Father disputes pilot guilt on Germanwings crash anniversary
BERLIN: Two years to the day after the deadly Germanwings crash in the French Alps, the father of co-pilot Andreas Lubitz was due to hold a press conference yesterday to dispute that his son deliberately downed the plane.
Both the message and the timing of the first public appearance by a member of Lubitz’s close family since the 2015 disaster that claimed 150 lives have been criticised by victims’ families, who will be holding their own anniversary events to mark the tragedy.
German prosecutors in January closed their investigation after concluding that Lubitz, 27, was suicidal and bore sole responsibility for the catastrophe. Now his father, 63-year-old Guenter Lubitz, will present his own findings to reporters alongside journalist Tim van Beveren, whom he called ‘an internationally recognised aerospace expert’.
“Up to now, everyone has believed the theory of a co-pilot who was depressed for a long time, who deliberately crashed his plane into a mountain in a planned act. We are convinced this is false,” the father said in a press release.
The daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that the two men would present the theory of a carbon monoxide leak in the cabin which disabled the co-pilot, who was alone at the controls at the time of the crash.
Lubitz senior told news weekly Die Zeit that the image of the suicidal loner or cold-blooded killer did not correspond with the man he knew.
“Our son was a very responsible person. He had no reason to plan and carry out a suicide, and certainly not to take another 149 innocent people with him,” he said. He accused investigators of gross negligence, and called for a new probe.
“There were very clearly things that weren’t even looked into, perhaps because they didn’t want to look into them,” he said.