Unless You've Been In A Cave For The Past 24 Hours...

[Gob]

Andreas Lubitz, the young co-pilot believed to have caused Tuesday's Germanwings plane crash, started flying as a teenager.



He first took to the skies as member of a gliding club in his home town of Montabaur in west Germany, before fulfilling his ambition of becoming a professional pilot. Friends and neighbours have described him as a "quiet" but "fun" character, who was enjoying his job.

A picture from his now defunct Facebook page shows him smiling happily in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

But on the morning of the 24 March the 27-year-old's career took a dark turn.


His keen interest in flying started about the age of 14, when he joined the LSC Westerwald e.V. glider club in Montabaur.

He learned to fly in a sleek white ASK-21 two-seat glider and went on to obtain his full licence, according to the club's chairman Klaus Radke.

Neighbours said running was another of his passions and he could be regularly seen jogging in the neighbourhood.

In 2007 he graduated from high school and was accepted as a Lufthansa trainee the following year, enrolling at the company's training school in Bremen.

Mr Lubitz had a break in training about six years ago, lasting several months, according to Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr. But his suitability was assessed again and he resumed his studies.
Then in September 2013 he joined the Lufthansa budget airline Germanwings.

He initially worked as a flight attendant, according to German news website Spiegel, before starting his role as co-pilot.

His duties would have included monitoring instruments, communicating with air traffic controllers and sharing control of the aircraft with the captain. He would have also been expected to steer the plane during the pilot's breaks, or if he or she became ill.

Lufthansa said Mr Lubitz had flown a total of 630 hours before Tuesday's fatal crash.

He underwent a regular security check on 27 January and it found nothing untoward. Previous security checks in 2008 and 2010 also showed no issues, the local government in Duesseldorf said.

Klaus Radke told the Associated Press that he saw him last autumn, when he returned to the club to renew his glider licence.

"He seemed very enthusiastic about his career. I can't remember anything where something wasn't right," he said.

Mr Radke rejected the prosecutor's claims that the plane was brought down intentionally. He said: "I don't see how anyone can draw such conclusions before the investigation is completed."

Peter Ruecker, a long-time member of club, also insisted Mr Lubitz seemed "very happy" during their last meeting.

"I'm just speechless. I don't have any explanation for this. Knowing Andreas, this is just inconceivable for me," he said.

Mr Robin said there were no grounds to suspect that Mr Lubitz had carried out a terrorist attack. He refused to discuss his religious background.

"Suicide" was also the wrong word to describe actions which killed so many other people, he said.

"I don't necessarily call it suicide when you have responsibility for 100 or so lives."

"He was 100% fit to fly without any restrictions or conditions," Mr Spohr told reporters in Cologne.

Those who knew Mr Lubitz have described him as an affable young man, who gave no indications he was harbouring any harmful intent.

[Econoline]

Has anyone else here ever read the short story "The Year of the Jackpot" by Robert A. Heinlein?

[Gob]

Dear god, that's a blast from the past!

ETA:

Sounds like just another day on Plan B

Meade's striptease, along with the commonplace public transvestism, the new churches with their ceremonial nudity and all the other pieces of minor insanity are simply symptoms of the inexorable trends.

[Gob]

Chilling tale...

Alone in the cockpit

At 9.27GMT on Tuesday the Airbus completed its climb. Captain Sonderheimer engaged the autopilot, then, said Mr Robin: "We heard the captain ask the co-pilot to take control, then we hear the noise of a seat that goes back and a door opening and closing, we can assume he went to relieve himself.

"At that moment the co-pilot was alone at the controls. It is then that the co-pilot uses the flight monitoring system button to put the plane into descent mode, I repeat, the pilot is in lone control of this Airbus 320, that the pilot is pressing the buttons of the flight monitoring system to put into action the descent mode.

"The action of altitude selection could not be anything but deliberate."

Having taken manual control, Lubitz secured the cockpit by flicking the cockpit door switch on the central panel to the "locked" position. In keeping with modifications to aircraft carried out after the 9/11 hijackings in 2001, it meant the heavily reinforced door, which could normally be opened from outside using a code, was now deadlocked.

Having discovered the door was deadlocked, the captain used a video intercom to demand to be let in. Lubitz could see Captain Sonderheimer on a monitor, but did not respond. The captain knocked, but again got no response.

Meanwhile air traffic controllers in France were trying repeatedly to contact the cockpit, having seen the unexpected descent on their radar screens.

The first attempt was made as soon as the aircraft began descending at 9.31. Two more attempts were made at 9.35 and 9.36 on the international distress frequency. He made no response. Other aircraft in the area also radioed the Airbus, to no avail.

Throughout the eight-minute descent, the only sound to come from Lubitz is the sound of him breathing, picked up by the microphone on his headphone set.

"We could hear human breathing inside the cabin," said Mr Robin. "And this breathing noise we heard up until the moment of final impact.

"That means that the co-pilot was alive. Apparently he was breathing normally, so this is not someone having a heart attack, for example."

In the cockpit, an automatic alarm sounded to warn that the plane was too close to the ground. Lubitz ignored it.

