The co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 appeared to have practised a controlled descent on his flight into Barcelona just two hours before he intentionally crashed the A320 jet into a mountainside on the return flight to Duesseldorf, air accident investigators said.

Five years ag,o Federal Aviation Administration officials questioned the mental fitness of the Germanwings pilot who crashed an airliner in the French Alps last month. 

Europe’s air safety regulator says it has found more than 10 incidents in recent years in which Germany appeared lax in following aviation medical requirements, prompting a European Commission investigation that is still under review.

The co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings flight repeatedly sped up the plane as he used the automatic pilot to descend the A320 into the Alps, the French air accident investigation agency said.

The co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 appears to have researched suicide methods and cockpit door security in the days before he flew the plane into the French Alps, killing 150 people.

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.

The co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 that crashed into the French Alps last week had received treatment for suicidal tendencies several years ago.

Pilots with a history of depression should not be banned from flying commercial jets, according to a leading British psychiatrist, in a warning against a knee-jerk reaction to the French Alps air disaster.

Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz appears to have hidden evidence of an illness from his employers, including having been excused by a doctor from work the day he crashed a passenger plane into a mountain.

All the news you need this lunchtime: 

The Germanwings airline said it is stunned and “utterly baffled” as to why one of its pilots deliberately crashed a plane into the Alps killing himself and 149 other people.

The French Alps plane disaster took a dramatic turn after black box recordings pointed to the co-pilot deliberately crashing the Airbus A320 into the mountains.

THE picture of a young man, believed to be 28-year-old Andreas Lubitz, sitting calmly beside San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge is a classic image of the proverbial ‘boy next door’.