MONTABAUR, Germany: Andreas Lubitz never showed any sign he was anything but thrilled to have landed a job with Germanwings, according to those who taught him the trade as a teenager in this town in the woody hills of Western Germany.
On Thursday, French prosecutors said Lubitz, the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525, “intentionally” crashed the jet into the side of a mountain.
Members of the hometown flight club in Montabaur, where he renewed his glider license only last fall, told The Associated Press the 28-year-old appeared to be happy with the job he had at the airline, a low-cost carrier in the Lufthansa Group.
After starting his job with Germanwings in September 2013, Lubitz was upbeat when he returned to the LSC Westerwald e.V glider club in the fall to renew his glider pilots’ license with 20 or so takeoffs.
“He was happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well,” said longtime club member Peter Ruecker, who watched him learn to fly. “He was very happy. He gave off a good feeling.”
Club chairman Klaus Radke said he rejected Marseille prosecutors’ conclusion that Lubitz put the Germanwings flight intentionally into a descent and dove it into the French Alps when the pilot had left the cockpit.
“I don’t see how anyone can draw such conclusions before the investigation is completed,” he told the AP.
At the house believed to be his parents’, the curtains were drawn and four police cars were parked outside.
Police kept the media away from the door of the single-family two-story home in a prosperous new subdivision on the edge of Montabaur, a town about 60 kilometers (nearly 40 miles) northwest of Frankfurt surrounded by wooded hills.
Neighbors refused to comment, and police told journalists to stay away.
Lubitz learned to fly at the glider club in a sleek white ASK-21 two-seat glider, which sits in a small hangar today on the side of the facility’s grass runway.
Ruecker said that he remembers Lubitz as “rather quiet but friendly” when he first showed up at the club as a 14- or 15-year-old saying he wanted to learn to fly.
On Thursday, a large hawk circled lazily over the runway using the same gentle updrafts that glider pilots use.
After obtaining his glider pilot’s license as a teenager, he was accepted as a Lufthansa trainee after finishing the tough German abitur college preparatory school, at the town’s Mons-Tabor High School.
According to the airline, he trained in Bremen before starting to fly for Germanwings in September 2013. Ruecker said Lubitz also trained in Phoenix, Arizona. He had logged 630 hours’ flight time by the time of the crash, the airline said.
Ruecker said Lubitz gave no indication during his fall visit to the club that anything was wrong. “He seemed very enthusiastic” about his career. “I can’t remember anything where something wasn’t right.”
Ruecker said Lubitz had a girlfriend but did not have many more details about his life.
Lubitz’s family could not immediately be reached, but a recently deleted Facebook page bearing Lubitz’s name showed him as a smiling man in a dark brown jacket posing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in California.
Ruecker confirmed the photo was that of Lubitz.
The page, which was wiped from Facebook sometime in the past two days, said Lubitz was from Montabaur. It also lists him as having several aviation-themed interests, including the A320 — the model of plane that crashed Tuesday, Lufthansa, the German aviation company, and Phoenix Goodyear Airport, in Arizona.
The defunct Facebook page also included a link to a result in the 2011 Lufthansa half marathon in Frankfurt, where a runner with the nickname “flying_andy” ran a 1 hour, 48 minutes, 51 seconds.
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Co-pilot was ‘very happy’ with Germanwings job
Co-pilot was ‘very happy’ with Germanwings job
Tourists empty out of Cuba as US fuel blockade bites
- Several nations have advised against travel to Cuba since the US tightened a decades-old embargo
- The island of 9.6 million inhabitants has faced hard times since the US trade embargo took hold in 1962
HAVANA: With rolling power cuts, hotel closures, and flight routes suspended for lack of fuel, tourists are gradually emptying out of Cuba, deepening a severe crisis on the cash-strapped island.
Several nations have advised against travel to Cuba since the US tightened a decades-old embargo by choking vital oil imports.
“I found only one taxi,” said French tourist Frederic Monnet, who cut short a trip to a picturesque valley in western Cuba to head back to Havana.
“There might be no taxis afterward,” he said.
A petroleum shortage has led to regular hours-long power cuts, long queues at petrol stations, and has forced many airlines to announce that they will cancel regular services.
About 30 hotels and resorts across the island are being temporarily closed due to low occupancy and fuel rationing, according to an internal Tourism Ministry document obtained by AFP.
Since January, a flotilla of US warships have stopped Venezuelan tankers from delivering oil to Cuban ports.
Washington has also threatened Mexico and other exporter with punitive tariffs if they continue deliveries.
