AFP/Reuters/Berlin

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) had voiced concerns over Germany’s “non-conformity” with air safety rules before the Germanwings air crash which killed 150 people, especially on air crew health monitoring, a spokesman said yesterday.
The EASA, an EU agency, “had pointed out several cases of non-conformity”, spokesman Dominique Fouda said, confirming a Wall Street Journal report.
“On the basis of the EASA recommendations the European Commission launched, in late 2014, a process calling for accountability from Germany,” he continued.
Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot suspected of deliberately crashing a Germanwings airliner on March 24, had searched online for information about suicide and cockpit doors, according to prosecutors.
All 150 people on board Flight 4U9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf were killed when it crashed into the Alps in the bloodiest such disaster on French soil in decades.
German prosecutors have said Lubitz was diagnosed as suicidal “several years ago”, before he became a pilot.
The parent company of Germanwings, German flag carrier Lufthansa, has come under huge pressure after it emerged that Lubitz had informed his bosses that he had suffered from severe depression.
Lufthansa said that the co-pilot had told the airline in 2009 about his illness after interrupting his flight training.
Doctors had recently found no sign that Lubitz, 27, intended to hurt himself or others, but he was receiving treatment from neurologists and psychiatrists who had signed him off sick from work a number of times, including on the day of the crash.
Lufthansa chief Carsten Spohr has said the airline was utterly unaware of any health issues that could have compromised Lubitz’s fitness to fly, calling him “100% airworthy”.
Yesterday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal cited two people familiar with the matter as saying EU officials had found the aviation authority, the Luftfahrtbundesamt (LBA), had a lack of staff, which could have limited its ability to carry out checks on planes and crew, such as medical checks.
An EU Commission spokesman told AFP that, based on the EASA findings, it had “told Germany to get its aviation industry in conformity” with the rules.
“Germany’s responses are currently being evaluated,” he added. “This is part of a continuous system of supervision” in a process which can culminate in corrective action.
“All EU member states have findings and this is a normal and regular occurrence. It is part of a continuous system of oversight: findings are followed by corrective action, similar to an audit process,” the Commission spokesman said, without specifying EASA’s findings in Germany.
The spokesman was not immediately available for further comment.
A spokeswoman for the LBA said EASA’s audits of national aviation authorities such as the LBA took place several times a year.
She said the LBA had answered a single-figure number of criticisms levelled at it during the audits and those responses were now being assessed by EASA.
The French air accident authority BEA has said that its investigation into the Germanwings crash would study “systemic weaknesses” that might have led to the disaster, including psychological profiling.
The Wall Street Journal said it was unclear whether the deficiencies identified at LBA were factors in the crash.