Crash pilot was psychiatric patient, planned big gesture - paper

The co-pilot suspected of deliberately crashing an airliner, killing 150 people, had told his girlfriend he was planning a spectacular gesture so "everyone will know my name", a German daily said on Saturday.

The Bild newspaper published an interview with a woman who said she had had a relationship in 2014 with Andreas Lubitz, the man French prosecutors believe locked himself alone in the cockpit of the Germanwings Airbus on Tuesday and steered it into the French Alps, killing all on board.

"When I heard about the crash, I remembered a sentence... he said: 'One day I'll do something that will change the system, and then everyone will know my name and remember it'," said the woman, a flight attendant the paper gave the pseudonym of Maria W.

"I didn't know what he meant by that at the time, but now it's obvious," she said. "He did it because he realised that, due to his health problems, his big dream of working at Lufthansa, of a having job as a pilot, and as a pilot on long-distance flights, was nearly impossible."

"He never talked much about his illness, only that he was in psychiatric treatment," she told the paper, adding they finally broke up because she was afraid of him.

"He would suddenly freak out in conversations and yell at me," she recalled. "At night he would wake up screaming 'we are crashing' because he had nightmares. He could be good at hiding what was really going on inside him."

The woman also told Bild: "We always talked a lot about work and then he became a different person. He became upset about the conditions we worked under: too little money, fear of losing the contract, too much pressure."

A Lufthansa spokesman declined to comment. The company and its low-cost subsidiary Germanwings took out full-page advertisements in major German and French newspapers on Saturday, expressing "deepest mourning".

Lufthansa and Germanwings offered condolences to the friends and families of the passengers and crew and thanked the thousands of people in France, Spain and Germany it said had helped since the crash.

German officials said there would be a ceremony on April 17 in Cologne Cathedral attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and senior officials from other countries including France and Spain.

Also on Saturday, relatives of the Germanwings captain whom Lubitz locked out of the cockpit before the crash visited a memorial to the victims in the French Alps, while a special mass was held at the small cathedral in nearby Digne-les-Bains.

"OVERSTRESS SYMPTOMS"
German authorities said on Friday they had found torn-up sick notes showing the co-pilot had been suffering from an illness that should have grounded him on the day of the tragedy. Germanwings, the budget airline of the flag carrier Lufthansa, has said he did not submit a sick note at the time.

German newspaper Welt am Sonntag quoted a senior investigator as saying the 27-year-old "was treated by several neurologists and psychiatrists", adding that a number of medications had been found in his Duesseldorf apartment.

Police also discovered personal notes that showed Lubitz suffered from "severe subjective overstress symptoms", he added.

The New York Times on Saturday quoted officials as saying Lubitz had also sought treatment for vision problems that may have jeopardized his ability to work as a pilot.

German state prosecutors and police spokesmen declined to comment on the media reports, adding there would be no official statements on the case before Monday.

Investigators have retrieved cockpit voice recordings from one of the plane's "black boxes", which they say show that Lubitz locked himself alone in the cockpit, as his fellow pilot desperately tried to break in, and caused the airliner to crash.

A chief French investigator said on Saturday it was too early to rule out other explanations for the crash.

"There is obviously a scenario that is well known to the media and which we are focusing on," French investigator General Jean-Pierre Michel told French media.

"But we have no right today to rule out other hypotheses, including the mechanical hypotheses, as long as we haven't proved that the plane had no (mechanical) problem," he added, pointing out that a second black box containing flight data had not been found yet.

(Additional reporting by Georg Merziger, Maria Sheahan, Tom Käckenhoff, Ingrid Melander and Reuters television; Editing by Andrew Roche and Raissa Kasolowsky)

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150 killed in plane crash in French Alps

A plane operated by the budget carrier of Germany's Lufthansa crashed in a remote area of the French Alps on Tuesday (Mar 24), killing all 150 on board in France's worst aviation disaster in decades.

