Germanwings’ Chief Operating Officer Oliver Wagner speaking yesterday during a news conference about assistance for the relatives of the victims of the Germanwings Airbus A320 crash. Photo: Reuters

The Germanwings co-pilot suspected of deliberately crashing a plane in the French Alps last week had been treated in the past for suicidal tendencies, German state prosecutors said yesterday.

“Several years ago before obtaining his pilot’s licence the co-pilot was in a long period of psychotherapeutic treatment with noticeable suicidal tendencies,” the prosecutors’ office in Düsseldorf, where the pilot Andreas Lubitz lived and where the flight from Barcelona was heading, said in the statement.

The prosecutors’ office, which quoted “relevant medical documentation” as the basis for its findings, added that since that period Lubitz had not shown any signs of suicidal behaviour or aggressive tendencies towards others in visits to doctors.

The Germanwings Airbus crashed into a remote area of the French Alps last Tuesday, killing everyone on board.

Investigators believe the 27-year-old Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately set the plane to descend and crash into the mountainside.

The prosecutors said yesterday that they had not found any evidence Lubitz was planning such an attack, nor his reason behind it.

“No special circumstances have come to light, whether in his personal life or his work life, that shed any plausible light on a possible motive,” the prosecutors’ statement said.

Under German law, sick notes excusing a person from work do not give information on medical conditions

A spokeswoman for Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, said medical records were subject to doctor-patient confidentiality and that the airline therefore had no knowledge of what they contain.

Under German law, employers do not have access to employees’ medical records and sick notes excusing a person from work also do not give information on medical conditions.

Meanwhile Germanwings’ Chief Operating Officer Oliver Wagner yesterday gave a news conference about the assistance for families and relatives of victims of the Germanwings Airbus A320.

French investigators said yesterday they were digging an access route to the mountain crash site in order to speed up the investigation.

The plane’s second flight recorder, which contains flight data, has not yet been found.

Kay Kratky, a board member of Lufthansa’s German airlines unit, told a German talk show on Sunday evening that, due to the force with which the plane hit the mountain face, it was possible the recorder’s locator beacons had been damaged and were not working properly.

“I am hopeful that we will find the recorder by physical searching,” he said.

Separately, the police in Düsseldorf said a full evaluation of items removed from Lubitz’s homes would take some time.

Times Talk will be discussing the Germanwings disaster tonight at 6.45pm on TVM.