A French Gendarmerie rescue helicopter drops rescue workers next to the debris of the Airbus A320.
DUESSELDORF, Germany:
German prosecutors have decided that nobody other than pilot Andreas Lubitz could be held accountable for the crash of a Germanwings plane in March 2015, a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office said on Monday.
Co-pilot Lubitz deliberately flew the Germanwings A320 jet into a French mountainside on March 24, 2015, on a flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf, killing all 150 people on board.
Prosecutors have said Lubitz was suffering from a suspected "psychotic depressive episode" that started in December 2014, months before the fatal crash, but that he had concealed his illness from his employer, part of the Lufthansa group.
They had been looking into whether anyone still alive could also be held accountable for the crash, but the spokesman said investigations had not shown cause for fault, whether on the part of doctors, Lufthansa, Germanwings, or the German aviation authority.
Lawyers representing the families of those killed have previously said Lubitz, who had temporarily halted his pilot training to receive treatment for a depressive episode, should have been more closely monitored.
The crash has led to authorities in Europe proposing new laws on screening and monitoring of pilots.
Germanwings is now being integrated into Lufthansa's Eurowings budget unit.
(Reporting by Matthias Inverardi; Writing by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Co-pilot Lubitz deliberately flew the Germanwings A320 jet into a French mountainside on March 24, 2015, on a flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf, killing all 150 people on board.
Prosecutors have said Lubitz was suffering from a suspected "psychotic depressive episode" that started in December 2014, months before the fatal crash, but that he had concealed his illness from his employer, part of the Lufthansa group.
They had been looking into whether anyone still alive could also be held accountable for the crash, but the spokesman said investigations had not shown cause for fault, whether on the part of doctors, Lufthansa, Germanwings, or the German aviation authority.
Lawyers representing the families of those killed have previously said Lubitz, who had temporarily halted his pilot training to receive treatment for a depressive episode, should have been more closely monitored.
The crash has led to authorities in Europe proposing new laws on screening and monitoring of pilots.
Germanwings is now being integrated into Lufthansa's Eurowings budget unit.
(Reporting by Matthias Inverardi; Writing by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Gareth Jones)
© Thomson Reuters 2017
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