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ANDREAS GUENTER LUBITZ was the 28-year-old co-pilot of Germanwings flight 4U9525 which crashed into the French Alps on Tuesday morning.
Today, following analysis of flight recordings, it has emerged that Lubitz most likely crashed the plane deliberately having been left alone in the cockpit after the senior pilot exited to use the bathroom.
Lubitz hailed from the town of Montabaur, about 60 miles north of Frankfurt in Germany’s Rhineland, where he still lived with his parents.
His Facebook page, which has already been memorialised, lists interests including DJ David Guetta, his local Burger King, aviation humour, and a technical website about the A320 model of aircraft that crashed so tragically.
As well as being an aspiring pilot in his teens it seems Lubitz was a keen runner.
He obtained his glider pilot’s license (having joined a club in order to ‘fulfill his dream of flying’ say acquaintances) as a teenager before being accepted as a Lufthansa pilot trainee.
This involved finishing a gruelling German college preparatory school, according to fellow gliding-club member Peter Ruecker.
Ruecker has described Lubitz as a ‘quiet, but friendly’ young man.
“He was happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well. He gave off a good feeling,” said Ruecker, who watched Lubitz learn to fly.
Lubitz joined Lufthansa’s cadet school in 2008, and trained in Bremen, Germany and Phoenix, Arizona.
It seems that, in 2009, Lubitz interrupted his training for some months, without providing details. Unconfirmed reports suggest that he may have been suffering with burnout and depression at the time.
Lubitz is included in a list of certified pilots on the American Federal Aviation Administration’s website.
His certification lists his medical date as being June 2010 (due to expire in 2015), and that he is ‘English Proficient’.
At a press conference earlier today chief executive of Lufthansa, Germanwings parent company, Carsten Spohr said that he could not say why Lubitz would have intentionally crashed the plane.
He had passed all flight training and psychological screening and had no record of problems, Spohr said.
He said he couldn’t comment on Lubitz’s break in training, but that he was tested again for flight fitness after returning.
Lubitz officially joined Germanwings as a flight officer in September 2013 and had 630 flight hours to his name at the time of the crash, according to Lufthansa (which made him very much the junior pilot on flight 4U9525).
Prior to qualifying as a flight officer Lubitz served with the airline as a flight attendant.
Both pilots of the crashed plane had undertaken DLR psychiatric tests which are standard throughout the airline industry.
“Anybody who interrupts the training has to do a lot of tests so the competence and fitness would be checked again,” said Spohr.
His performance was without any criticism. Nothing at all was striking. Not in our worst nightmares would we ever have imagined such a tragedy.
In a company like ours where we are so proud of our selection criteria, our safety criteria, this is even more of a shock for us than it is for the general public.
German interior minister Thomas de Maizière said separately today that their security forces had no inkling that Mr. Lubitz had any sort of extremist history.
“According to our present information…we have no indication of any kind of terrorist background for him,” de Maizière said in a televised statement.
Earlier today Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin revealed that Lubitz deliberately piloted the Germanwings flight into the ground.
“He never said a word,” said Robin of Lubitz’s actions in the eight minutes he spent alone in the cockpit before the crash.
He took this action, for reasons we still don’t know why.
We can only deduce he destroyed the plane. He voluntarily allowed the plane to lose altitude.
I think the victims only realised at the last moment because on the recording you only hear the screams on the last moments.
Asked about the possibility Lubitz had committed suicide, Robin replied “when you kill 150 people, I do not call that suicide.”
- Additional reporting AP
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Gosh the pay is awful
Thats just for 38 hours a week…. They love the double bubble on the weekend..
Expenses that can be claimed are lovely though, I hear.
What expenses? You’re showing your true ignorance now gravytrain. I’d say you’d want to question your”source” and don’t just assume that what you hear is correct. Maybe try looking at gra website to see what the pay entails instead of trying to troll by using word like expenses..
Double bubble for the weekend? I think it’s 12 euro extra for a Saturday with an allowance for Sundays. They work 5 Sundays out of 10. I think I’d rather be with the family.
Aoife the salary is probably only half of the picture, there’s a list of allowances available to Gardai which would make a politician blush, it really is a long list and a lot of the payments are tax free. I’m not bashing Gards by the way because I have nothing but respect for the job they do and I would not do it myself so they deserve what ever they get. but the picture painted of Gardai not earning much money seems to be a misrepresentation to me.
Available but not possible to claim as a lot of them are posts so they don’t get anti social hours allowances and a lot aren’t available to Garda rank. New recruits unfortunately don’t even get the rent allowance which is core pay for every one else. It’s tough money starting off.
That’s basic pay. They get allowances on top of the basic. It’s still not great pay but the allowances are a big help I believe.
Teddington did you actually read what you just posted? Most of those allowances are *potential* and only apply if you’re stationed in the Aran Islands or an instructor or something.
Most Gardaí wouldn’t be eligible for the big ones, so your crusade to tar them all as money grabbers and worse than politicians is shameful.
