Germanwings co-pilot suffered serious depression

Marignane, France

THE Germanwings co-pilot who flew his Airbus into a French mountainside, killing all 150 aboard, suffered serious depression, a German newspaper reported, raising new questions over how he was cleared to fly.

The black box voice recorder shows that Andreas Lubitz locked his captain out of the cockpit on Tuesday and deliberately sent Flight 4U 9525 into the Alps, French officials say, in what appears to have been an act of suicide and mass murder.

Initial portraits of the co-pilot painted a well-liked man, a fitness fanatic who lived with his parents in a leafy, upscale street in the west German town of Montabaur. But a troubled man hid behind that guy-next-door image.

The co-pilot sought psychiatric help for "a bout of heavy depression" in 2009 and was still getting assistance from doctors, Bild daily said, quoting documents from Germany's air transport regulator Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA). He was still receiving "regular, individualised medical" treatment, Bild reported, adding that Germanwings' parent company Lufthansa had transmitted this information to…