BERLIN — The co-pilot who crashed Flight 9525 into a French mountainside last week had informed German airline Lufthansa in 2009 about a “previous episode of severe depression,” the airline said Tuesday, raising fresh questions about the decisions that allowed Andreas Lubitz to stay in the skies.
The admission that the company knew at least some of the history of Lubitz’s mental illness came after chief executive Carsten Spohr said last week that Lufthansa — parent of the budget airline Germanwings for which Lubitz worked — had no previous knowledge of his medical history.
In a statement Tuesday, however, the carrier said it wanted to issue a “swift and seamless clarification.” In 2009, Lubitz had taken several months off during his training to become a pilot. When he resumed the program, Lufthansa said, he provided them “medical documents” that noted his bout of severe depression.
The company said it had forwarded those documents to prosecutors, who are now handling the crash as a homicide.
Under European aviation law, pilots with active and untreated cases of depression are prevented from flying. But if deemed medically cured, there may have been no legal impediment for Lubitz to continue his training and obtain his license, experts say.
Pilots who have attempted “a single self-destructive act” — such as suicide — are legally barred from commercial flying. Also, pilots who are taking psychotropic medications — such as popular anti-depressants — as part of their therapy, for instance, have some limitations, including a stipulation that they not be alone in the cockpit.
German prosecutors said Monday that Lubitz had suffered from “suicidal tendencies” for which he was treated over an extended period. The prosecutors said the treatment occurred before he was issued a pilot’s license and that they had found no indications that he was recently suicidal.
But German authorities have said that he had been issued multiple doctors’ notes judging him unfit to work, including one covering the day of the plane crash. At least one of the notes was found torn up in his apartment. The system depends on employees reporting their own medical conditions to their employers.
An official familiar with the investigation said that authorities were not examining Lufthansa for any negligence. During Lubitz’s employment with Germanwings, starting in 2013, his medical certificates and examinations declared him flightworthy.
Separately, a French aviation investigation agency said that it had begun a study of “systemic weaknesses” that may have led to the crash. The French Bureau of Investigations and Analyses for Civil Aviation Security said it would focus on the procedures used “to detect psychological profiles,” as well as look at cockpit safety rules.
At the crash site in the French Alps, investigators said they hope to have found DNA samples for everyone killed on the flight in the next 24 hours. Lt. Col. Jean-Marc Menichini said the search was still on for the plane’s second black box — its data recorder.