Captain Sonderheimer's increasingly frantic attempts to get into the cockpit turned to desperation as he tried to break down the door. The recorder picked up "strong, violent knocks, almost as if to force the door open", said Mr Robin.

"I remind you this is an armoured door according to international norms to protect against potential terrorist actions."

By now the passengers and cabin crew were fully aware of the imminent disaster. The aircraft clipped a mountain ridge, then crashed into a mountainside at 9.40.

"I think that the victims only realised what was happening at the last minute," said Mr Robin. "We only hear screams in the last seconds. Death was instant."

A woman called Sandrine, whose uncle died in the crash, said that came as something of a relief. "You can hear screams, but they didn't live through eight minutes of total horror," she said.

Mr Robin said the "most plausible and probable interpretation for us is that the co-pilot, by a voluntary abstention, refused to open the door to the cockpit to the flight captain and activated the button to start descent. There was a deliberate desire to destroy this plane.

"When you have 150 people in your responsibility, I can't call this suicide."

[Lord Jim]

"When you have 150 people in your responsibility, I can't call this suicide."

I completely agree...

This guy was a cold blooded mass murderer, full stop...

He murdered 149 people from 18 different countries, including two infants and 16 kids from the same school...

149 completely innocent people, people who had never done him any wrong, people he didn't even know...

People with the rest of their lives to pursue; people with families and friends who loved and cherished them...

People whose lives were senselessly snuffed out in an instant to satisfy some dark, maniacal, depraved craving of a narcissistic sociopath...

The man was a monster; if there is a Hell, I'm confident that he is residing a particularly hot corner of it....

[Lord Jim]

I do however have some sympathy for his family, particularly his parents...

Not only do they have to live with the fact that their son was a mass murderer, they will now no doubt be subject to hate mail and death threats, (completely undeserved) and may even have to wind up going into hiding...

They are innocent victims of this monster's cruelty too...

[Econoline]

To call him a mass murderer explains nothing, and only raises still more questions. He committed mass murder *AND* suicide, and apparently took the answers to those questions to his grave.

[Lord Jim]

To call him a mass murderer explains nothing, describes him accurately

FTFY

ETA:

And by the way, I really wish the media would find some other picture of this scumbag to broadcast rather then the photo of him sitting next to the Golden Gate Bridge...

Lord knows this burg has got enough image problems without being associated with that piece of human garbage.

[Econoline]

To call him a mass murderer explains nothing describes him accurately...yet still explains nothing--and only raises still more questions. He committed mass murder *AND* suicide, and apparently took the answers to those questions to his grave.

FTFY

FTFY...okay? Better?

My point was that not knowing his motive makes his act even worse, if that's possible.

ETA: If that's the only photo they have, they ought to just crop the bridge out of the photo.

[BoSoxGal]

This is just so chilling. Times like these I am very grateful I don't have 24/7 cable news in my home.

[Lord Jim]

Better late than never...

But apparently not for Lufthansa:

Airlines introduce two-person cockpit rule after Alps crash

(Reuters) – Airlines rushed on Thursday to change rules to require a second crew member in the cockpit at all times, hours after French prosecutors suggested a co-pilot who barricaded himself alone at the controls of a jetliner had crashed it on purpose.

The United States already requires two crew members to be in the cabin at all times, but many other countries do not, allowing pilots to leave the flight deck, for example to use the toilet, as long as one pilot is at the controls.

That is precisely what French prosecutors suspect happened on the Germanwings flight on Tuesday. They sayAndreas Lubitz, 27, locked the captain out and appears to have set the controls to crash into a mountain, killing all 150 people on board.

Airlines including Norwegian Air Shuttle, Britain’s easyJet, Air Canada and Air Berlin all said within hours that they had introduced a requirement that two crew members be in the cockpit at all times.

Canada said it would immediately impose such a rule on all its airlines.

“We had a lot of concerned customers,” an Air Berlin spokesman said.

Airlines including Ryanair that already had such rules in place rushed to reassure customers.

Among the companies that did not announce such a policy change was Germanwings parent Lufthansa, whose CEO Carsten Spohr said he believed it was unnecessary.

“I don’t see any need to change our procedures here,” Spohr told journalists. “It was a one-off case. But we will look at it with the various experts at Lufthansa and the authorities. We shouldn’t lose ourselves in short-term measures.”

His comments drew criticism on Twitter, with some people demanding the airline introduce the two person-rule.

http://fortune.com/2015/03/26/airlines- ... lps-crash/

I have a suspicion that the reason that Lufthansa is taking what looks like an absurd position (you'd think they'd be leading the effort to impose this policy) on this relates directly to their legal liability...

I'll bet their legal team has told them that if they change the procedures they could be looking at larger lawsuit settlements based on the possibility that changing the policy could be argued to be an admission to a level of negligence...

Whatever the reason, shame on them...

What I don't understand is why didn't the regulation-happy EU, that likes to regulate everything down the tiniest details of how to make sausage, issue a regulation requiring something as obvious and important as this?

