How Germanwings co-pilot hid secret mental illness: Families' fury at airline as police find pile of torn-up sick notes in home of killer nicknamed 'Tomato Andy' - including one for day he crashed jet

The 'depressed' co-pilot who crashed his plane into a mountain killing himself and 149 people hid a secret illness from his employers, German prosecutors have revealed.

Andreas Lubitz locked the captain out of the Airbus A320's cockpit on Tuesday before setting the airliner's controls to descend into a rocky valley, obliterating the plane and killing everyone on board.

Following searches of Lubitz's Dusseldorf apartment, investigators today revealed they have found torn-up past sick leave notes and, most chillingly, a doctor's sign-off for the day of the disaster.

Prosecutors said the finds indicate 28-year-old Lubitz may have had a medical condition which he kept secret from his bosses at budget airline Germanwings. Police have found no suicide note or claim of responsibility and no evidence of a political or religious motivation for Lubitz's actions.

As the revelations emerged, families of those killed in the disaster expressed fury that Germanwings allowed Lubitz to fly a plane. Claude Driessens, whose 59-year-old brother died on the Airbus A320, said the co-pilot should not have been allowed anywhere near the cockpit.

He said: ‘Looking back, I slowly start to be angry. I don’t understand how a serious company can let a depressed man pilot a plane.

‘Because the boy was depressed, it was necessary to say he was. It’s not normal to leave somebody by himself in charge, and who shuts the doors, I’m very angry.'

 


Killer in the cockpit: Andreas Lubitz - pictured competing in a half-marathon in 2013 - was reportedly in the middle of a 'relationship crisis' when he crashed the Germanwings airliner into the Alps, killing himself and 149 others