Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz was passionate and obsessed about the mountainous area of the French Alps that he used to ask his family to bring him to the area to fly it in a glider.
That means the co-pilot of the plane that crashed into the French Alps, which killed everyone onboard, knew the place too well.
“He was passionate about the Alps and even obsessed. I’m sure he knew the crash area well because he had flown it in a glider,” said Dieter Wagner, a member of the Montabaur club.
Sources said the co-pilot and his family would take trips with members of a gliding club in his hometown of Montabaur, Germany to the French Alps for gliding trips.
The crash site is popular with glider pilots, the Associated Press reported.
One member of a local French gliding club said the Lubitz family came to the area regularly between 1996 and 2003, with the co-pilot participating in one of the gliding courses in the Alpine region.
Earlier, a hospital in Duesseldorf, Germany denied previous media reports that Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz was suffering from depression.
The University Hospital of Duesseldorf issued a statement saying Lubitz visited the hospital as a patient in February 2015, with his last visit recorded on March 10, 2015.
The hospital admitted Lubitz, who was identified by French prosecutor as the co-pilot in the crashed Germanwings 4U9525 flight, was receiving diagnosis evaluation. The hospital, however, refused to provide more details.
“Reports that Andreas Lubitz was treated in our hospital for depression are incorrect,” the hospital statement read.