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The co-pilot suspected of crashing a German airliner into the French Alps, killing himself and 149 others, knew the region from gliding holidays, the BBC reported.

A member of the Montabaur flight school where Andreas Lubitz took lessons confirmed to BBC News the co-pilot had flown a glider over the region.

Mr Lubitz was on holiday at the time, several years ago, Dieter Wagner said.

A French newspaper reports that the co-pilot holidayed at a local flying club with his parents from the age of nine.

Investigators are trying to establish what may have motivated Mr Lubitz to seize sole control of the Airbus A320 and crash it.

German prosecutors believe he was concealing an illness from his employer, Germanwings, at the time of the crash.

Data from the voice recorder suggests the 27-year-old purposely started an eight-minute descent into the mountains after locking the pilot out of the flight deck.

There were no survivors when Flight 4U 9525 crashed in a remote Alpine valley on Tuesday while en route from Barcelona in Spain to Duesseldorf in Germany.

Prosecutors say there was no evidence of a political or religious motive for his actions and no suicide note has been found.