Several Canadian and Russian airlines are sending empty flights to Cuba to retrieve thousands of otherwise stranded passengers, and others are introducing refueling stops in the route home.
American tourist Liam Burnell contacted his airline to make sure he could get a flight back.
“There was a danger that I might not be able to return, because the airport says it doesn’t have enough fuel for the planes,” he said.
‘Critical, critical’
An absence of tourists is more than an inconvenience for the Cuban government.
Tourism is traditionally Cuba’s second major source of foreign currency, behind revenue from doctors sent abroad.
The revenue is vital to pay for food, fuel, and other imports.
And the 300,000 Cubans who make a living off the tourist industry are already feeling the pinch.
A hop-on, hop-off bus touring Havana’s sites on Thursday was virtually empty.
Horses idled in the shade of colonial buildings, waiting for carriages to fill with visitors.
“The situation is critical, critical, critical,” said 34-year-old Juan Arteaga, who drives one of the island’s many classic 1950s cars so beloved by tourists.
“There are few cars (on the street) because there is little fuel left. Whoever had a reserve is keeping it,” he said.
“When my gasoline runs out, I go home. What else can I do?” he said.
The island of 9.6 million inhabitants has faced hard times since the US trade embargo took hold in 1962, and in recent years the severe economic crisis has also been marked by shortages of food and medicine.
On Thursday, two Mexican navy ships arrived in Cuba with more than 800 tons of much-needed humanitarian aid — fresh and powdered milk, meat, cookies, beans, rice and personal hygiene items, according to the Mexican foreign ministry.
Musician Victor Estevez said because tourism has been “a lifeline for all Cubans...if that is affected, then we are really going to be in trouble.”
“The well-being of my family depends on me.”
The tourism sector had already been severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, experiencing a 70 percent decline in revenue between 2019 and 2025.
Tourism expert Jose Luis Perello said the island now faces the prospect of “a disastrous year.”
Several nations have advised against travel to Cuba since the US tightened a decades-old embargo by choking vital oil imports.
“I found only one taxi,” said French tourist Frederic Monnet, who cut short a trip to a picturesque valley in western Cuba to head back to Havana.
“There might be no taxis afterward,” he said.
A petroleum shortage has led to regular hours-long power cuts, long queues at petrol stations, and has forced many airlines to announce that they will cancel regular services.
About 30 hotels and resorts across the island are being temporarily closed due to low occupancy and fuel rationing, according to an internal Tourism Ministry document obtained by AFP.
Since January, a flotilla of US warships have stopped Venezuelan tankers from delivering oil to Cuban ports.
Washington has also threatened Mexico and other exporter with punitive tariffs if they continue deliveries.
Several Canadian and Russian airlines are sending empty flights to Cuba to retrieve thousands of otherwise stranded passengers, and others are introducing refueling stops in the route home.
American tourist Liam Burnell contacted his airline to make sure he could get a flight back.
“There was a danger that I might not be able to return, because the airport says it doesn’t have enough fuel for the planes,” he said.
‘Critical, critical’
An absence of tourists is more than an inconvenience for the Cuban government.
Tourism is traditionally Cuba’s second major source of foreign currency, behind revenue from doctors sent abroad.
The revenue is vital to pay for food, fuel, and other imports.
And the 300,000 Cubans who make a living off the tourist industry are already feeling the pinch.
A hop-on, hop-off bus touring Havana’s sites on Thursday was virtually empty.
Horses idled in the shade of colonial buildings, waiting for carriages to fill with visitors.
“The situation is critical, critical, critical,” said 34-year-old Juan Arteaga, who drives one of the island’s many classic 1950s cars so beloved by tourists.
“There are few cars (on the street) because there is little fuel left. Whoever had a reserve is keeping it,” he said.
“When my gasoline runs out, I go home. What else can I do?” he said.
The island of 9.6 million inhabitants has faced hard times since the US trade embargo took hold in 1962, and in recent years the severe economic crisis has also been marked by shortages of food and medicine.
On Thursday, two Mexican navy ships arrived in Cuba with more than 800 tons of much-needed humanitarian aid — fresh and powdered milk, meat, cookies, beans, rice and personal hygiene items, according to the Mexican foreign ministry.
Musician Victor Estevez said because tourism has been “a lifeline for all Cubans...if that is affected, then we are really going to be in trouble.”
“The well-being of my family depends on me.”
The tourism sector had already been severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, experiencing a 70 percent decline in revenue between 2019 and 2025.
Tourism expert Jose Luis Perello said the island now faces the prospect of “a disastrous year.”
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