Roundup: Germanwings plane co-pilot 100 percent fit to fly: Lufthansa CEO

The Germanwings' co-pilot who is thought to have deliberately crashed the A320 plane on Tuesday's ill-fated flight 4U9525, had passed all the flight and medical tests and was "100 percent fit to fly", said Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr on Thursday.

He told reporters in a press conference in Cologne that Lufthansa and its low-cost subsidiary Germanwings were "speechless" that the airbus had been deliberately crashed by its co-pilot, evidence which emerged when the plane's black box voice recorder was analyzed by a French prosecutor.

"We were shocked," Spohr said, "We could not imagine that it is even getting worse."

He said the co-pilot, identified by the French prosecutor earlier on Thursday as 28-year-old Andreas Lubitz, started his training in 2008 but his training was interrupted for seven months.

The training then resumed, said Spohr, and he had been working as a co-pilot for Germanwings since 2013.

"It (the interruption) was not uncommon," he said, but refused to disclose any details about the reasons for the break in Lubitz's training.

According to Spohr, a pilot candidate for Lufthansa and Germanwings must receive a fitness test after a break in training, regardless of the reason, and can only continue if the fitness is established.

The co-pilot of flight 4U9525 passed all flight and medical tests and was "100 percent fit to fly with no restriction," Spohr said.

He said one of the pilots could only leave the cockpit "when the stress is quite low," and that was the case in flight 4U9525 as the captain left only when the aircraft had reached its cruising height.

Spohr revealed that the electronically-secured door of the cockpit could be opened automatically by a special code from the outside if there was no answer from the inside, "but the pilot inside the cockpit can prevent it in order to keep the door shut."

He added that it was not clear whether it was because the captain didn't enter the code or the co-pilot barred the pilot's entry from inside, and that more investigation was needed.

Spohr admitted that there are regular aeronautical examinations and annual medical check-ups of its pilots, but "there is no regular psychological checks."

However, he insisted that the crash on Tuesday was "an incredibly tragic, individual case," and his company had "firm confidence" in the selecting, training, qualification and work of its pilots.

Spohr said there was no indication that the co-pilot had had terrorist intentions.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that the latest findings about the Germanwings flight crash were unbelievable and Germany would do everything possible to support the investigation into the crash.

Earlier on Thursday, two special flights arranged by Lufthansa carried relatives and families of the passengers in the crashed aircraft to Marseille from Barcelona and Duesseldorf. Endit