With the cause of the accident a complete mystery, authorities recovered a black box from the Airbus A320 at the crash site, where rescue efforts were being hampered by the mountainous terrain.

Local MP Christophe Castaner, who flew over the crash site, said on Twitter: "Horrendous images in this mountain scenery. Nothing is left but debris and bodies. Flying over the crash site with the interior minister - a horror - the plane is totally destroyed."

Video images from a government helicopter flying near the area showed a desolate snow-flecked moonscape, with steep ravines covered in scree.

Budget airline Germanwings said the Airbus plunged for eight minutes but French aviation officials said the plane had made no distress call before crashing near the ski resort of Barcelonnette.

"A black box was found and will be delivered to investigators," Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. Weather did not appear to be a factor in the crash, with conditions "calm" at the time.

"There was no cloud at the plane's cruising altitude", winds were "light to moderate" and there was no turbulence that could have contributed to the crash, French weather officials said.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said there were no survivors, adding that the authorities "can't rule out any theory" on the cause of the disaster.

The plane, carrying 144 mainly Spanish and German passengers - including two babies - and six crew, was travelling from Barcelona to the western German city of Duesseldorf when it came down.

German authorities said 16 German teenagers on a school trip were on board the doomed plane, as tearful relatives rushed to the airports in the two cities anxiously seeking information about their loved ones.

'IT IS A TRAGEDY'

It was the first fatal accident in the history of Germanwings, and the deadliest on the French mainland since 1974 when a Turkish Airlines crashed, killing 346 people.

French President Francois Hollande said he would meet his German and Spanish counterparts at the crash site on Wednesday. "It is a tragedy, a new airline tragedy. We will determine what caused the crash," Hollande said.

The dead included Germans, Spaniards and "probably" Turks, Hollande said, while Belgium said at least one of its nationals was on board.

Germanwings said 67 Germans were believed to have been on board while Spain said 45 people with Spanish sounding names were on the flight.

A crisis cell has been set up in the area between Barcelonnette and Digne-les-Bains along with an emergency flight control centre to coordinate the chopper flights to the crash site.

Authorities commandeered a large meadow with dozens of helicopters taking off to head to the crash site. Valls said one helicopter had been able to touch down at the site of the accident but locals described the difficult terrain that awaited rescue teams.

"Ground access is horrible, I know the Estrop massif, it's a very high mountainous area, very steep and it's terrible to get there except from the air during winter," local resident Francoise Pie said. A witness who was skiing near the crash site told French television he "heard an enormous noise" around the time of the disaster.

'DARK DAY'

The plane belonged to Germanwings, a low-cost affiliate of German flag carrier Lufthansa based in Cologne. "We've never had a total loss of aircraft in the company's history until now," a company spokeswoman told AFP. Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr described it as a "dark day."

A spokesman for Airbus, the European aerospace giant, did not give any information about possible causes but said the company had opened a "crisis cell" and was sending experts to the scene.

French civil aviation authorities said they lost contact with the plane and declared it was in distress at 10.30am (5.30pm Singapore time). However, the aircraft's crew did not send a distress signal, civil aviation authorities told AFP.

"The crew did not send a Mayday. It was air traffic control that decided to declare the plane was in distress because there was no contact with the crew of the plane," the source said.

In 1981, a plane crashed on the French island of Corsica with 180 people on board.

In July 2000, an Air France Concorde crashed shortly after take-off from Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport en route for New York, leaving 113 people, leaving mainly Germans dead and eventually leading to the supersonic airliner being taken out of service.

The world's worst air disasters remain the Mar 27, 1977, collision of two Boeing 747s on the runway at Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583 people, and the Aug 12, 1985 crash into a mountainside of a Boeing 747 belonging to Japan Airlines, killing 520 people.

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Lufthansa pilots extend strike to long-haul services

Lufthansa pilots, on strike since Monday (Oct 20), extended their industrial action to include long-haul flights on Tuesday, grounding almost all inbound and outbound services at Germany's usually busy Frankfurt airport.

