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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Airline knew of pilot’s depressive episode

Magazines say video from cabin found

Associated Press

BERLIN – Lufthansa knew six years ago that the co-pilot of the passenger plane that crashed in the French Alps last week had suffered from a “serious depressive episode,” the German airline said Tuesday.

The airline said that as part of its internal research it found emails that Andreas Lubitz sent to the Lufthansa flight school in Bremen when he resumed his training there in 2009 after an interruption of several months.

In them, he informed the school, where he had started studying in 2008, that he had suffered a “serious depressive episode,” which had since subsided.

The airline said Lubitz subsequently passed all medical checks and that it has provided the documents to prosecutors. It declined to make any further comment.

The revelation that Lufthansa had been informed of Lubitz’s psychological problems raises further questions about why he was allowed to become a pilot for its subsidiary, Germanwings, in September 2013.

Authorities say the 27-year-old Lubitz, who in the past had been treated for suicidal tendencies, locked the captain out of the cockpit before deliberately crashing the Airbus 320 on March 24. All 150 people aboard Flight 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf were killed.

Separately Tuesday, German daily Bild and French magazine Paris Match said their reporters have been shown a video they say was taken by someone inside the cabin of the doomed plane shortly before it crashed.

Marseille Prosecutor Brice Robin, overseeing the French criminal investigation into the crash, told the Associated Press Tuesday night that no cellphone video has been found from the plane.

Paris Match reported that “you can hear cries of ‘My God’ in several languages” and metallic banging, perhaps of the pilot trying to open the cockpit door with a heavy object. It said the screaming intensified toward the end, after a heavy shake.

Bild said that “even though the scene on board is chaotic and completely shaky, and no individual person can be identified, the accuracy of the video is beyond question.”

Lufthansa earlier Tuesday said it had set aside $300 million to deal with possible costs from the crash as French aviation investigators said they were examining “systemic weaknesses” like cockpit entry rules and psychological screening procedures that could have led to the Germanwings plane crash – issues that could eventually change worldwide aviation practices.

German prosecutors say Lubitz received psychotherapy before obtaining his pilot’s license and that medical records from that time referred to “suicidal tendencies.” They have given no dates for his treatment, but said visits to doctors since then showed no record of any suicidal tendencies or aggression against others.