The co-pilot of the crashed Germanwings flight may have spiked the pilot’s drink with a diuretic to force him out of the cockpit to go to the bathroom before locking the door, according to a report.
Andreas Lubitz, 27, is accused of crashing the plane into the French Alps in late March. Specifically, investigators say Lubitz locked the pilot, Patrick Sondheimer, out of the cockpit before smashing the aircraft into the mountains.
The U.K. Daily Telegraph reported Lubitz may have mixed some kind of drug into Sondheimer’s drink, forcing him to leave to the restroom.
Other reports suggest Lubitz may have looked up information online about diuretics in the days before the crash.
As the Telegraph notes, “But it appears to be largely based on speculation, with no evidence that Lubitz actually bought the drugs or took them with him in the flight.”
Recordings of the cockpit flight recorder, or black box, show that the pilot was likely banging on the door to try and get inside. “Open the damn door,” Sondheimer is heard saying. All the while, Lubitz said nothing.
Meanwhile, German police said Thursday they are looking into whether a woman fraudulently claimed to be a relative of a victim of last month’s Germanwings crash to get free flights to southern France.
Germanwings parent Lufthansa organized special flights for victims’ relatives after the March 24 crash in the French Alps, which killed all 150 people on board.
The Halterner Zeitung newspaper, based in the town of Haltern, which lost 16 high school students and two teachers, reported that a woman from western Germany flew to the region twice at Lufthansa’s expense after falsely claiming to be a cousin of one of the teachers.
Markus Tewes, a police spokesman in the town of Hoexter, said police are investigating possible fraud and the woman will be questioned after Lufthansa took the case to authorities.
The airline said it’s looking into what appears to be a “regrettable isolated case,” but didn’t give details.
At the crash site itself, Germanwings and Lufthansa now have responsibility for organizing the removal of the wreckage and clearing up any environmental damage, Lufthansa spokesman Boris Ogursky said.
With AP.
