(CBS) -- A German newspaper reported Wednesday that Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz practiced his fatal descent hours before he locked his captain out of the cockpit of their Airbus A320 and rammed it into the side of a mountain, killing himself and everyone else on board in an apparent suicide flight.Bild, a German tabloid, cited sources close to the official probe being carried out by French air crash investigation agency BEA as saying prosecutors believe Lubitz carried out a "controlled descent that lasted for minutes and for which there was no aeronautical justification" during his flight from Dusseldorf to Barcelona on March 24.BEA investigators were expected to issue a report later Wednesday including the findings, but they would not confirm the details of the Bild report in advance.On the return flight later that same day, Flight 9525 disappeared from radar screens over the French Alps. Prosecutors have said Lubitz locked the captain out of the cockpit after he went to the lavatory, and then deliberately set the flight controls to a steep but controlled descent into the side of a mountain.The captain can be heard on cockpit voice recordings demanding to be let back in and trying to break down the reinforced door.Lubitz and all 149 others on board the plane were killed in the crash, which left the jet splintered into thousands of pieces on the side of a steep, rocky mountain.Five years ago Federal Aviation Administration officials questioned Lubitz' mental fitness, but they awarded him a U.S. pilot license after his German doctor said he had fully recovered from severe depression, government records show.The records, posted online in late April by the FAA in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, show Andreas Lubitz applied for a U.S. pilot license while he was employed by Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, and was training to be an airline pilot at a flight school in Phoenix in 2010. As part of the application, he initially submitted a medical form to the FAA asserting he had no mental disorders. He then resubmitted the form acknowledging he had been treated for severe depression from 2008 to 2009.The FAA initially sent Lubitz a letter warning that his license application could be denied and giving him 30 days to provide a letter from his doctor describing his treatment and his current condition. The license was granted after he provided letters from his doctor describing his treatment and saying he had recovered.Lubitz had suffered an episode of severe depression because he was unable to cope with "modified living conditions," according to the letters. Lubitz was treated with two drugs, Cipralex and Mirtazapin, which, along with therapy, "enabled him to develop sufficient resources for getting on with similar situations in the future," the doctor, whose name was blacked out by the FAA, said in one letter.Follow us on Twitter @Local12 ([ Ссылка ]) and LIKE us on Facebook ([ Ссылка ]) for updates!
