Germanwings crash co-pilot ‘practised rapid descent’

Prosecutors believe Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of the Germanwings plane that crashed in March, locked the captain out of the cockpit and steered the plane into a mountainside on a flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf.

An interim report published by French crash investigation agency BEA says Lubitz had practised reducing flight altitude on the outbound flight from Duesseldorf to Barcelona the same day as the crash.

The BEA reported a “controlled descent that lasted for minutes and for which there was no aeronautical justification”.

Lubitz had suffered from severe depression in the past and a computer found in his home showed he had used the internet to research ways of committing suicide in the days leading up to the crash.

Prosecutors also found torn-up sick notes at his home, showing he should not have flown on the day of the flight.

Lufthansa, the owner of Germanwings, declined to comment on the report.

Tragic flight

At first the incident seemed a tragic accident – but as the week drew on it emerged as something altogether more sinister.

Within days police started to search properties in Dusseldorf after French authorities describe how Andreas Lubitz “refused to open” the cockpit door of the Airbus A320 and accelerated its descent “intentionally”.

Information pulled from the black box cockpit voice recorder and formed some chilling testimony delivered by French prosecutor Brice Robin a few days after the crash.

Mr Robin explained how the journey started normally but took a dark turn.

Lubitz’s responses were initially courteous in the first part of the trip, but became “curt” when the captain Patrick Sondenheimer began the mid-flight briefing on the planned landing.
Later Mr Sondenheimer left the controls, apparently to use the bathroom.

“It was while he was alone that the co-pilot manipulated the flight monitoring system to action the descent of the plane,” Mr Robin said.

Unconfirmed reports suggested the autopilot mechanism may also have been tampered with to prevent any intervention.

“The action of selecting the altitude could only have been done voluntarily,” Mr Robin said. During the final minutes of the flight’s descent, pounding could be heard on the outside of the cabin door as alarms sounded.

Passengers could be heard screaming as the captain tried desperately to re-open it from the outside.