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Pilot who crashed jet into French Alps was 'afraid to go blind'

In email to his doctor two weeks before the crash Andreas Lubitz said: 'I'm afraid to go blind and I can't get this possibility out of my head.'

La rédaction de Mediapart

This article is freely available.

The final paranoid outpourings of killer Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz have been revealed ahead of the one year anniversary of the air disaster, reports the New Zealand Herald.

Lubitz, then 27, slammed the A320 jet into the French Alps on March 24, killing all 149 passengers and crew on board.

The contents of the email he sent to his doctor two weeks before the atrocity have now finally been revealed.

In the email, published by German newspaper Bild, he said: "I am afraid to go blind and I can't get this possibility out of my head."

It emerged after the crash that Lubitz was suffering from both depression and loss of vision - and feared his conditions would cost him his job as a pilot.

The email revealed he was taking the highest dose of Mirtazapine, an anti-depressant which is also used as a drug to induce sleep.

Lubitz, who put the plane into a steep dive after locking his co-pilot out of the cockpit, said the increased medication was making him more restless and made him panic about his vision.

He also told his therapist that he was bothered about the permanent tension he felt in his eyes and wrote: "If it wasn't for the eyes, everything would be fine."

Read more of this report from the New Zealand Herald.