Airline bosses mum on Flight 9525 co-pilot controversy
The CEOs of Germanwings and parent company Lufthansa on Wednesday visited a memorial near the site of last week's crash in the French Alps but shed little light on the growing controversy over the co-pilot's mental issues.
Also Wednesday, authorities said they had completed the recovery of human remains. The crash site, a steep ravine more than 6,000 feet above sea level, remains littered with plane debris and personal effects of the 150 people who died in the crash.
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr and his Germanwings counterpart, Thomas Winkelmann, landed by helicopter in Seyne-les-Alpes before traveling to the small village of Le Vernet near the crash site and laying flowers at the stone monument.
"We have the greatest respect for the dedication and the professionalism with which people are working here to investigate and process this tragedy," Spohr said. "We appreciate the immense psychological and physical strain that these helpers are working under. We cannot thank them enough."
He said the airlines would "do everything" to support the location's transformation into a place of mourning for relatives and friends of the victims and to "restore this beautiful countryside as much as we can" when the investigation is finished.
Both men walked away without comment when media members pressed them for more information concerning when Lufthansa officials learned that Andreas Lubitz, co-pilot of doomed Flight 9525, had suffered an "episode of severe depression" while training for his pilot license.
A day earlier, Lufthansa revealed that Lubitz had disclosed the episode in 2009 in an email to the airline's Flight Training Pilot School. At the time, he was returning to training after what the airline called an "interruption" of several months.
"Thereafter the co-pilot received the medical certificate confirming his fitness to fly," Lufthansa said in a statement. Lufthansa said it had turned over all relevant documents to crash investigators.
The Düsseldorf-bound Airbus A320 slammed into the mountains less than an hour after departing Barcelona on March 24. Authorities, citing cockpit voice recordings, said they believe Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit and intentionally crashed the plane.
German prosecutors told the Associated Press that Lubitz's medical records referred to "suicidal tendencies," but visits to doctors since then showed no record of any suicidal or violent outbursts.
David Gregory, Dorothy Day professor of law and executive director of the Center for Labor and Employment Law at St. John's University, said there was "every indication" of criminal gross negligence, which could result in criminal prosecutions, "posing the possibility of damages in numbers that could threaten the very future of the airline."
On Tuesday, French and German publications Paris Match and Bild said they had obtained cellphone video taken inside the plane in the seconds before the crash. They said the video was found amid the wreckage by a source close to the investigation.
French police said the video was a hoax, but both publications maintained the authenticity was unquestionable. "The editorial staff at Paris Match watched the video and we all agreed that the document was perfectly valid and corresponded exactly to the investigation's scenario," reporter Frédéric Helbert said.
Lt. Col. Jean-Marc Menichini said investigators "will continue looking for bodies, but at the crash site there are no longer any visible remains," AP reported. French President Francois Hollande has said all the victims could be identified through DNA testing by week's end.