The co-pilot suspected of intentionally crashing a passenger jet into the French Alps had practiced the deadly descent just hours before the plunge in March that killed all 150 people aboard, a said Wednesday.
The interim investigation by French aviation experts offered new details on how Andreas Lubitz apparently plotted the March 24 dive of the which was en route from Barcelona to Düsseldorf.
The report found that Lubitz used the earlier flight to Barcelona that morning to test setting the autopilot controls of the Airbus A320 to descend as low as 100 feet while alone in the cockpit for less than five minutes.
He then restored the proper coordinates before the change was detected, according to the 30-page report by the French civil aviation agency BEA.
“A sort of rehearsal,” BEA Director Remi Jouty told reporters in Paris.
Lubitz also may have been able to further mask his actions because they coincided with air-control requests to lower the plane’s altitude to begin the descent into Barcelona, the report added.
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“He only did it for very few seconds before the plane could even move,” said Peter Pletschacher, president of the German Aviation Writers Association. “There was no way for air-traffic control to detect that.”
During the doomed flight, Lubitz locked the cockpit door while the pilot was out and did not acknowledge calls from air-traffic controllers as Flight 9525 headed toward the peaks in southern France.
“The man planned this,” Pletschacher said. “It was no spontaneous action.”
Various reports about the psychological state of the 27-year-old Lubitz emerged after the crash, including German officials saying he had scanned Web sites the week for information on ways to commit suicide.
Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, said it had been informed in 2009, when Lubitz returned from a months-long break in his training, that he had suffered an “episode of severe depression.” The admission came several days after Lufthansa said it had received no prior information about his medical condition.
But the BEA report described Lubitz’s professional standing as “above standard” at the time of the crash.
“I can’t speculate on what was happening inside his head. All I can say is that he changed this button to the minimum setting of 100 feet, and he did it several times,” Jouty said. “These very brief actions on the previous flight were of the maneuver.”
Lufthansa spokesman Helmut Tolksdorf said the carrier had no immediate comment on the report.
Germanwings also declined to comment on the report, but it said in a statement that the airline “welcomed any new information that can help clarify what happened.”
In the report, investigators presented a detailed — and, at times, chilling — chronology of the flight from takeoff at 9 a.m. in Barcelona until it slammed into an Alpine ridge.
At 9:12 a.m. and 15 seconds: Lubitz, the pilot and a flight attendant chat about the nearly hour-long layover in Barcelona.
9:27:20 a.m.: The plane levels off at 38,000 feet.
9:29:40 a.m.: The flight is transferred to the Marseille ground control center.
9:30 a.m.: The captain reads back the controller’s clearance to fly direct to a waypoint, a navigation station. The next waypoint on the flight route has the code IRMAR. ‘‘Direct IRMAR Merci Germanwings one eight Golf,” the captain says in the last communication between the plane and air-traffic controllers.
9:30:08 a.m.: The captain tells Lubitz he is leaving the cockpit and asks Lubitz to take over radio communications.
9:30:24 a.m.: The sound of the cockpit door opening and then, three seconds later, being shut as the captain steps out.
9:30:53 a.m.: The selected altitude is changed from 38,000 feet to 100 feet.
9:33:47 a.m.: Ground controllers try to contact the cockpit to discuss cruise levels. There is no reply. The plane is at 30,000 feet.
9:34:31 a.m.: The sound of the buzzer requesting access to the cockpit.
9:35:32 a.m.: Sounds of knocking on the cockpit door, which are heard periodically for more than four minutes.
9:37:13 a.m.: A muffled voice asks for the cockpit door to be opened.
9:39:30 a.m.: Banging on the cockpit door.
9:40:41 a.m.: The plane’s crash alarm system triggers recording: ‘‘Terrain, Terrain, Pull Up, Pull Up.’’
9:41:06 a.m.: The cockpit recordings stop at the moment of impact near a ridge.
The BEA noted that its report includes only preliminary findings and that investigators were still studying possible “systemic failings” exposed by the crash.
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They include medical confidentiality laws, which sharply limit wider scrutiny of treatments sought by flight crews, and potential “compromises” to boost airline security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, such as reinforced cockpit doors and locking systems.
The Germanwings plane had been at a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet when it began its gradual descent. Flight recorders recovered from the crash site included the screams of terrified passengers and the sound of Lubitz breathing in the cockpit as ground controllers pleaded for a reply.
Murphy reported from Washington.
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