Co-pilot deliberately slams plane in Alps; families ask why

Their families “are having a hard time believing it,” he said, after briefing some of them in Marseille.

Many victims’ relatives visited an Alpine clearing Thursday where French authorities set up a viewing tent for family members to look toward the site of the crash, so steep and treacherous that it can only be reached by a long journey on foot or rappelling from a helicopter.

Lubitz’s family was in France but was being kept separate from the other families, Robin said. German investigators searched his apartment and his parents’ home in Montabaur, Germany, where the curtains were drawn.

READ: Pilot ‘locked out of cockpit’ before French Alps crash

The prosecutor’s account prompted quick moves toward stricter cockpit rules — and calls for more.

Airlines in Europe are not required to have two people in the cockpit at all times, unlike the standard US operating procedure, which was changed after the 9/11 attacks to require a flight attendant to take the spot of a briefly departing pilot.

Canada and Germany’s biggest airlines, including Lufthansa and Air Berlin, as well as low-cost European carriers easyJet and Norwegian Air Shuttle announced new rules requiring two crew members to always be present.

Some experts said even two isn’t enough, and called for rules to require three.

“The flight deck is capable of accommodating three pilots and there shouldn’t ever be a situation where there is only one person in the cockpit,” said James Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, referring to the “jump seats” all airliners are equipped with.

Others questioned the wisdom of sealing off the cockpit at all.

“The kneejerk reaction to the events of 9/11 with the ill-thought reinforced cockpit door has had catastrophic consequences,” said Philip Baum, London-based editor of the trade magazine Aviation Security International.

Neither the prosecutor nor Lufthansa — the parent company of low-cost carrier Germanwings — indicated there was anything the pilot could have done to avoid the crash.

Robin would not give details on the co-pilot’s religion or his ethnic background. German authorities were taking charge of the investigation into Lubitz.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said that before Thursday’s shocking revelations, the airline was already “appalled” by what had happened in its low-cost subsidiary.

“I could not have imagined that becoming even worse,” he said in Cologne. “We choose our cockpit staff very, very carefully.”

Lubitz joined Germanwings in September 2013, directly out of flight school, and had flown 630 hours. Spohr said the airline had no indication why he would have crashed the plane.