Germanwings Plane: Co-Pilot Practiced Rapid Descent on Previous Flight

Investigations by the French Civil Aviation Authority reveal that the co-pilot of Germanwings, who crashed a plane with 150 passengers and crew into a mountain about a month and a half ago, had practiced rapid descent maneuvers on the same day during the outbound flight to Barcelona, Spain. The deliberate crash of the plane by Andreas Lubitz, the 28-year-old co-pilot of the German airline, occurred on April 4 during a flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf, and now investigations show that he had practiced maneuvers on the same aircraft during the previous flight to Barcelona. According to the Associated Press, Lubitz, while practicing these maneuvers with the pilot absent from the cockpit, put the plane into a rapid descent five times over four and a half minutes and then returned it to normal flight. On April 4, during the return flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf, Lubitz locked the cockpit door and did not allow the pilot, who had stepped out for a restroom break, to re-enter, deliberately crashing the plane into the French Alps. All 150 passengers and crew members were killed, including Milad Hojjatoleslami and Hossein Javadi, journalists traveling with the Iranian national football team in Austria. The 30-page report from the French Civil Aviation Authority, published on Wednesday, states that Lubitz managed to conduct his practice without significant impact on the flight process. Investigations indicate that Lubitz had been suffering from severe depression for a long time and had been under psychoanalytic treatment. He had also been treated for suicidal tendencies and had researched methods of suicide. Since the incident, various airlines have changed their regulations, mandating that at least two crew members must be present in the cockpit at all times. In this context, there is a 'video' of the last moments of the Germanwings crash, the co-pilot was suffering from 'severe depression', German police inspected the home of the co-pilot accused of crashing the plane, and two Iranian sports journalists were among the victims of the Germanwings flight.