Andreas Lubitz, the Germanwings co-pilot believed to have deliberately crashed flight 4U9525 last week, did online research into cockpit doors and suicide methods in the days leading up to the crash, according to Düsseldorf prosecutors.

As French investigators announced they had found the second black box recorder from the wrecked plane, Ralf Herrenbrück, the German prosecutors’ press spokesman, said the a tablet computer found in the co-pilot’s flat had been analysed.

“The browser history had not been deleted, in particular search terms called up using this device in the time from 16 March to 23 March 2015 could be reconstructed,” Thursday’s statement from Herrenbrück said.

“According to these, the user was, on the one hand, looking into medical treatments and, on the other, learning about the different methods and possibilities of committing suicide.”

On at least one day, according to the statement, Lubitz had spent several minutes entering search terms about cockpit doors and their security arrangements.



The user name, personal correspondence and search terms found on the tablet all appeared to confirm that the device belonged to Lubitz, Herrenbrück said. He added that they would not be releasing the exact search terms used and that the device was still being examined.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Investigators have reconstructed what they believe are Andreas Lubitz’s computer searches from a tablet found in his apartment in Düsseldorf. Photograph: IBL/Rex

At a press conference in France, the second since the crash, French public prosecutor Brice Robin confirmed that the second black box, the digital flight data recorder (DFDR) had been found.

“The second black box, the DFDR, was found by a female gendarme from Chamonix,” he said.

“This box was the same colour as the rock. It was found to the left of a ravine that had already searched but it was embedded. It had to be dug out. It had obviously been in the fire, because it is charred, however, its general state leads us to hope there is a possibility that it can be exploited.”

Robin said the DFDR would normally contain 500 registered flight recordings, of speed, altitude, motors and other technical data that he said were “vital ... for finding out the truth” of the Airbus A320 crash.

The flight recorder was flown to Paris on Thursday evening to be sent for examination by experts at the French air accident investigation bureau (BEA).

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“It will give us all the details of the flight itself from its departure from Barcelona to the crash and, above all, the actions of the pilot,” Robin said. “It will tell us if there was only one pilot operating at the time of the crash ... it’s a complement to us understanding the final minutes of this flight.”

Robin said the evidence appeared to confirm that Lubitz was alive and conscious right until the end and had acted twice in response to two speed alarms.

The prosecutor said 40 mobile telephones had been found in the wreckage, all of them in a “very bad state”. This information came 24 hours after Paris Match magazine claimed it had seen a video from a mobile phone sim card made by a passenger in the final moments of the doomed flight.

Robin told journalists that search teams had found 2,285 DNA strands giving 150 different “profiles”.

“This doesn’t mean we have identified all the 150 victims and I stress this point. We have to compare this postmortem DNA with the DNA of these people before they died provided by the families. This work will begin as soon as possible next week.

“At each identification, the victim’s family will be notified, I promise that,” he said.

However, he warned that the return of body parts could only happen when all 150 victims had been identified and following a meeting of all the legal, civil and judicial authorities

“The box will answer the question: did he go right to the end on automatic pilot, or did got manual and pilot the plane right to impact,” Jean Serrat told BFMTV. “I don’t think it’s going to tell us anything we don’t already know, but it removes the last possible doubts.”

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There has been growing public anger in Germany about some of the media coverage of the crash.



After a pupil at the Joseph-König high school in Haltern wrote a blog post complaining of the press siege outside her school, the organisers of a vintage plane air show posted an open letter, addressed to an unnamed press agency, in which it explained why it would not answer the request for footage that might contain images of Lubitz. The letter described mass-media coverage as “serving low voyeurism and generating circulation through horror”.

On Thursday, German politicians attempted to show they were taking action to improve safety and security in the aftermath of the crash.

The transport minister, Alexander Dobrindt, announced a new regular taskforce for optimising flight safety. Following a meeting with representatives of the airline industry association BDL and the civil aviation authority, he said the taskforce would re-examine cockpit door mechanisms and the medical and psychological tests for pilots.

The interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, said it was time to review European Union regulations for passport checks inside the Schengen area. “We need to know for security reasons who is on board a flight,” he told Bild newspaper. “At first, it wasn’t even clear who was on board the flight.”

The comments were immediately condemned by opposition politicians. “A pure placebo reaction to a human tragedy,” Green party MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht told Der Spiegel magazine.