Germanwings Captain Patrick Sondheimer Pictured In Shrine Alongside Andreas Lubitz

This is the first picture of the Germanwings captain who desperately tried to prevent his co-pilot from deliberately crashing their passenger aircraft.

Father-of-two Patrick Sondheimer had left the cockpit to use the toilet when co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked the door and sent the plane plummeting into the French Alps.

Sondheimer’s picture emerged in a shrine at the Germanwings headquarters in Cologne, commemorating all of the plane’s crew.

Patrick Sondheimer tried desperately to get back into the locked cockpit

The inclusion of Lubitz’s photograph suggests it was erected before prosecutors stated he had deliberately crashed the plane.

Audio retrieved from the A320’s black box recorder revealed Sondheimer at first pleading for Lubitz to open the door.

Sondheimer, 34, can then be heard for more than five minutes trying to break down the door with an axe or crowbar, shouting: “Open the goddamn door!”

Moments later Lubitz sent all 150 people on board to their deaths.

Sondheimer was pictured in a shrine to the crew on board the doomed flight. Andreas Lubitz is also pictured second left

Sondheimer had recently switched from long-haul to short-haul flights to spend more time with his six-year-old daughter and three-year-old son, it has been reported.

His mother paid tribute to her son, describing him as a hero.

She said: "He died a hero but he still died, and we are devastated. The light has gone out of our lives.”

Lubitz is believed to have deliberately steered the plane into the Alps, killing everyone on board

According to Der Spiegel, Lubitz was being treated by at least five doctors including psychiatrists and a neurologist.

He also apparently researched suicide methods and how to keep cockpit doors locked before the flight, adding further detail to prosecutors' beliefs he may have crashed the plane intentionally.

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He is believed to have hidden details of an illness from his employer, after "torn up sick notes" were found in his home which had signed him off work sick on the day of the disaster.

German prosecutors have said Lubitz's medical records from before he received his pilot's license referred to "suicidal tendencies," and Lufthansa, Germanwings' parent company, said it knew six years ago that Lubitz had had an episode of "severe depression" before he finished his flight training.

Work continues in the hunt for a precise rundown of what happened onboard the plane.