In the ninth walkout by its pilots since April, the German airline said it has cancelled 1,511 flights over the two days of the stoppage, with some 166,000 passengers affected.

Nevertheless, the situation in Frankfurt, Germany's busiest airport, was relatively calm because around 90,000 passengers had been informed in advance via email or text message, a Lufthansa spokesman said.

The strike started on Monday at 1pm (7pm Singapore time), initially on short and medium-haul services, but was extended to include long-haul flights at 6am (noon) on Tuesday. The walkout was scheduled to end at 11.59pm on Tuesday (5.59am Wednesday).

The pilots are striking over plans by management to raise the age at which pilots are able to take early retirement. At present, pilots are allowed to retire at 55 and receive up to 60 per cent of their pay until they reach the statutory retirement age.

Travellers in Germany already faced separate strikes by train drivers at the weekend.

In an interview with the mass-circulation daily Bild, transport minister Alexander Dobrindt complained that the repeated strikes were "killing" the economy. "Our transport axes are our country's central nervous system ... a long-lasting blockade will cause a greal deal of damage to the economy," the minister said.

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German pilots strike after weekend rail chaos

Lufthansa pilots launched a strike on Monday (Oct 20), deepening Germany's travel chaos after train drivers stopped work at the weekend just as school holidays began in much of the country.

The top-selling Bild daily complained that "ping-pong strikes are crippling our economy", Europe's biggest, as about 10,000 pilots and 20,000 train drivers had "taken hostage" 80 million Germans.

The German Industry Federation charged that the pilots strike, following the "disproportionate" railway stoppage, "harms the entire economy" by hitting logistics, tourism and business travel.

The government said the strikes will certainly "impact some sectors of the economy", though there was no reason to change Germany's 2014 growth forecast, which was lowered this month to 1.2 percent.

Pilots for Lufthansa, Europe's biggest airline, said they would broaden strike action to long-haul flights on top of previously announced stoppages on short- and medium-length routes.

The industrial action on Monday and Tuesday was expected to affect more than 200,000 passengers on 1,400 flights, said Lufthansa, advising passengers to check for updated information on its website.

Pilots stopped short- and medium-haul flights departing between 1100GMT Monday and 2159GMT Tuesday (between 6pm Monday and 4.59am Wednesday Singapore time), as well as intercontinental flights scheduled to leave Tuesday between 0400GMT and 2159GMT (between 11am Tuesday and 4.59am Wednesday Singapore time).

The strike will not affect Lufthansa subsidiaries Austrian, Swiss and Brussels Airlines or Germanwings, the low-cost carrier whose pilots staged a 12-hour strike last week.

Pilots union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) launched its eighth action in recent months in a bid to keep an early retirement scheme that management wants to phase out to reduce costs.

INFRASTRUCTURE PARALYSED

The stoppages come as autumn school holidays start in seven of Germany's 16 states and are ongoing in two more. "Now, during the holiday period, I think this is pretty brazen," one affected air passenger told NTV television, though he said he understood that "everyone has interests they want to promote".

Lufthansa accused the union of bringing Germany to "a standstill" and sought to draft in pilots working in management positions to ensure a third of scheduled services still operate. The airline labelled the strike "incomprehensible and disproportionate" and demanded legislation against actions that cripple large parts of Germany's travel infrastructure.

Lufthansa spokesman Andreas Bartels said the company wants new "rules of the game for such labour disputes, which are needed especially in infrastructure-critical" sectors of the economy. Berlin is working on legislation to stop small groups of employees from paralysing large parts of the transport system, and a draft law is expected in November.

The flight chaos compounded weekend disruptions when train drivers halted at least two-thirds of passenger and cargo services nationwide. The GDL train drivers' union launched their biggest stoppage since 2008 in demand for more pay, shorter hours and the right to also represent conductors and other rail personnel.

