Andreas Lubitz, who was flying the Germanwings jetliner that slammed into a mountain in the French Alps on Tuesday, sought treatment for vision problems that may have jeopardized his ability to continue working as a pilot, two officials with knowledge of the investigation said Saturday.
The revelation of the possible trouble with his eyes added a new element to the emerging portrait of the 27-year-old German pilot, who the authorities say was also being treated for psychological issues and had hidden aspects of his medical condition from his employer. The police found antidepressants during a search of his apartment here Thursday, an official said Saturday.
It is not clear how severe his eye problems were or how they might have been related to his psychological condition. One person with knowledge of the investigation said the authorities had not ruled out the possibility that the vision problem could have been psychosomatic.
Lubitz, the co-pilot, was alone in the cockpit of the Airbus A320 jetliner on the flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, ignoring demands from the captain to be let back in, when the plane crashed. The French prosecutor in the case, drawing from cockpit voice recordings and other data about the flight, has said that Lubitz deliberately guided the plane, with another 149 people on board, into the mountains.
The information available so far about a possible motive remains sketchy, and it is not yet clear whether his apparent decision to crash the plane was triggered by a particular development in his life. Investigators and journalists continue to search for clues from every period and corner of his life, including his relationship with a longtime girlfriend and a report in a German newspaper on Saturday that another woman with whom he had a relationship had described him as unstable.
Many questions remain unanswered, if not unanswerable, including whether his decisions in the cockpit Tuesday morning were impulsive or planned.
Meanwhile its reported Lubitz worried his health problems would dash his dreams and vowed one day to do something to "change the whole system", according to an an ex-girlfriend.
The 26-year-old woman, identified only as Maria W, recalled in an interview with the mass-circulation Bild daily how Andreas Lubitz told her: "One day I'm going to do something that will change the whole system, and everyone will know my name and remember."
"I never knew what he meant by that but now it makes sense," it quoted the "shocked" flight attendant as saying.
Friends and acquaintances have repeatedly said how important flying was to Lubitz, who began piloting gliders at a flying club near his hometown at the age of 14.
Police officers searching Lubitz's apartment here in Dusseldorf on Thursday found notes from various doctors testifying that he was too ill to work, including on the day of the crash. Prosecutors refused to comment on the illness specified in the notes. One had been torn up and thrown in the wastebasket.
It appears that Lubitz did not tell the airline about his vision concerns. The European Aviation Safety Agency has vision standards and pilots are tested every year as part of an annual medical exam, a spokesman for the agency said.
The Dusseldorf University Hospital said in a statement Friday that Lubitz had been evaluated at its clinic in February and as recently as March 10. Reached by phone Saturday, a spokeswoman would not comment on whether he had sought treatment for vision problems, citing patient privacy laws. The hospital has an eye clinic. On Friday the hospital denied speculation that Lubitz had sought treatment for depression there.
With AAP
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