French Media: Alps Crash Pilot Told Ex 'Everyone Will Know My Name'

“The co-pilot who investigators believe crashed a passenger jet into the French Alps, killing all 150 aboard, worried ‘health problems’ would dash his dreams and vowed one day to do something to ‘change the whole system’, an ex-girlfriend told a German newspaper,” Agence France-Presse reports:

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The 26-year-old woman, identified only as Maria W., recalled in an interview with the mass-circulation Bild daily how Andreas Lubitz told her: “One day I’m going to do something that will change the whole system, and everyone will know my name and remember.”

“I never knew what he meant by that but now it makes sense,” it quoted the “shocked” flight attendant as saying.

The black box voice recorder indicates that Lubitz, 27, locked the captain out of the cockpit of the Germanwings jet and deliberately flew Flight 4U 9525 into a mountainside as the more senior pilot tried desperately to reopen the door during its eight-minute descent, French officials say.

As investigators race to build up a picture of Lubitz and any possible motives, new media reports emerged saying he had suffered from vision problems, adding to earlier reports he was severely depressed.

The London Daily Mail adds additional details:

[Lubitz] is said to have sought help over his vision as recently as March 10, amid fears his eye problems may have jeopardised his ability to continue working as a pilot.

It came as police revealed that evidence found at his home suggested he was suffering from a ‘serious psychosomatic illness’. Officers reportedly found a variety of drugs used to treat mental illness at his flat in Dusseldorf, appearing to substantiate claims he was severely depressed.

And a former partner described him as a tormented, erratic man who was a master of hiding his darkest thoughts and would wake up from nightmares screaming ‘we’re going down’.

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“‘During conversations he’d suddenly throw a tantrum and scream at me,’ [Maria] said. ‘I was afraid. He even once locked me in the bathroom for a long time,” the Daily Mail chillingly reports.

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