GDL chief Claus Weselsky announced a seven-day pause, but warned of more stoppages after that if rail operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) does not offer "real negotiations". His union earlier rejected an offer of a five-percent wage increase over 30 months.

DB said the strike had caused damage "in the tens of millions of euros" due to lost business, reimbursement payments, extra staffing for a customer hotline and hotel and taxi vouchers for many customers.

As train carriages stood idle, it said, "vandals took advantage and sprayed graffiti on 69 suburban train cars at eight stations in Berlin alone", also defacing trains in Hamburg, Leipzig and elsewhere. DB personnel chief Ulrich Weber charged that the small union "has not moved one millimetre, has applied pressure, angered millions of customers and damaged the company".

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Lufthansa to drop services to Abu Dhabi

German airline Lufthansa announced on Thursday (Oct 16) that it will pull the plug on its once-daily flights between Frankfurt and Abu Dhabi due to competition from its Gulf rival Etihad.

"Substantial capacity has arisen in recent years on services between Germany and the United Arab Emirates because state-subsidised Gulf carriers have massively increased their presence," Lufthansa complained in a statement.

"This development has been further exacerbated by the fact that Etihad Airways has unfairly been allowed to offer and market code-sharing flights with Air Berlin," the German airline continued.

"In face of huge over-capacity, the service between Frankfurt and Abu Dhabi has become increasingly uneconomical for us. We are now taking the consequences and will drop the service from our timetable starting from summer 2015," Lufthansa said.

The carrier complained that the unfair competition from state-subsidised airlines in the Gulf region puts jobs at risk in the German airline sector.

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Lufthansa pilots' strike grounds around 20,000 passengers

A new walkout by Lufthansa pilots on Tuesday (Sep 30) forced the cancellation of 50 flights in Frankfurt, Germany's busiest airport, affecting roughly 20,000 passengers, the airline said.

Flights in and out of the hub were being affected but a company spokesman said the situation was calm and that Lufthansa was confident it would operate all 32 flights it had promised would take off.

In its fourth labour action in recent weeks, the pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit called on its members to strike on long-haul flights departing from the airport between 8am and 11pm (2pm Tuesday and 5am Wednesday Singapore time). Affected were flights operated on Airbus A380, A330 and A340 aircraft, as well as Boeing 747 jets. "The situation in Frankfurt is calm. It seems like a normal day," the spokesman told AFP.

Lufthansa's pilots are striking over changes to their retirement benefits being introduced as part of deep restructuring in recent years to bring down the German carrier's costs. Pilots can currently take paid early retirement from the age of 55. They are fighting a plan by the airline to raise the minimum age and to involve pilots in the financing of their pensions.

Tuesday's work stoppage was the fourth by the pilots' union in recent series of bottom-line-hitting operations. The first strike at the end of August hit Lufthansa's low-cost subsidiary Germanwings. The second walkout hit Frankfurt and the third stoppage targeted Munich airport, Germany's second-busiest air hub.

Vereinigung Cockpit already grounded thousands of Lufthansa flights during three days of strikes in March and April, costing the airline around 60 million euros (US$76 million).

Many of Europe's older airlines are running into opposition from powerful unions as they try to cut costs to compete with budget rivals. On Sunday, Air France's main pilots' union ended the longest strike in the carrier's history to allow "calmer" talks to go ahead over the contentious issue of the airline's low-cost subsidiary Transavia.

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Lufthansa pilots threaten new strikes as talks fail

German pilots' union Cockpit announced on Thursday (Sep 25) that talks with Lufthansa over early retirement provisions had crashed and warned a new wave of strikes could be expected with immediate effect.

"Cockpit regrets that negotiations have failed once again," the union said in a statement, accusing management of not wanting to reach an agreement. "Further industrial action can be expected with immediate effect. The public will be warned in advance," the statement said.

