Lufthansa declines comment on co-pilot's mental state (18:20)

Berlin, March 27
The co-pilot of the Germanwings flight 4U9525, who appeared to have deliberately crashed the plane in the French Alps, had passed all tests set by parent company Lufthansa, a spokesman told Xinhua news agency on Friday and declined to comment on his metal condition.

As the company was unable to access the co-pilot's clinical data that has been reported by the media, Lufthansa had no comment to offer on those media reports, the Lufthansa spokesman said.

German news site Spiegel Online reported earlier that after the house search, investigators found evidence that the co-pilot was mentally ill.

The Bild newspaper also reported possible mental illness of the co-pilot, based on a six-year-old memorandum of the German Federal Aviation Office.

The spokesman added that although the company believed that the current psychological testing system for pilots was not in question, there was no doubt that they would continue to improve this system.

"There will be specific measures introduced, but details still need further discussion," he said.

All 144 passengers and six crew members of the Germanwings Airbus 320 are feared killed after the aircraft crashed around 11 a.m. on Tuesday in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence in the southern French Alps.

The prosecutor of the French government said on Thursday that indications are that the co-pilot deliberately crashed after locking out the pilot from the cockpit.

Earlier on Friday, Duesseldorf police told Xinhua that there was no evidence to confirm that the 27-year-old co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, was mentally ill.

After hours of search on Thursday at the co-pilot's apartment in Duesseldorf, police said they have nothing new to talk about the investigation.

As for media reports about Lubitz's mental problems, police said it was "a manifest error of interpretation of the English reporter".

"It has only been said that the evidence has been found and must be evaluated," a police officer said, adding that prosecutors would decide when the results could come out.