Flight school knew about pilot’s depression

Associated Press

FRANKFURT, Germany

Lufthansa knew that the co-pilot of the passenger plane that crashed in the French Alps last week had suffered from an episode of “severe depression” before he finished his flight training with the German airline.

The airline said Tuesday that it has found emails that Andreas Lubitz sent to the Luft-hansa flight school in 2009 when he resumed his training in Bremen after an interruption of several months. In them, he informed the school that he had suffered a “previous episode of severe depression,” which had since subsided.

The airline said Lubitz subsequently passed all medical checks and that it has provided the documents to prosecutors. It declined to make any further comment.

French authorities say voice recordings indicate Lubitz, 27, locked the other pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the Airbus A320 in the French Alps on March 24. All 150 people aboard Flight 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf died.

The disclosure that Lubitz had told the airline he had suffered from depression before he was hired in September 2013 at Lufthansa’s budget arm Germanwings is another blow to the company’s reputation. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr had said that Lubitz passed all tests and had been pronounced fit to fly.