Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz is known to have suffered depression in the past

The co-pilot of the Germanwings plane which crashed in the French Alps in March may have practised a rapid descent on a previous flight, a report by French investigators has said.

The report said Andreas Lubitz repeatedly set the plane into an unauthorised descent earlier that day.

Lubitz is suspected of deliberately crashing the Airbus 320, killing all 150 people on board.

He had locked the flight captain out of the cockpit.

The plane had been flying from Barcelona to Duesseldorf on 24 March.

The descent occurred on the plane’s outbound flight from Duesseldorf to Barcelona on the same day, the report said.

It added that on several occasions – again with the captain out – the altitude dial was set to 100ft (30m), the lowest possible reading, despite instructions by air traffic control in Bordeaux to set it to 35,000ft and then 21,000ft.

It was also reset on one occasion to 49,000ft, the maximum altitude.

The changes apparently happened over a five-minute period.

Read further