Report: Co-pilot practiced deadly descent before French Alps crash

The co-pilot suspected of intentionally crashing a passenger jet into the French Alps had practiced setting the plane’s auto­pilot into a deadly descent before the fatal plunge in March that killed all 150 people aboard, a report said Wednesday. The Washington Post writes.

The interim investigation by French aviation experts offered new details on how co-pilot Andreas Lubitz apparently plotted the dive of the Germanwings plane on March 24 on a flight between Barcelona and Düsseldorf.

The report found that Lubitz used the previous flight to Barcelona on the morning of the crash to test setting the auto­pilot controls of the Airbus A320 to descend as low as 100 feet while alone in the cockpit for less than five minutes.

He then pulled the plane out of the descent before it was detected, investigators concluded in the 30-page report by France’s civil aviation agency BEA.

[Scenes from the alpine crash site]

During the doomed flight, Lubitz managed to lock the cockpit door while the pilot was out and refused to acknowledge calls from air traffic controllers as Flight 9525 headed toward the peaks in southern France.

“The man planned this. It was no spontaneous action,” said Peter Pletschacher, president of the German Aviation Writers Association.

Various reports about the psychological state of the 27-year-old Lubitz emerged after the crash, including German officials saying he scanning Web sites the week before the disaster to research information on various methods of suicide.

Lufthansa — the parent company of Germanwings — said it had been informed in 2009, when he returned from a months-long break in his training, that Lubitz had suffered an “episode of severe depression.” The admission came several days after Lufthansa said it had received no prior information about his medical condition.

Lufthansa spokesman Helmut Tolksdorf said the carrier had no immediate comment on the report.

The BEA noted its report includes only preliminary findings, and investigators were still studying possible “systemic failings” exposed by the crash.

They include medical confidentiality that sharply limits wider scrutiny of treatments sought by flight crews, and potential “compromises” to boost airline security after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks such as reinforced cockpit doors and locking systems.

The Germanwings plane had been at a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet when it began its gradual descent toward the ice-covered Alps. Flight recorders recovered from the crash site included the screams of terrified passengers and the sound of Lubitz breathing in the cockpit as an alarm sounded warning of an imminent collision.