A spokesman for Lufthansa insisted that the airline had "signalled its willingness to compromise" and offered to talk about the contentious points. No new date had been set for further negotiations, however. "We appeal to the union not to go ahead with more industrial action and to return to the negotiating table," the spokesman said.

Following three separate days of walkouts in recent weeks, Lufthansa pilots agreed to postpone a fourth warning strike last week after receiving a new proposal from management.

Lufthansa pilots can currently take paid early retirement from the age of 55. They are fighting a plan by the airline to raise the minimum age and to involve pilots in the financing of their pensions.

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Lufthansa flights grounded in new pilots' strike

 Lufthansa, Germany's biggest airline, said it will cancel 200 flights on Friday (Sep 5), affecting 25,000 passengers, as a consequence of a pilots' strike to be held later in the day.

The pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit has called for a six-hour walk-out between 5.00pm and 11.00pm (11pm to 5am, Singapore time) over plans to change the airline's early retirement policy. The industrial action is focusing on the country's biggest airport in Frankfurt and will ground most domestic and regional flights.

Lufthansa said individual flights would already be cancelled as early as 1.30pm (7.30pm, Singapore time) and most flights from 4.00pm (10pm, Singapore time). The airline promised to try and limit the impact of the strike for customers.

Lufthansa pilots can currently take paid early retirement from the age of 55. They are fighting a plan by the airline to raise the minimum age and to involve pilots in the financing of their pensions.

Last Friday, more than 100 flights were cancelled at several of Germany's main airports as pilots of Lufthansa's low-cost airline Germanwings also walked out. And on Monday, a union for German train drivers called for a three-hour walkout to turn up the pressure on management of the national rail operator Deutsche Bahn in gridlocked wage talks.

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ANA, Lufthansa announce cargo business tie-up

Japan's All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Lufthansa of Germany on Wednesday (Sep 3) announced an air cargo tie up as they look to fight off intense competition from budget airlines on passenger routes. The airlines said they had won regulatory approval for the agreement, which will see them integrate network planning, pricing, sales and handling on all routes between Japan and Europe.

"The two carriers aim to introduce the joint approach on shipments originating from Japan to Europe in winter 2014/2015 and for shipments from Europe to Japan in mid-2015," they said in a statement. "The joint venture will benefit customers by generating a greater selection of routings and a wider range of service options. Customers will especially profit from a larger and faster network with more direct flights, more destinations and more frequencies."

ANA and Lufthansa, both members of the Star Alliance global airline network, launched a joint venture for Japan-Europe passenger flights two years ago. The Japanese carrier holds a 17 per cent market share for air freight between Japan and Europe, while Lufthansa has 16 per cent, the leading Nikkei business daily said on Wednesday. Mainline carriers' cargo businesses have become increasingly crucial to their bottom line as they battle budget airlines in the passenger market.

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Lufthansa confirms targets, to expand low-cost ops

German airline Lufthansa said on Wednesday it is sticking to recently revised full-year profit targets and planning to boost its operations in the low-cost sector.

Lufthansa said in a statement that despite the investment needed for a raft of new strategic measures, it "remains confident of its revised business projections for 2014 and 2015.

"The executive board expects to report an operating profit of around 1.0 billion euros (US$1.3 billion) for the current year."

Just last month, Lufthansa cut its earnings targets for this year and next year in the face of disappointing developments in passenger and freight business, and financial fallout from strikes.

But to meet the targets, the airline would scale back the planned expansion of its passenger traffic capacity, withdraw a number of aircraft and cut its freight capacity, the statement explained.

Lufthansa also unveiled plans to beef up its presence in the low-cost sector.

"In the dynamic and highly price-sensitive market segments, our current platforms only enable us to exploit the growth potential to a limited extent, in view of their sometimes over-rigid cost structures," said chief executive Carsten Spohr.

"That's why we are now seeking to tap new growth areas."

Lufthansa's low-cost platform at present is is known as Germanwings.

