Lubitz researched suicide methods, cockpit door before crash

Andreas Lubitz made internet searches for ‘‘ways to commit suicide’’ and information about cockpit door security in the week before he crashed his Germanwings plane with the loss of all 150 lives on board.

German prosecutors said that a tablet computer used by the 27-year-old co-pilot revealed searches for suicide methods as well as ‘‘cockpit doors and their security precautions’’.

The computer was retrieved from the apartment Lubitz shared with his girlfriend in Dusseldorf and the city prosecutor’s office revealed that the searches were made in the days running up to the crash on March 24.

Details of its secrets emerged as investigators said they had found the second black box from the Airbus A320 and the airline said that it was unaware of the pilot’s history of depression.

‘‘He concerned himself on one hand with medical treatment methods, on the other hand with types and ways of going about a suicide,’’ said Ralf Herrenbruck, a spokesman for Dusseldorf prosecutors.

‘‘In addition, on at least one day [Lubitz] concerned himself with search terms about cockpit doors and their security precautions.’’

The computer searches took place between March 16 and 23.

The second black box, the flight data recorder, will be analysed for further clues to the actions of Lubitz, who apparently locked the captain out of the cockpit and was at the controls breathing steadily as the plane hit the ground.

Germanwings said it was not made aware that Lubitz suffered from depression during his training with their parent company, Lufthansa, four years before he joined the low-cost airline.

Lufthansa said on Wednesday that Lubitz informed the airline by email in 2009 that he had a ‘‘previous episode of severe depression’’ and German investigators said that he was treated at the time for suicidal tendencies.

‘‘We did not know this,’’ said Vanessa Torres, a spokeswoman for Germanwings, which hired Lubitz in September 2013. She declined to explain the discrepancy but noted that Lufthansa said that Lubitz held a ‘‘fully valid class 1 medical certificate’’ from the German Federal Aviation Office at the time of the crash.

Lubitz also seems to have misled doctors treating him recently for depression and an eye condition, telling them that he was off work when, in fact, he carried on flying.

Investigators found torn up sick notes in his apartment.

The German Government and the German Aviation Association (BDL) announced the creation of an expert task force to examine what went wrong in the crash.

The group will consider whether changes are needed to cockpit doors or pilot procedures for passing medicals, including ‘‘the question of recognising psychological peculiarities’’.

Klaus-Peter Siegloch, the head of the BDL, said the task force would work quickly but would not reach ‘‘over-hasty’’ conclusions. ‘‘We have no taboos about what the task force will discuss,’’ Siegloch said.

The German newspaper Bild has revealed that Lubitz was being prescribed Lorazepam, a powerful anti-depressant.

Users are recommended not to drive while taking the drug.

At the crash scene, investi- gators said that they had found mobile phones amid the debris but the phones had not yet been thoroughly examined.

Both Bild and the French magazine Paris Match said that they had seen a video from the final moments of Flight 4U9525 recorded on a mobile phone.

‘‘The scene was so chaotic that it was hard to identify people, but the sounds of the screaming passengers made it perfectly clear that they were aware of what was about to happen to them,’’ Paris Match said.

The newly discovered black box will provide a detailed history of the aircraft’s performance and control inputs, which investigators will use to confirm the sequence of events.

Britain’s The Times