KUALA LUMPUR, March 27 — Similarities to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 are surfacing as investigators hone in on the pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 who is now suspected of crashing the plane into the French Alps and killing 149 people.

As in the early days when Malaysian police descended on the home of Capt Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, German investigators yesterday searched the house of Andreas Lubitz, 27, who had been at the controls of Flight 9525 when it crashed on Tuesday.

According to British daily The Telegraph, crash investigators are also trying to ascertain if Lubitz was inspired by the events of MH370 and similar incidents.

Lubitz is now the prime suspect in the crash after revelations from the plane’s cockpit voice recorder showed he was calmly at the helm of the plane while the other pilot fought desperately to regain entry into the locked cockpit.

Among others, they are scouring the background of the young German aviator for signs of depression or other problems that may have prompted the incident that is being investigated as voluntary manslaughter.

Discovery of Lubitz’s action has prompted immediate response from the aviation industry, with many airlines now mandating that no pilot may be alone in the cockpit at any time during the flight.

Suspicion remains on Zaharie as the “rogue pilot theory” remains among those considered the most likely to explain the disappearance of MH370.

In the days after the plane’s disappearance, police confiscated a flight simulator he built and examined this together with the help of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The checks, however, found nothing suspicious in the simulator or Zaharie and Fariq’s personal computers.

An interim report on MH370 released prior to the anniversary of the plane’s disappearance also found no red flags relating to the plane crew.

MH370 disappeared from radar on March 8, 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board; it remains missing despite a massive multinational search that has since been scaled back to involve Australia, Malaysia and China.

Flight 9525 crashed into the French side of the Alps while flying from Barcelona, Spain to Dusseldorf in Germany on May 24, killing all 150 people on board.

It is the first major civilian air disaster in France since 2000 and the deadliest since a 1981 crash that killed 180 people.