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Lufthansa calls for reform of right to strike

The head of Lufthansa called for a reform of workers' right to strike on Friday as the biggest strike in the airline's history entered its third and final day.

While Lufthansa chief executive Christoph Franz insisted that the right to strike was a constitutional right, "from our point of view, there must be a guarantee that critical infrastructure is kept up and running.

"And that includes railways and air traffic control," Franz told the business daily Handelsblatt in an interview.

Lufthansa's pilots have been on strike since Wednesday, grounding most of the airline's flights and leaving as many as 425,000 passengers without a connection.

Lufthansa cancelled around 3,800 flights on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as a result of the walkout by pilots who are demanding better pay and retirement conditions.

While the walkout is expected to cost Lufthansa tens of millions of euros (dollars), no travel chaos has ensued because Lufthansa was able to warn passengers in advance and help them make alternative travel arrangements.

The strike has come under heavy fire from politicians and industry, but a poll by ARD public television showed that the majority of Germans supported the pilots' industrial action.

As many as 55 per cent of those surveyed said they understood the pilots' position versus 42 per cent against, the poll found.

Nevertheless, the level of support is still much lower than two years ago when 75 per cent of Germans said they understood a strike by cabin staff.

Lufthansa CEO Franz has said he expects services to return to normal on Saturday, even if there might be a few isolated disruptions for operational reasons.

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Lufthansa to cancel 3,800 flights due to pilots' strike

Lufthansa, Germany's biggest airline, said on Monday it will cancel most of its flights later this week due to a pilots' strike.

The carrier said in a statement: "As a result of the planned strike by the pilots' union Cockpit, around 3,800 flights will be cancelled on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

"During the three-day stoppage by Cockpit teams, there will only be around 500 short- and long-haul flights by Lufthansa and Germanwings."

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Chaos at Frankfurt airport as security staff strike

Passengers were advised on Friday not to bother turning up for flights at Frankfurt airport because of a one-day strike by security staff.

"We have asked passengers not to travel to the airport for now. As things currently stand, the legally required security checks cannot be carried out," a spokesman for airport operator Fraport told AFP.

The spokesman said that in total, 65 flights had officially been cancelled so far, out of a total 1,300 scheduled for the entire day.

The number of actual cancellations was comparatively small, because a large part of the traffic going through Frankfurt is transit or transfer traffic where passengers do not need to undergo security checks again.

However, even if flights are not officially cancelled, no other passengers turning up for them can board because no security checks are being carried out.

Germany's main airline, Lufthansa, said around two-thirds of its passengers were transit passengers.

"Flights aren't being cancelled to help keep operations up and running," a Lufthansa spokesman said.

Service industry union Verdi called on members employed by private security contractors to stay away from work between 0100 and 2200 GMT on Friday.

Verdi is fighting for an hourly wage rise to 16 euros ($22), calling an offer by employers of 10-13 euros "far too low".

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Airbus urges Berlin to unfreeze 600m euro loan payment

Airbus on Saturday urged the German government to pay out a promised final loan instalment of 600 million euros (US$830 million) for the construction of the A350, after the aircraft manufacturer said it had created German jobs in return.

Airbus chief operating officer Guenter Butschek told the German daily Tagesspiegel that the firm was offering 4,000 jobs - 250 per cent more than originally planned - in a bid to unfreeze the last loan tranche, which has been blocked for months by Berlin pending agreement on German-based manufacturing and research jobs.

"We have clearly kept our promises and are of the opinion that there is no reason to withhold the remaining amount," Butschek was quoted as saying. "The ball is now in the government's court."

But he added that Airbus, a subsidiary of France-based EADS, was capable of completing the A350 development programme even without the outstanding loan amount.

"We have proved with our first flight, and with 400 flight hours since then, that we can finance and develop such a project according to plan, even without the rest of the government loan."

The first A350 XWB wide-bodied passenger jets are scheduled to be delivered by the end of next year. The next-generation plane carried out its first test flight in June.

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