Germanwings co-pilot had tried out deadly plane maneuver during previous flight

The Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety in France says the co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings passenger airliner had practiced a deadly plane maneuver on a previous flight.

Civil aviation investigators from the bureau, known by its French acronym as the BEA, said on Wednesday that Andreas Lubitz appeared to have tried out a “controlled, minute-long descent for which there was no aeronautical reason” on an earlier flight from Dusseldorf to Barcelona, only hours before his suicidal actions.

The Germanwings Airbus 320 crashed into a mountain in the French Alps on March 24, killing all the 150 people on board.

On the fatal flight back to Dusseldorf everything initially proceeded normally, with Lubitz even having his meal 15 minutes into the flight, the BEA report said.

Half an hour into the flight the captain left the cockpit for the restroom, and the selected altitude on the flight control unit changed “in one second” from a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet (11,600 meters) to 100 feet (30.48 m), which is the minimum height possible to select on an A320, the report added.

A record from the cockpit revealed that Lubitz had locked out the captain.

Following the crash, it was revealed that the co-pilot had sought medical treatment for vision problems and depression shortly before the tragic incident took place.

Lubitz had been diagnosed by health officials as suicidal “several years” prior to the fatal incident, German prosecutors said. Furthermore, he had allegedly told officials at an airline training school that he had suffered severe depression in the past.

MRA/HSN/SS

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