Andreas Lubitz: The Blind, Gay, Cheating, Mentally Ill, Fitness Fanatic I Knew

Andreas Lubitz smiles from the front of the Daily Mirror, where the story is that the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 impregnated his lover, Kathrin Goldbach. Jeremy Armstrong says fatherhood “may have led him to crash” the plane and murder 149 people.

We learn that Goldbach planned to leave the “control freak”.

Armstrong adds:

       “Friends believe Kathrin’s imminent split from Lubitz and fears he could lose his job due to depression and sight problems may have tipped him over the edge…”

When you see words like ‘believe’ and ‘may’ in the same sentence, you realise that the report is light on facts.

Having heard from two unnamed sources that Lubitz was controlling, the Mirror notes Lubitz had “apparently been refusing to take his antidepressants”, was a “fitness fantatic”, had only “about 30% vision becasue of serious sight problems” and behaved like “Jekyll And Hyde” when with an air stewardness with whom he was cheating, shouting at and locking in a bathroom.

Over in the Daily Star, Lubitz is the subject of “gay rumours”.

Now Lubitz is dead we can all clearly see what he was really like. If only people close to him had been so knowing when he was alive and piloting a commercial airliner.

Anorak.

PS Later today we learnt, Lubitz 'had treatment for suicidal tendencies'.

Whatever next?

Daily Star: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Just a warning THIS IS IN THE DAILY STAR!

Maybe he was - they say there's a lot of it about these days - but let me know if you can spot any actual evidence in this piece.

And in a second story today, the Star says it was cause he had eye problems and depression.

Joined-up journalism!

Update: There's a very thorough article about Lubitz in the Sunday Telegraph.

On qualifying, Lubitz did not land a job as a pilot immediately and worked as a cabin steward until a vacancy arose. It earned him the nickname “Tomato Andi”, possibly because one of his roles was to hand out tomato juice. It has also been suggested “Tomato” is a derogatory term, meaning someone who isn’t sure if he was a “fruit” or not. There is no evidence, so far at least, that Lubitz was gay and kept his homosexuality hidden, but it’s inevitably an area for the police to explore.

Whatever the truth, for Lubitz, a young man wanting to fly transatlantic jets, to find himself working as a “trolley dolly” would have been all too demeaning...

There have been so many competing claims and speculations in both the broadsheets and tabloids over the weekend, I think it's safe to conclude no-one really has a clue what really happened.

Update2: And by Monday it was...