Passenger Plane Crashes in French Alps.

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.

I do know the difference, politicians use it to weasel out of promises all the time, just like you're using it to weasel out of admitting you were wrong.

.. and you forgot to mention that he had been on holidays with his parents, as a child, close to where the plane came - over several times! He bought a new Audi just days ago, had ordered one for his girlfriend, a technical failure of the plane is still investigated, his local aero club is kind of twinned with the one in France, ... ... ...

The picture emerging of Lubitz is one of a man haunted, whose ambition to fly brought him both pleasure and torment. Authorities have found doctors’ sick notes stating he was unfit for work, including on the day of the crash. On Saturday, Germany’s Bild newspaper quoted an interview with a former girlfriend of Lubitz’s who described a man who suffered from vivid nightmares and delusions of grandeur.

Extrapolate that to a year, and you have 900 flight hours, 1800 duty hours and 3600 hours away from home. I would say this represents the average US domestic 121 pilot. Some do more, some do less, but this is pretty typical.

Europeans get more time off but 630 hours in almost 1.5 years? Seems pretty low. Why?

That's average for Germanwings' first officers.

I think I see here that this guy was paying back 70,000 euros for his training, if he was not working as much as normal that could have been a problem. If he thought that he was going to lose his job that was certainly a problem.

Hawkeye is simply trying to avoid falling off his ideological high horse, and landing right in the pile of **** he's been dribbling.

But oversimplifying depression and generalizing all those suffering from a mental illness as dangerous doesn't help anyone ... aside from increased sales of certain newspapers.

DÜSSELDORF, Germany — Andreas Lubitz, who was flying the Germanwings jetliner that slammed into a mountain in the French Alps on Tuesday, sought treatment for vision problems that may have jeopardized his ability to continue working as a pilot, two officials with knowledge of the investigation said Saturday.

The revelation of the possible trouble with his eyes added a new element to the emerging portrait of the 27-year-old German pilot, who the authorities say was also being treated for psychological issues and had hidden aspects of his medical condition from his employer. The police found antidepressants during a search of his apartment here on Thursday, an official said Saturday.

It is not clear how severe his eye problems were or how they might have been related to his psychological condition. One person with knowledge of the investigation said the authorities had not ruled out the possibility that the vision problem could have been psychosomatic.