Lawyer claims Germanwings co-pilot feared losing eyesight

PARIS— The co-pilot who crashed a Germanwings jet into the Alps feared that he was losing his eyesight, and some of the many doctors he consulted felt he was unfit to fly, a French prosecutor said Thursday.

The doctors didn’t report their concerns to Andreas Lubitz’s employers, however, because of German patient privacy laws, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin told reporters in Paris.

Robin couldn’t confirm whether Lubitz’s vision troubles were real or imagined. Robin met with families of victims Thursday and updated reporters on the status of the investigation into the March 24 crash, which killed all 150 people on board. Families are starting to receive remains of their loved ones and will start holding burials in the coming weeks.

Robin said the investigation “has enabled us to confirm without a shadow of a doubt . . . Mr. Andreas Lubitz deliberately destroyed the plane and deliberately killed150 people, including himself.”

Investigators say Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit and flew the plane into a French mountainside after having researched suicide methods and cockpit door rules and practised an unusual descent.

In a new development, Robin said information from his tablet PC showed Lubitz had also investigated vision problems, and “feared going blind” — a career-ending malady for a pilot.

Lubitz had seven medical appointments within the month before the March 24 crash, including three with a psychiatrist, Robin said. Some of the doctors felt Lubitz was psychologically unstable, and some felt he was unfit to fly, but “unfortunately that information was not reported because of medical secrecy requirements,” the prosecutor said.