German prosecutors say the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 appears to have researched suicide methods and cockpit door security in the days before he crashed the plane with 150 people on-board last week.
Duesseldorf prosecutors said on Thursday that investigators found a tablet computer at Andreas Lubitz's apartment enabling them to reconstruct his searches from March 16 to March 23.
Prosecutors' spokesman Ralf Herrenbrueck said in a statement that search terms included medical treatment and suicide methods. On at least one day, the co-pilot looked at search terms involving cockpit doors and their security methods.
Investigators believe co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked his captain out of the Airbus A320's cockpit and intentionally crashed Flight 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf into a French mountainside on March 24. All 150 people on board the plane were killed.
A memorial of flowers and candles in front of the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium secondary school in Haltern am See, western Germany, from where some of the Germanwings plane crash victims came. (AFP Photo)
Germanwings was unaware of co-pilot's 'depressive episode'
{{/usCountry}}Germanwings was unaware of co-pilot's 'depressive episode'
{{/usCountry}}Germanwings on Thursday said it was unaware that Lubitz had suffered from depression during his pilot training.
German airline Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, had confirmed on Tuesday it knew six years ago that Lubitz had suffered from an episode of "severe depression" before he finished his flight training, but said he had passed all his medical checks since.
A spokeswoman for Germanwings, where Lubitz started work in September 2013, said the airline didn't know about the depressive episode when Lufthansa did.
A black ribbon and a flower to commemorate the victims of Germanwings Flight 4U9525 hung up over a ticket counter of Lufthansa and Germanwings at Duesseldorf's airport. (Reuters Photo)
French authorities find second black box
French prosecutors, meanwhile, say the second black box recorder from the jet crash in the French Alps has been found.
It was based on recordings from the first black box, that investigators believed that Lubitz had intentionally crashed Flight 9525 on March 24.
The second black box is the data recorder and contains readings for nearly every instrument.
French gendarmes and investigators work in the scattered debris on the crash site of the Germanwings Airbus A320. (AFP Photo)