Germanwings Co-Pilot May Have Rehearsed Fatal Descent In Another Flight

(RTTNews) - Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, who appears to have deliberately crashed the aircraft on French Alps, had rehearsed controlled descent on another flight that morning, investigators said. The crash has killed 150 people aboard the Germanwings Flight 9525 on March 24.

The investigators from the French civil aviation reported that Lubitz has set the autopilot of the Airbus A320 to a 100 feet setting on March 24, while he was flying from Dusseldorf to Barcelona. He was alone in the cockpit for four and a half minutes and tried the lowest settings at least five times. He set the autopilot to normal when the captain returned to the cockpit. It was on the return flight from Barcelona, Lubitz apparently locked the captain out of the cockpit and put the aircraft into a controlled descent, using an altitude dial setting of 100 feet.

The French investigators suspect that Lubitz deliberately primed the autopilot to its lowest settings, when the plane was flying at a height of 38,000 feet. The passengers realized the danger at the last moment, before the aircraft got pulverized after just eight minutes of descent. Lubitz remained calm and his breathing was normal as heard in the cockpit voice recorder.

German Media reported that Lubitz has been going through a crisis in personal life and he had once discontinued his pilot training. He re-entered the training after a through fitness and psychological tests. Lubitz had stopped flight training six years ago due to 'burnout syndrome,' reports said.