Germanwings co-pilot reported depression to school amid pilot training: Lufthansa

Germany's air carrier Lufthansa said Tuesday that the co-pilot of the crashed Germanwings flight 4U9525 had informed the airline's pilot training school about his depression.

Lufthansa said in a statement that the airline had submitted additional documents to the Public Prosecutor in the German city of Duesseldorf for clarification of the crash, particularly training and medical documents, which also include the email correspondence of the co-pilot with Lufthansa's Flight Training Pilot School.

"In this correspondence he (co-pilot) informed the Flight Training Pilot School in 2009, in the medical documents he submitted in connection with resuming his flight training, about a previous episode of severe depression'," said the statement.

According to Lufthansa, the Germanwings co-pilot had interrupted his pilot training at the school for several months, but received thereafter the medical certificate confirming his fitness to fly.

Prosecutors believed the 27-year-old co-pilot Andreas Lubitz had deliberately crashed Germanwings A320 flight on March 24.

Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr told reporters on March 26 that the co-pilot started his training at the Flight Training Pilot School located in Germany's Bremen in 2008, but interrupted for a while for reasons Spohr didn't mention. The training then resumed, said Spohr, and he started to work as a co-pilot for Germanwings since 2013.

According to Spohr, the co-pilot had passed all the flight and medical tests and was "100 percent fit to fly".

The Public Prosecutor in Duesseldorf confirmed Monday that several years ago, before Lubitz got his pilot certificate, he had undergone psychotherapy treatment because of suicide risk. Lubitz had not been attested as having suicidal tendencies or aggression during his doctor visits in the subsequent period, the Public Prosecutor added. Enditem