BERLIN — Germanwings said Thursday it was unaware that the co-pilot of its plane which crashed in the French Alps last week had suffered from depression during his pilot training. Investigators believe co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked his captain out of the Airbus A320's cockpit and intentionally crashed Flight 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf into a French mountainside on March 24. All 150 people on board the plane were killed. German airline Lufthansa confirmed Tuesday that it knew six years ago that Lubitz had suffered from an episode of “severe depression” before he finished his flight training. “We didn't know this,” said Vanessa Torres, a spokeswoman for Lufthansa subsidiary Germanwings, which hired Lubitz in September 2013. She declined to explain the discrepancy, citing the ongoing investigation. Torres noted that Lufthansa has said Lubitz held a “fully valid class 1 medical certificate” on the day of the crash. The news came as Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt and the German Aviation Association, which represents German airlines, announced the creation of an expert task force to examine what went wrong in the Germanwings crash. — AP
