A report by French authorities claims that the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 tried to practice the flight's ill-fated plunge during a previous flight. The plane crashed in the French Alps on March 24, killing all 150 people aboard.
According to the New York Times, the Bureau of Investigations and Analyses says that Andreas Lubitz, 27, dipped the plane's altitude during another flight on the same day:
The initial findings by the Bureau of Investigations and Analyses, known by its French abbreviation B.E.A., show that the co-pilot repeatedly set the Germanwings plane’s altitude to 100 feet during its outbound flight to Barcelona, Spain, from Düsseldorf, Germany, on March 24.
The maneuvers, which were captured by the plane’s flight data recorder, took place while the flight’s captain had left the cockpit temporarily.
To us, it is clear that this was some kind of rehearsal, Rémi Jouty, the director of the B.E.A., said in a telephone interview. We see the same actions being taken in the same circumstances, at a moment when the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit.
This revelation comes after investigation by German police uncovered Lubitz's past struggles with depression, and audio footage recorded by one of the black boxes in the plane's cockpit suggested that he had intentionally crashed the plane. The Times reports that authorities in France believe this information is strong proof that Lubitz's actions were deliberate:
We cannot presume what was going on in his mind, Mr. Jouty said. But based on all the information that we have gathered so far, we can affirm, categorically, that this crash was the result of an intentional act,” he continued, “a series of steps that, taken together, all point in the same direction.
[via New York Times]
