German pilot’s ‘ breakdown’ six years ago offers only clue

In Andreas Lubitz’s hometown Thursday, the sense of disbelief was palpable.

Everyone who had encountered the 27- year- old Germanwings pilot described him as quiet, polite and “normal.”

Yet, in what German Chancellor Angela Merkel described as a “new, simply incomprehensible” dimension to the Germanwings air disaster, it appeared that Lubitz was responsible for the deaths of 149 people.

The only clue to what may have driven him to fly the Airbus A320 into an Alpine mountainside was an apparent breakdown he suffered six years ago.

But, according to his employer, Lufthansa, he had fully overcome the depressive episode and was judged “100 per cent” fit to fly.

Lubitz enjoyed an affluent upbringing in the small town of Montabaur. His father was a successful business executive and his mother a piano teacher. He first sat in the cockpit of a light aircraft at the age of 14 and, after a year of instruction under dual controls, was able to fly on his own.

“It was his dream to fly from an early age, so when he went on to gain his commercial licence and fly planes like the Airbus he was very happy and proud,” said Klaus Radker, chairman of the local Luftorts Club Westerwald.

Radker last saw Lubitz last fall, when the Germanwings pilot returned to the club to renew his light aircraft flying licence.

“He seemed normal; proud of his job. He seemed happy,” said Radker. “I find it hard to believe that Andreas ... would deliberately fly his plane into a mountain and kill all those people. If that is true it also means that the results of all the psychological tests he would have had to take to be a pilot were wrong.”

It is believed that in 2009 Lubitz may have suffered some sort of breakdown that forced him to take a break from his pilot training.

A mother of a school friend said Lubitz had told her daughter that he was suffering from depression.

“Apparently he had a burnout,” the girl’s mother told a German newspaper. But she added that her daughter had seen him again just before Christmas and that he had appeared normal.

Carsten Spohr, the chief executive of Lufthansa, said that Lubitz “took a break in his training six years ago. Then he did the tests ( technical and psychological) again. And he was deemed 100 per cent fit to fly.”

But he added: “I am not able to state the reasons why he took the break for several months.”

Lubitz left Montabaur at the age of 20 in 2007 to begin his commercial pilot’s training in the northern German city of Bremen. He was a year into his training when he appears to have suffered the breakdown and took a break, before returning to qualify.

By the time of the accident he was still relatively inexperienced, having notched up only 630 hours of flying time, compared to the flight captain, who had flown for more than 6,000 hours and had worked for Lufthansa for 10 years.

Lubitz was a keen runner and music fan, according to his Facebook page, which features a photograph of him by the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. In 2007, he came 72nd out of 780 participants in a 10- km New Year run in Montabaur.