The Germanwings co-pilot suspected of deliberately crashing his plane into the Alps had disclosed an earlier bout of depression, Lufthansa has said.
French gendarmes and members of the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis (BEA) at the site of the Germanwings crash. Photo: AFP
The airline, which owns Germanwings, said last week that Andreas Lubitz had taken a break from flight school training, but refused to say why.
It has now shared emails from 2009 which show Lubitz told instructors he had suffered from "severe depression".
Meanwhile, all human remains from the crash have reportedly been recovered.
French authorities told AFP news agency that the remains of all the victims had been removed from the remote ravine where the plane went down, but mountain troops would return to the scene on Wednesday to search for personal belongings.
The search for the second flight recorder will also continue.
Also on Tuesday, German newspaper Bild and French news magazine Paris Match said they had obtained a video showing the plane's last moments before the crash.
The footage was shot on a mobile phone inside the plane, and recorded the sound of passengers screaming and the sound of a metal object striking the cockpit door, the newspapers said.
'Suicidal tendencies'
A recording from the cockpit of the aircraft suggests Lubitz, 27, deliberately caused the disaster last Tuesday, which killed 150 people.
Andreas Lubitz in 2009 Photo: AFP
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr previously said that the company was not aware of anything that could have driven the co-pilot to crash the Airbus A320.
"He was 100 percent fit to fly without any restrictions or conditions," he told reporters.
It has now emerged, as part of the airline's internal research, that Lubitz had sent information about his depressive episode to the Lufthansa flight school in Bremen, when he resumed training after an interruption of several months.
He subsequently passed all medical tests and eventually secured his license. He started working with Lufthansa subsidiary Germanwings in 2013.
