The co-pilot whom prosecutors say deliberately crashed a Germanwings flight on Tuesday in the French Alps had aspired to be a pilot from his early youth.

Andreas Lubitz, 28, started flying with the LSC Westerwald air club near his hometown of Montabaur in the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate when he was a teenager and was a years-long member, according to the group’s website.

“Andreas became a member as a youth,” the club wrote on its website. “He wanted to see his dream of flying realized. He started as a sailplane flying student and made it into the pilot seat in an Airbus A320.”

Lubitz joined Germanwings, a low-cost carrier operated by Deutsche Lufthansa AG, in Sept. 2013 and had logged 630 flight hours, the airline said. His motivation for deliberately initiating the fateful descent while the captain was locked out of the cockpit isn’t known, Brice Robin, a French prosecutor, told reporters at a press conference in Marseille.