Lufthansa CEO: Full picture will take time

Lufthansa said on Wednesday the reconstruction of the events that led to the Germanwings plane crash last week will not be quick.

"We are learning more every day about the causes of the accident," Chief Executive Carsten Spohr said in a statement on Wednesday near the crash site in France.

"It will take a long, long time for all of us to understand how this could happen."

He wouldn't answer questions on what Lufthansa knew about the mental health of Andreas Lubitz, who investigators believe deliberately crashed the plane, but the airline admitted that Lubitz told his bosses he had suffered from severe depression.

Lufthansa, which owns Germanwings, said the 27-year-old Lubitz had told the airline in 2009 about his illness after interrupting his flight training.

The parent company said it had handed additional information, especially medical and training documents, to prosecutors in Dusseldorf after "further internal investigations".

Until now, the airline had only said Lubitz interrupted his training for several months six years ago, though it offered no explanation.

Spohr and Thomas Winkelmann, the head of Germanwings, the low-cost subsidiary, planned to visit the crash site in Seyne-les-Alpes early on Wednesday to pay their respects to the dead.

The authorities said the bodies of all victims had been recovered.

Crash video emerges

A video purportedly showing the final seconds inside the cabin of the ill-fated Flight 4U9525 minutes before it crashed has emerged, two European media outlets said on Tuesday, although French police dismissed the claims.

One sequence reportedly shows a chaotic scene with passengers screaming, "My God!"

French magazine Paris Match and the German daily Bild said the authenticity of the video filmed on a mobile phone is "unquestionable" and that it had been retrieved from the wreckage.

However, French police Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Marc Menichini denied that investigators had found mobile phone footage at the crash site, telling CNN the reports were "completely wrong" and "unwarranted".

AFP - Reuters