Media reports have said that the Germanwings co-pilot who crashed his Airbus in the French Alps had told his ex-girlfriend that "one day everyone will know my name."
The 26-year-old flight attendant told German newspaper Bild that when she heard about the crash she recalled Andreas Lubitz telling her last year: "One day I'm going to do something that will change the whole system, and everyone will know my name and remember."
Her claim follows revelations by the Dusseldorf prosecutor that Lubitz had been declared unfit, or unwell, in the days leading up to his last fatal flight on Tuesday, but that he had hidden this from his employer, the Telegraph reported.
The black box voice recorder indicates that Lubitz, 27, locked his captain out of the cockpit and deliberately flew Flight 4U 9525 into a mountainside, French officials said, in what appears to have been a case of suicide and mass killing.
It emerged that Lubitz tore up a sick note signing him off work on the day of the crash, and kept it a secret from the airline.
Lubitz had been undergoing treatment at a hospital in Dusseldorf as recently as March 10, just two weeks before the tragedy, but had also concealed this from his employers.
They did not specify the illness.
According to Bild, the young woman, who was "very shocked", flew with Lubitz on European flights for five months last year, during which time they are believed to have been romantically involved, AFP reported.
If Lubitz did deliberately crash the plane, "it is because he understood that because of his health problems, his big dream of a job at Lufthansa, as captain and as a long-haul pilot was practically impossible", she told Bild.
Half of the 150 victims of Tuesday's disaster were German, with Spain accounting for at least 50 and the remainder composed of more than a dozen other nationalities.
