User:BrookeLouise94/sandbox/German co-pilot stuff

In a BEA report released overnight French Authorities claim that Andreas Lubitz, Co-Pilot of the fatal Germanwings crash may have ‘practised’ the fatal descent on his previous flight. The BEA, the French organization responsible for safety investigations into Aviation accidents, concluded that Lubitz practiced the maneuvers on the same plane, just one flight before the fatal accident.

The devastating Germanwings crash occurred on March 24 when the Airbus 320 came down in the French Alps en-route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, killing all 150 people on board.

According to the report, Lubitz was also on board the previous flight to Barcelona as the co-pilot. It was just half-an-hour into the flight recording when the pilot can be heard leaving the cockpit. This was when Lubitz took this chance to practise the rapid descent several times over the course of just 5 minutes until the Pilot returned to the cockpit.

The 30 page BEA report then goes on to detail findings of the investigation into the fatal accident which occurred just hours after the ‘practice run'.

They concluded that “the selected altitude changed from 38,000 ft. to 100 ft. while the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit. The aeroplane then started a continuous and controlled descent on autopilot.”

Several of the altitude selections Lubitz made towards 100 ft. were recorded “during descent on the flight that preceded the accident flight, while the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit”.

During the fatal descent, the Marseille control centre called the flight crew on eleven occasions on three different frequencies, without any answer being transmitted.

French military also tried multiple times to make contact during the descent but to no avail. In total, the report says there were 14 incoming external calls and four internal calls to the cockpit which all elicited no reply from Lubitz.

While it has been reported that Lubitz was unfit to fly, the report explains that while his class 1 Medical Certificate was previously revoked in 2009 due to depression, it was revalidated in July 2014 for one year.