentionally crashed the passenger jet in the French Alps and killing all 150 people aboard, searched online for information about suicide methods and cockpit door security systems, German prosecutors said Thursday.
The revelation came as French officials said that searchers had found the plane’s flight data recorder at the site of the March 24 crash.
Investigators reviewing evidence taken from copilot Andreas Lubitz’s apartment in the German city of Duesseldorf traced the search engine history on his computer tablet from March 16 to March 23.
The copilot “concerned himself on one hand with medical treatment methods, on the other hand with types and ways of going about a suicide,” prosecutor Ralf Herrenbrueck said in a statement.
“On at least one day the person in question also spent several minutes with search terms about cockpit doors and their security arrangements,” he said.
The German newspaper Bild reported that Lubitz told his doctors that he was on sick leave and concealed the fact that he was still flying. According to Bild, Lubitz was seeking treatment for trauma and vision problems after a car accident at the end of 2014.
Documents from Germany’s air transport regulator later revealed that Lubitz had sought psychiatric help for a bout of serious depression in 2009 and was still getting assistance from doctors.
Meanwhile, French public prosecutor Brice Robin confirmed that the aircraft’s second “black box,” the digital flight data recorder, had been found.
“This black box was the same color as the rock,” he said. “It was found to the left of a ravine that had already searched, but it was embedded. It had to be dug out. It had obviously been in a fire, because it is charred. However, its general state leads us to hope there is a possibility that it can be exploited.”
He said the device should contain 500 records tracing airspeed, altitude, engine status and other technical data that are vital for the investigation.
The flight recorder was being flown to Paris on Thursday evening for examination by experts at the French air accident investigation bureau, he said.
“It will give us all the details of the flight itself, from its departure from Barcelona to the crash, and above all the actions of the pilot,” Robin said. “It will tell us if there was only one pilot operating at the time of the crash.... It’s a complement to us understanding the final minutes of this flight.”
Audio recordings obtained from the previously discovered cockpit voice recorder prompted French prosecutors to surmise that Lubitz had locked the pilot out of the cockpit before intentionally crashing the plane into a mountainside in the southern Alps.
The prosecutor said 40 cellphones had been found in the wreckage, all of them in a “very bad state.” This information came 24 hours after Bild and the magazine Paris Match reported they had seen a cellphone video made by a passenger in the final moments of the doomed flight. Authorities have disputed their claim.
Robin said that search teams had found 2,285 DNA strands providing 150 different profiles, but that only long and painstaking work to match the postmortem DNA with that of the victims would show whether all had been identified.
Special correspondents Hassan reported from Berlin and Willsher from Paris.