The Federal Aviation Administration raised questions in 2010 about whether it should grant a pilot’s license in the United States to Andreas Lubitz, who in March flew a Germanwings jetliner into a French mountainside, but was assured by his doctors in Germany that he had fully recovered from an episode of depression the year before, according to newly released documents.
The release of the information, in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from news organizations, helps to fill in holes in the timeline of Lubitz’s illness and treatment, and shows that authorities in the United States were aware at the time that he had psychiatric problems.
According to the documents released by the FAA, Lubitz was treated between January 2009 and October 2009 with at least two drugs, Cipralex and mirtazapine. During that period, he was on leave from Lufthansa’s pilot-training school, a program that normally lasts around two years and included a period of several months at a Lufthansa-owned center in Arizona when he would learn to fly small planes.
Ultimately the agency decided that Lubitz could travel to the United States and continue training, but it warned that he would be prohibited from flying if his depression recurred.
There is also evidence suggesting that Lubitz might have tried to mislead the FAA about his treatment, initially marking “no” in response to a question on whether he had ever been treated for mental disorders, on a form dated June 2010. Referring to a question number on the form, the file notes, “changed from N to Y.”
French prosecutors say that Lubitz, 27, intentionally flew the Airbus A320 bound from Barcelona to Duesseldorf, Germany, with 149 other people on board, into a mountain range on March 24.
Germany’s strict privacy laws have frustrated efforts to understand how Lubitz became a pilot despite the severe depressive episode and how his increasingly troubled behavior in the months leading up to the crash raised no alarms at Germanwings or its parent company Lufthansa.
Lubitz graduated from high school in 2007. An avid glider pilot as a teenager, he was accepted into Lufthansa’s highly selective flight academy the following year. Records show that a Lufthansa flight doctor examined him in April 2008 and gave him a clean bill of health; the only abnormality listed was a tonsillectomy.
By the next January, though, he was undergoing treatment with psychotherapy and antidepressant drugs, the documents say. “In the case of Mr. Lubitz, modified living conditions caused the onset of a depressive episode,” according to an account provided to the FAA by Lubitz’s doctor in Germany. The known timeline of Lubitz’s career suggests this was after his move to Lufthansa’s flight school campus in Bremen, Germany, from his parents’ home in the small town of Montabaur.
The name of the psychologist who treated him in Germany was redacted, but the psychologist was described as specializing in psychotherapy “for children and juveniles.” Lubitz’s “high motivation and active participation contributed to the successful completion of the treatment, after the management of the symptoms,” a document provided to the FAA said.
In addition to psychotherapy, Lubitz was treated with Cipralex, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and mirtazapine, a drug used to treat major depressive disorders. According to the documents, Lubitz’s use of the medication had been tapered by July 2009. The treatment “enabled him to develop the sufficient resources for getting on with similar situations in the future,” one document said.
Lufthansa has said that Lubitz sent an e-mail after his treatment in 2009 seeking reinstatement to its flight-training program, acknowledging that he had suffered from severe depression.
Lufthansa put him back through its standard applicant-screening process and medical tests. There is no evidence that the company imposed special monitoring of his condition beyond what would be required for any pilot who had a flagged health issue.