The co-pilot accused of deliberately crashing a plane in the French Alps with the loss of 150 lives was happy in his job, members of his flying club have said.
Details about the life of Andreas Lubitz emerged after a French prosecutor concluded the 28-year-old had wanted to "destroy the plane" by flying it into a mountainside.
The German national, with 630 hours flying experience, had trained at the Lufthansa flight school in Bremen and joined Germanwings after graduating.
He is also thought to have trained in Phoenix, Arizona.
The Facebook profile picture of co-pilot Andreas Lubitz
And according to members of the glider club in his hometown of Montabaur, where Mr Lubitz had learned to fly as a teenager, he was enthusiastic about his job with the budget airline.
They also said he had been upbeat when he returned to the club in the autumn to renew his glider licence.
Club member Peter Ruecker said: "He has happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well. I can't remember anything where something wasn't right."
He also recalled Mr Lubitz as "rather quiet but friendly" when he first joined the club as a teenager, wanting to learn to fly.
And he said Mr Lubitz, a keen half-marathon runner, had a girlfriend.
Klaus Radke, the club's chairman, said he did not believe the conclusion of Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin, that Mr Lubitz had "intentionally" put the Airbus A320 into the disastrous descent, after locking the pilot out of the cockpit.
Police outside a house in Montabaur where it is thought Mr Lubitz lived
"I don't see how anyone can draw such conclusions before the investigation is completed," he said.
The curtains were drawn at the home thought to belong to his parents' in the town, which lies about 40 miles northwest of Frankfurt. Four police cars were parked outside.
It is also reported Mr Lubitz had been included by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on its database to show he had met or exceeded its pilot certification standards, which aim to "reduce pilot errors that lead to fatal crashes".
Mr Robin said Mr Lubitz had never been flagged as a terrorist.
And when pressed over Mr Lubitz's religion, he said: "I don't think this is where this lies. I don't think we will get any answers there."
Mr Robin said the plane's black box recordings showed Mr Lubitz "was breathing normally, it wasn't the breathing of someone who was struggling".
The passenger plane crashed on Tuesday en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, killing all 150 people on board, including three Britons.
Carsten Spohr, chief executive of Lufthansa which owns Germanwings, said he is "stunned" at the claim made against the co-pilot.
He said: "We choose our staff very, very carefully."
Pilots underwent yearly medical examinations but this did not include psychological tests, he said.
However, Mr Spohr said Mr Lubitz had disrupted his training for several months.
Although rare, there have been previous instances of suspected pilot suicide.
The most infamous likely but disputed cases of pilot suicide was the 1997 Silk Air crash in Indonesia, in which 104 people died.
A US-led investigation concluded it had been caused deliberately, probably by the captain who had serious personal problems.
A Mozambique Airlines plane crash that killed 33 people in Namibia in 2013 is also believed to have been a case of pilot suicide.
