Germanwings plane crash: Victim's brother hits out at Germanwings over plane crash that left him an 'orphan'

Claude Driessens spoke of his anger at the procedures and the airline which he said left him 'an orphan'

French gendarmes and investigators make their way through debris from wreckage on the mountainside at the crash site of an Airbus A320, near Seyne-les-Alpes

Claude Driessens had two brothers and now, for reasons linked in one way or another to aviation, he has none. Today, he spoke of his anger at the procedures and the airline which he said had robbed him of his remaining sibling and left him "an orphan".

The 65-year-old Belgian received a phone call on Tuesday afternoon from his Spanish sister-in-law to tell him that her husband and his brother, Christian, was on board Germanwings flight 4U 9525 when it hurtled into a mountainside close to this Alpine ski station as a result of the actions of its co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz.

Mr Driessens said: "I cannot understand how a responsible company could let a depressive fly a plane - because that is what he was this young man and we have to recognise it.

"I am angry that this company's rules didn't say there must be always two people in the cockpit. It is not normal to leave someone at the controls by themselves who then blocks the door. I am very angry."

For the father-of-one, the loss of his 59-year-old brother is the second disaster to strike his family in which aviation has played a role. In 1981, his youngest brother, Carol, an airline pilot based in Venezuela disappeared without trace in the Caribbean and Mr Driessens dwelt upon the fact that three brothers have been reduced to one.

He said: "Now there is nothing left, I'm the last one. I'm an orphan of sorts."

The retired manufacturer said he harboured no ill-feeling towards the parents of Mr Lubitz. In a remarkable interview with French radio station Europe 1, he said: "They are a mother and a father, just like millions of others who were proud of their son. Sadly it did not turn out well but I cannot have anything against them."

Mr Driessens said he believed his brother, a businessman who had lived in Barcelona for 30 years with his wife and children and travelled frequently by air, must have realised what was happening in its final moments as the Airbus A320 made its 18-minute descent and was torn apart on the slate-grey, snowy peak of the Col de Mariaud. Christian had been making one of many frequent visits back to northern Europe - he had booked a large village in a Belgian resort this summer so that his extended family could stay together.

Mr Driessens said: "It must have been a calvary, above al for my brother who flew all the time and would have known what a descent like that meant. He would have seen his death coming. The other passengers would have seen their deaths coming. It is very hard to speak of it. I think of the other families who are living this grief."

An Airbus plane of German airline Lufthansa carrying onboard relatives of the Germanwings plane crash victims takes off from the Duesseldorf airport in Duesseldorf, western Germany, en route to Marseille

In the village of Le Vernet where some 200 of those other relatives gathered yesterday in the shadow of the Col de Mariaud, a temporary stone memorial put in place by locals remained decked with single white roses laid by the families. Inside the cellophane wrapping of each flower many had placed a photograph of their loved one.

Those who had volunteered their services - from psychologists to translators - described how the bereaved had responded when in the privacy of a conference room at Marseille airport it was revealed to them that their relatives were not the victims of an accident but an apparently calculated mass killing.

One of the translators said: "Before, the families were talking or thanking people. But as they were told the news, they cracked. There were cries, some went to the ground, crying. It was so hard for them."

By nightfall on Thursday all but a very small handful of the bereaved, among them members of Mr Lubitz's family who like others had travelled to France without knowing the cause of the crash, had returned to their homes.

They left behind them an accelerating operation to return to them the remains of their loved ones from the mountainside where, such was the force of the impact, the corpses of the victims were obliterated along with the plane that was carrying them.

Those in charge of the operation said yesterday that the body parts, each painstakingly catalogued by forensic experts working at the crash site, were being sent to a specialist centre in Paris to begin the arduous process of identification, which they warned could take up to three months as the remains are matched with DNA and information such as dental records.

Alongside them, others are beginning to piece together the mindset and the history that led Mr Lubitz to adjust the altitude settings of his plane to 100 metres - the lowest possible - and ignore the pleas and screams from the cabin behind him as he flew 149 people to their deaths.

For Mr Driessens, who did not travel to France and said he wanted to offer his prayers from his home in Liege, the prospect of a wait of up to a year for an official report is one he freely accepts in the hope that it will provide the full answers that those left behind from flight 4U 9525 need.

He said: "My definitive grief can only come when the experts are able to say exactly what happened. Even now we only have part of the truth - there are other things that may come up to explain why [the co-pilot] acted as he did. But in the end I have to know, because I owe it to my brother."