Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, suspected of deliberately crashing a flight that killed all 150 people on board last week, once told a girlfriend he wanted to do something drastic "that will change the system," according to the German newspaper Bild.
In a translation from Reuters, a woman who identified herself as Lubitz's ex-girlfriend said she remembered a chilling statement the co-pilot made upon hearing about the deadly crash in the French Alpes last Tuesday.
" 'One day I'll do something that will change the system, and then everyone will know my name and remember it,' " said the woman identified only as Maria W, who is a flight attendant.
"I didn't know what he meant by that at the time, but now it's obvious," she said. "He did it because he realized that, due to his health problems, his big dream of working at Lufthansa, of having a job as a pilot, and as a pilot on long-distance flights, was nearly impossible," she said of Germany's biggest airline.
Investigators believe Lubitz, said to have suffered from a mental illness, locked himself in the cockpit aboard the Germanwings Airbus and flew the plane into the side of a mountain, a conclusion arrived at after the aircraft's voice recorders were recovered.
In Germany, officials said they found torn sick notes indicating the 27-year-old had a mental illness that should have forbidden him from flying the Dusseldorf-bound flight 9525 from Barcelona, according to Reuters.
Lubitz had also been "treated by several neurologists and psychologists," a top investigator told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
Maria W, who dated the co-pilot last year, said their relationship ended because she was scared of him.
"He would suddenly freak out in conversations and yell at me," she told Bild. "At night he would wake up screaming 'we are crashing' because he had nightmares. He would be good at hiding what has really going on inside him."
Germanwings, a budget carrier owned by Lufthansa, said they received no sick note from Lubitz at the time of the crash, according to Reuters. A spokesman from Lufthansa declined to comment.
A ceremony for the 150 victims, including German, Spanish and American nationalities, is to be held April 17 at Germany's Cologne Cathedral.
