The Germanwings co-pilot suspected of deliberately crashing a jet in the Alps in March entered the fatal descent settings several times on an earlier outbound flight, investigators have said.
A report on the crash by the BEA, France’s air accident investigation agency, showed that Andreas Lubitz had set the altitude dial on the Airbus A320’s autopilot to 100ft (30 metres) five times while alone in the cockpit on the previous flight, from Düsseldorf to Barcelona, on 24 March. He then restored the plane to the correct altitude when the flight captain returned.
Black box recordings from the doomed flight back from Barcelona to Düsseldorf later that morning suggested that Lubitz locked the captain out of the cockpit before putting the plane into a controlled descent.
He also ignored repeated attempts to contact him by air traffic controllers and the French military. All 150 people on board were killed when the plane ploughed into a mountain.
After the crash, German investigators discovered that Lubitz, 27, had been signed off sick by his doctor on the day of the tragedy. He had suffered from severe depression in the past and a computer found at his home showed he had used the internet to research suicide methods in the days leading up to the crash.
The cockpit voice recorder found in the wreckage in a rocky ravine in the French Alps showed Lubitz had locked the captain, Patrick Sondheimer, out of the flight deck after his colleague left to use the lavatory after putting the aircraft at its cruise altitude of 38,000ft.
Lubitz then put the plane’s autopilot into a controlled descent, increasing the speed of the Airbus several times as it dropped. Sondheimer can be heard trying to smash his way in, shouting: “Open the damned door!” Seconds later, the aircraft crashed near Digne-les-Bains.
The BEA preliminary report, released on Wednesday, states that the sound of breathing was recorded on the CVR until a few seconds before the end of the flight.
There was movement of the “right sidestick”, the co-pilot’s control stick, for about 1min 33sec before the plane’s impact with the mountain, but it was not enough to disengage the autopilot, according to information from the flight data recorder (FDR), the second black box.
“During the descent of the accident flight, the Marseille control centre called the flight crew on 11 occasions on three different frequencies, without any answer being transmitted,” states the report.
“The French military defence system tried to contact flight GWI18G on three occasions during the descent, without any answer. The buzzer to request access to the cockpit sounded once during the descent, 4min 7sec after the captain had left. The interphone sounded in the cockpit 4min 40sec after the captain had left. Three other calls on the interphone sounded in the cockpit. None of the calls using the interphone elicited any answer.”
Lubitz would have had to “toggle” with the cockpit door controls to keep Sondheimer out of the flight deck, the report suggests.
On the outbound flight from Germany, the report says the FDR recordings show that “several altitude selections towards 100ft were recorded during descent on the flight that preceded the accident flight, while the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit”.
After he was left at the controls at 7h 19min 59sec, Lubitz set the altitude to 100ft five times until the captain returned at 7h 24min 29sec. On this occasion, Lubitz allowed his senior officer back into the flight deck. The report also details Lubitz’s training and medical checks and states his files show that instructors and examiners rated his professional level as “above standard”.
However, his class 1 medical certificate allowing him to fly, issued on 9 April 2008, was “not revalidated a year later by the Lufthansa aeromedical centre due to depression and the taking of medication to treat it”.
The report continues: “On 14 July 2009, his request for renewal of his class 1 medical certificate was refused by the Lufthansa aeromedical centre ... on 28 July 2009, he obtained a new class 1 medical certificate valid until 9 April 2010, endorsed with the note: “Note the special conditions/restrictions of the waiver FRA 091/09 -REV-.”
“His pilot’s licence then included the limitation ‘‘***SIC**incl. PPL***’’, which means ‘Specific regular medical examinations – contact the licence issuing authority’.”
The last valid class 1 medical certificate had been issued to Lubitz on 28 July 2014 and was valid until 14 August 2015.
His schedule shows he did not fly between 13 and 22 March 2015. On 23 March 2015, the day before the accident, he made an internal flight from Düsseldorf to Berlin-Tegel between 04.57 and 05.56, returning to Düsseldorf at about 08.20 as a passenger.
Key findings from the Germanwings report:
- Investigators searched air accident databases and found evidence of six public transport accidents whose conclusions show they were caused by “intentional manoeuvres by one of the flight crew members that was intended to lead to the loss of the aircraft and its occupants”.
- On the 24 March outbound flight from Düsseldorf to Barcelona, Andreas Lubitz set the plane’s altitude to 100ft five times while alone in the cockpit. He returned the aircraft to its correct altitude before the captain returned. This was not noticed at the time, but showed up on the FDR.
- On the flight back to Düsseldorf, Lubitz again set the plane’s autopilot to an altitude of 100ft and an eight-minute crash course over the French Alps. This time he refused to let the captain, Patrick Sondheimer, back into the cockpit. Black box recordings show he ignored requests to open the door and attempts to break it down.
- Lubitz failed to respond to 11 attempts at radio contact on different frequencies from air traffic controllers, French air defence systems and another aircraft.
- A preliminary report into the crash concludes: “The initial information from the investigation shows that, during the cruise phase, the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit. He then intentionally modified the autopilot instructions to order the aeroplane to descend until it collided with the terrain. He did not open the cockpit door during the descent, despite requests for access made via the keypad, the cabin interphone and knocks on the door”.
- The 29-page report says investigators will “seek to understand the compromises that were made between the requirements of security, specifically those that followed the attacks of 11 September 2001, and the requirements of flight safety including a focus on cockpit access”.
- It will also aim to explain “how and why pilots can be in a cockpit with the intention of causing the loss of the aircraft and its occupants”.