Germanwings crash: search for the second black box

The search goes on for the second black box from the Germanwings passenger jet that crashed in the French Alps on 24 March, killing all 150 people on board.

Recordings and data already recovered revealed that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit when he went to the toilet, at which point he put the aircraft into its fatal eight-minute descent.

Read more: What we know so far about Andreas Lubitz

So far investigators have only retrieved the cockpit voice recordings from one of the plane’s black boxes.

Glider footage

Footage has now emerged of Lubitz flying a glider, in what appears to be his home town of Montabaur, about 130 km south of Dusseldorf.

The 27 year-old was a member of the LSC Westerwald flight club based in Montabaur, which held summer flying camps in the region of Sisteron.

The footage was reportedly filmed in the last 10 years, and shows Lubitz taking off and landing the glider, filmed by a passenger carried in the seat behind him.

German officials have now revealed Lubitz was being treated for suicidal tendencies years before he received his pilot’s licence.

This was the first acknowledgement from German officials that the co-pilot had suffered bouts of depression.

DNA identified

The French prosecutor had previously said a torn up sicknote was found in a search of Lubitz’s apartment, along with what appeared to be treatment for mental illness that he appears to have hidden from his employers.

German newspaper Die Welt reported that investigators had found evidence of a serious “psychosomatic illness”, and that Lubitz had been treated by “several neurologists and psychiatrists”.

German media reported the co-pilot is said to have told his ex-girlfriend he was planning a big gesture so “everyone will know my name”.

The Bild newspaper published an interview with a woman who said she had a relationship in 2014 with Lubitz.

Read more: Germanwings - three days that changed the face of flying

“When I heard about the crash, I remembered a sentence… he said: ‘One day I’ll do something that will change the system, and then everyone will know my name and remember it’,” said the woman, a flight attendant the paper gave the pseudonym of Maria W.

In France, DNA strands of 80 of the victims have been found, but French authorities say it will take a long time to identify the 150 passengers and crew that died in the crash.

This morning three military all-terrain vehicles left a helipad near the crash site carrying investigators and specialised mountain emergency personnel, who will continue to comb the remote site of the crashed Airbus A320 for bodies and the second black box flight recorder.

Two German helicopters were expected to fly to the crash site later on but were unable to due to strong winds, a military spokesman said.