[liberty]

Why didn’t the guy rent an air plane and take solo flight into the mountains; it is not like he should be concerned with expenses. Instead he was selfish and self centered.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Why didn’t the guy rent an air plane and take solo flight into the mountains; it is not like he should be concerned with expenses. Instead he was selfish and self centered.

I don't think we will ever know why.

[Lord Jim]

I think that after we get more details about what prompted that doctor to give him that note saying that he was unfit to fly we may have a better idea...

[Gob]

Whenever a major disaster occurs, it’s a perfectly understandable human reaction that we need to find a reason behind it. However, trying to make sense of a terrible situation is one thing, and falling over ourselves to jump to ridiculous conclusions is quite another. And quite frankly, the UK press should be downright ashamed of themselves today. The way in which they’ve covered the news that Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz may have had depression is abhorrent.

“Madman in cockpit” was the Sun’s effort. “Why on Earth was he allowed to fly?” asked the Daily Mail. In case you’re wondering what the link that’s trying to be made is, the Daily Mirror is here to help: “Killer pilot suffered from depression”. It’s difficult to know where to start with such breathless ignorance about mental health issues, but I’ll give it a go anyway. Again.

We’ll likely never know Lubitz’s state of mind while he was in flight

The crash investigation is still in a very early stage, which means that a lot of information being thrown around about what actually happened is pure conjecture. At any rate, we’ll probably never know what was actually going on in the cockpit, because no one survived the crash. It is therefore irresponsible to make any claims that Lubitz deliberately crashed the plane because of reason X or Y. It’s even more irresponsible to try and link the crash to Lubitz’s mental health. The fact is, we don’t know.

Depression does not make you want to kill people

I can’t believe I’m having to write this. “Why on Earth was he allowed to fly?”, Daily Mail? Because there’s no reason to suggest that people with depression – and again, we don’t know if Lubitz actually had depression at the time – are a risk for the wider population. More generally, it’s the other way around. A study in the Lancet Psychiatry last year found that people with mental illness in the UK were more likely to be victims of murder than people in the general population.

Trying to claim a link between depression and the crash only promotes stigma

The media sometimes likes to pretend that it’s making positive steps towards combatting stigmas surrounding all sorts of mental health. It’s really easy to report on campaigns like Time to Change, or cover a story about a new survey explaining how stigmatising attitudes create real problems for people with mental illnesses. That’s not good enough. If we’re serious about improving public attitudes towards mental health, we need to be persistently mindful about how we present potentially stigmatising information in the news. When it comes to the Germanwings crash, we’ve failed miserably today.

The only thing that we can be certain of at the moment is that an awful tragedy has happened that will have affected thousands of people. But making rushed and baseless claims about why it might have happened doesn’t do anybody any favours. If anything, it runs the risk of making it less likely that people coping with depression will want to speak up about their illness. We can, and should, be doing better than this.

[BoSoxGal]

I have been sick about that all day, Gob - the way that depressives will be stigmatized due to this one individual's horrific act.

[Gob]

In a statement (in German), prosecutors said they had seized medical documents from Mr Lubitz's two residences - his Duesseldorf flat and his parents' home north of Frankfurt - which indicated an "existing illness and appropriate medical treatment".

The "fact that, among the documents found, there were sick notes - torn-up, current and for the day of the crash - leads to the provisional assessment that the deceased was hiding his illness from his employer", the report states.

Germanwings confirmed it had not been given a sick note for the day of the crash.

Duesseldorf's University Hospital issued a statement (in German) saying Mr Lubitz had attended the hospital on 10 March and last month.

Adding that it had handed his medical records over to prosecutors, it said reports the co-pilot had been treated there for depression were incorrect.

Germany's Rheinischer Post newspaper, which spoke to the hospital, quoted its own unnamed sources as saying Mr Lubitz had been suffering from a physical, rather than a mental, illness.

[RayThom]

Lone wolf terrorist extraordinaire. 150 souls on board -- men, women, children. It just didn't matter. All accomplished by a rebel without a cause.

One of the most efficient, high tech, mass murderers since 9/11. Suffering from psychotic depression exacerbated by a failed relationship with his girlfriend. Died with a broken heart. This guy makes all them gun-totin' mass murderers look like rank amateurs.

When planes are outlawed only outlaws will have planes.

[Big RR]

I'll bet their legal team has told them that if they change the procedures they could be looking at larger lawsuit settlements based on the possibility that changing the policy could be argued to be an admission to a level of negligence...

I'll leave this matter for a definitive answer to those in out brethren who practice tort law, but my understanding is that taking efforts to correct (or remedy) a hazard is never admissible as evidence of negligence. Generally, the law wants to encourage people to fix what's broken immediately so more do not get hurt---so fixing the crack in the sidewalk or the stairs after someone was hurt is not evidence of anything.

My guess here is that Lufthansa is more concerned with the union contracts--perhaps the flight attendants can claim more pay if they have to sit in the cockpit with the pilot uses the rest room (or the pilots' contract doesn't allow anyone other than a pilot in the cockpit while in the air)?

[MajGenl.Meade]

...or maybe the stews are uneasy about being locked in a cabin with a hairy, homicidal Neanderthal? Or vice versa, in some cases