Germanwings flight crash co-pilot suffered from depression
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Germanwings flight crash co-pilot suffered from depression

Germanwings flight crash co-pilot suffered from depression

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(AGI) Rome, Mar 26 - The Germanwings Airbus 320 crash in theFrench Alps was caused deliberately by the young co-pilot, forreasons still unknown. This shift in the investigation cameless than 48 hours after the disaster as a result of audiorecordings of conversations from the only black box recovered.The New York Times first reported the contents and a few hourslater came the confirmation from Marseilles prosecutor BriceRobin. The co-pilot had temporarily left pilot training"due to depression," the mother of a classmate of the28-year-old told newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung. "Hewas a good lad, from a good family," said the woman, "but wentthrough a period of burnout and depression." Theprosecutor explained that the German co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz,28, locked himself in the cockpit when the flight commanderwent to use the restroom. He was "alone at the controls and itwas while he was alone that the co-pilot manipulated the flightmonitoring system to action the descent of the plane". "The action of selecting the altitude could only have been donevoluntarily," Robin said. He also failed to respond to appealsfrom the control tower in Marseille. There was silence in thecabin broken only by the steady breathing of the co-pilot,lucid and determined until the end in this insane act.According to German media, Mr Lubitz, hired in September 2013and with just 630 hours of flying time, had suspended histraining due to burnout and depression. This seems the mostlikely motive, even more than terrorism, which investigatorsseem to have discounted. The recording shows that thecommander tried on several occasions to bash down the door, butit was reinforced as required by international standards. Thepassengers only realised what was happening at the end whenthere could be heard screaming. The co-pilot "had passedall the medical tests and psychological and was deemed 100percent fit to fly." In addition to having trained in theLufthansa flight school, Mr Lubitz had received the certificateof excellence from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA),the U.S. flight safety organisation. (AGI) . . .
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