Lads will you all calm down the information is all there and all I’m doing is highlighting it, once you’re out of Templemore you get a €4K tax free housing allowance, that’s a required €8K payrise to anyone but a Garda. Pay in every profession is poor at the start and increases as you go but if you add €8K to every pay scale on the list things look a lot better already and that’s only one of the allowances.
Teddington that’s €4,017 rent allowance they get every year. Equates to about 300 quid a month.
Since they do a fairly thankless job for quite bad would you really begrudge them something that already exists as a social welfare payment?
*for quite bad pay I meant there, sorry
Rock Stoneballs I don’t know why everyone is getting on my back here, I have no issues with Garda pay I just think that the figures that are constantly thrown about are a misrepresentation. €300 quid a month is not a bad little tax free payment every month, it’s a €600 increase to anyone else before tax so I was merely pointing out that the pay scales are a little bit misleading.
You might say you’re doing a very thankless job for very bad recompense then eh?
Teddington how much are you getting paid to sit on your hole and post on the journal :-)
Teddington. ….. The rent allowance is taxable. …. your info is wrong. And the article is about new recruits who don’t get this rent allowance.
All allowances are taxable. Fact
This link is 6 years old !! Dosent take into USC,pay cuts ,pension levy etc !!
On the street for under 24k a year? It’s definitely not a job you do for the money,
Not tax free dude… Paid weekly in core pay and has paye, usc, prsi, superannuation and pension levy deducted from as all allowances have… All those deductions add up to approximately 60%…. None of the allowances are tax free despite what you think
This is not tax free and not applicable to new entrants.
I believe that the rent allowance was introduced back when the gardai were fighting for a pay increase and the government didn’t want increases across the board. It is not tax free.
So after 19 years you get to a salary where you can start thinking about saving for a house deposit in Dublin. Think I’ll give it a miss thanks.
Forget the salary it really doesn’t even begin to paint the picture, there’s a list of allowances as long as your arm (many tax free) on top of it, I don’t know why they bother with this idiotic idea of paying them a low salary and then bouncing it up with a host of other payments, it might be because they can give them tax free if they’re allowances instead of salary.
@ Cardio … LOL !! Plenty of red thumbs from the Gardai no doubt , the longer we keep them occupied reading these comments the more time we give those who’re really take a stand for justice, Liberty and against corruption : IRISH WATER PROTESTORS
95% of garda allowances are taxable….your completely wrong.
No allowances in Garda are tax free. Fact
A Garda pulls over a farmer on the road and says do you realise your wife fell out on road side a mile back… Farmer says thank god i thought i was going deaf!
They work 6 days on then get 4 days off -the 6 days are 10 hour days. They used to have a cushy number with easy money and extra payments but not anymore. I’ve yet to meet a guard that actually likes their job! They’re all counting down the days til they can retire!!
If they’re not happy in their jobs they should move as should anyone else out there, life is too short to be miserable like that. I know quite a few Gardai and all of them love what they do but the unsocial hours obvsiously get at them a bit as they miss a lot of things because of it.
Are letters of endorsement from the Parish Priest and Local GAA club not requirements anymore?
Don’t forget you need a big pair of lugs.
No – but stereotypes need only apply…
Where are all those people who complained about the high wages earned by public and civil servants? Where are all those people who continuously whinged about the cushy numbers and the massive pensions? Now the same simpletons have a chance to apply for one of these much sought after positions, but all they do now is complain about low wages and poor conditions.
They will be applying in their droves for these positions, you just wait and see Tap, I would guess they’ll get north of 20k applications for these positions.
Expect a lot more lads hiding behind bus shelters with speed guns over the coming years.. All new recruits will be trained well in the revenue making scams from day one in Templemore..
@Cosmo. If you drive responsibly why would you worry about fines ? Maybe it’s not someone else’s fault ?
Taxi drivers!
So if someone break the law they might get caught.
What else exactly would you have a police force do you complete bell end
Considering the importance of the job the Gardai do its shocking how little they are being paid overall. €45k after 19 years of service is rubbish, after a couple of years in Dublin or London it’s fairly realistic for a recent graduate to be earning that.
Should have kept the salary to themselves or open applications to 5 yrs old and up, as 19 yrs service to earn a salary that you can’t pay a mortgage with is insane and then deal with the lowest form of humanity. Starting salary €40k with €75k after 21 yrs now that’d be an incentive.
To me it seems like this campaign is getting a lot of media attention. I don’t think they will have the numbers applying for it that they may have hoped
Great career. Best of luck to all the applicants who applied.
There is no rent allowances for new entrants, this was cut during the austerity measures, their salary and unsociable hours allowances were also reduced by 10%, all in the new Garda gets approximately £8,000 less. To add further insult their pensions are also significantly reduced
There is no rent allowances for new entrants, their unsociable hours were also cut, so on average they are down £8,000 euro
i was actually researching it and was humouring the idea of signing up on the website..then i seen the pay. I was unemployed at the time but luckily for a job in the mean time. A career change is only a good idea if you can afford to live after the decision
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