Montabaur, Germany: Andreas Lubitz never appeared anything but thrilled to have landed a pilot’s job with Germanwings, according to those who helped him learn to fly as a teenager in a town in the forested hills of western Germany.
Members of his hometown flight club, where he renewed his glider licence towards the end of last year, said the 27-year-old appeared to be happy with the job he had at the airline, a low-cost carrier in the Lufthansa Group.
After starting as a co-pilot with Germanwings in September 2013, Mr Lubitz was upbeat when he returned to the LSC Westerwald e.V glider club to update his glider pilots’ licence with about 20 takeoffs.
‘‘He was happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well,’’ said longtime club member Peter Ruecker, who watched Mr Lubitz learn to fly.
‘‘He was very happy. He gave off a good feeling.’’
Club chairman Klaus Radke said he rejects the Marseille prosecutors’ conclusion that Mr Lubitz deliberately put the Germanwings flight into a descent and flew it straight into the French Alps after the pilot had briefly left the cockpit.
‘‘I don’t see how anyone can draw such conclusions before the investigation is completed,’’ he said.
Mr Lubitz learned to fly at the glider club in a sleek white ASK-21 two-seat glider.
Mr Ruecker said he remembers him 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.
After obtaining his glider pilot’s licence as a teenager, he was accepted as a Lufthansa trainee after finishing the tough German preparatory school at the town’s Mons-Tabor High School.
Mr Ruecker said Mr Lubitz had a girlfriend and gave no indication during his visit to the club last year that anything was wrong.
‘‘He seemed very enthusiastic’’ about his career, he said.
‘‘I can’t remember anything where something wasn’t right.’’
A Facebook page showed Mr Lubitz smiling, clad in a dark brown jacket and posing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
The page, which was wiped from Facebook sometime in the past two days and restored on Thursday as an ‘‘In Memory’’ site, said Mr Lubitz was from Montabaur.
It also lists him as having several aviation-themed interests, including the A320, the model of plane that crashed on Tuesday; Lufthansa, the German aviation company; and Phoenix Goodyear Airport, in the United States.
The 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 the course in 1 hour, 48 minutes, 51 seconds.
AP
