Flights security

Did the US miss a chance to stop suicidal German pilot?

U.S. safety regulators initially declined to grant medical clearance for a German pilot who five years later deliberately flew an airliner full of people into a mountainside in the French Alps. A lawyer for victims' families says they missed a chance to head off the disaster.

As Andreas Lubitz prepared in June 2010 to come to the U.S. for training at Lufthansa's flight school in Arizona, he applied to the Federal Aviation Administration for a student pilot medical certificate, according to FAA records and a report by French air crash investigators.

Lubitz initially told the FAA he hadn't been treated for any mental disorders, and he failed to list doctors who had treated him on the application form as required.

But Lufthansa knew that he was being treated for depression brought on by stress and had taken a leave of absence from his training before returning to work with a doctor's statement that he was had been successfully treated.