Anger over new findings

School victims’ town shocked, angry

THE town and school of the 16 pupils who died in a plane disaster in the French Alps said they were shocked by the news that the co-pilot may have deliberately crashed the jet.

And in the wake of the revelations, a number of airlines including EasyJet, Canadian charter airline Air Transat and low-cost carrier Norwegian Air Shuttle said yesterday they would require two people in the cockpit at all times for safety reasons.

The co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, 28, initiated the plane's descent while alone at the controls, and refused to open the locked cockpit door for the pilot, who was believed to have gone to the toilet.

“I am stunned, angry, deeply shocked and speechless by the latest news,” Bo- do Klimpel, the mayor of the small northwestern town of Haltern, where the pupils went to school, said.

“I’m asking myself when this nightmare will end,” Klimpel told a televised news conference after investigators said they believed the co-pilot of the Germanwings jet had deliberately slammed a jet into the French Alps, killing himself and the other 149 people on board.

“It’s bad enough for the families to learn of the death of loved ones in an accident. But when it’s clear that an individual may possibly have deliberately caused the accident, it takes on an even worse dimension,” a visibly stunned Klimpel said.

The 16 teens –14 girls and two boys – were among at least 75 Germans who made up half the death toll of 150.

They and their two women teachers had been on a weeklong exchange trip near Barcelona, paying a reciprocal visit after Spanish youngsters came in December to Haltern.

The head of their Joseph Koenig Gymnasium school said he had been informed of the latest developments by phone by the regional prime minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, at 1.20pm, too late to inform the other pupils as lessons had already finished for the day.

But he had informed the school’s teachers.

Head teacher Ulrich Wessel said they were all dazed “. . . that a possible suicide can lead to the deaths of 149 other people”.

“It leaves us angry, perplexed, stunned.”

Wessel did not want to speculate about what may have driven Lubitz to crash the jet. – AFP