New details about co-pilot Andreas Lubitz’s family appear, who, according to German media, deliberately crashed the Germanwings plane with 150 people on board in the Alps.
Thus, according to Donau Kurier, his grandfather has moved from Romania to West Germany in the early 70s, digi24.ro informs. Co-pilot grandfather, Hermand, born in Romania, was a pediatrician and stayed in Germany after attending a conference on medical topics.
He found a job as a primary physician at Children’s Hospital in Neuburg, Bavaria. His wife was employed as a teacher at a local school. The publication does not specify whether grandmother is originally from Romania too. They had a daughter, Ursula, mother of Andreas Lubitz, who now lives in Germany and is a pianist. It is likely that the co-pilot’s mother was born in Romania also.
According to local newspaper, German Andreas Lubitz often went to visit his grandparents in Neuburg. They just moved a few months ago to their daughter in Montabaur.
On the other hand, the co-pilot suspected of crashing a passenger jet in the Alps may have been suffering from a detached retina but investigators are unsure whether his vision problems had physical or psychological causes, Bild am Sonntag said. The German newspaper also reported how the captain of the Germanwings Airbus had screamed “open the damn door!” to the co-pilot as he tried to get back into the locked cockpit before the jet crashed last Tuesday.
Another German newspaper, Welt am Sonntag, quoted a senior investigator as saying the 27-year-old co-pilot Andreas Lubitz “was treated by several neurologists and psychiatrists” and that a number of medications had been found in his apartment.
Police also discovered personal notes that showed Lubitz suffered from “severe subjective overstress symptoms,” he added.
Lufthansa, the parent company of the budget airline, said the carrier was unaware of a psychosomatic or any other illness affecting Lubitz. “We have no information of our own on that,” a Lufthansa spokesman said.
A spokesman for state prosecutors in Duesseldorf declined to comment on Sunday on the various media reports, adding there would be no official statement before Monday. The mass circulation Bild am Sonntag said investigators had found evidence that Lubitz feared losing his eyesight, apparently because of a detached retina. However, it was unclear whether this was due to an organic failure or psychosomatic illness, when physical problems are thought to be caused or aggravated by psychological factors such as stress.