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Further thoughts on the Germanwings co-pilot — 117 Comments

  1. “[NOTE: It also seems bizarre that a man so young as Lubitz, and with so little flying experience, was allowed to co-pilot a plane of that magnitude. I don’t think that would be allowed in the US, but I haven’t been able to discover what the rules are about that.”

    Neo you would be shocked at the very low experience requirements for entry into an airline cockpit these days. It is more glaring over seas, including Europe, but we are moving in that direction. I am out of date on current experience requirements, but conversant with the trend; and I expect it has accelerated. Our extensive regional airline industry usually provides most of the input to the majors; so, only 50 or so lives are in the hands of the most inexperienced.

    With the traditional military pipe-line to the airlines slowed to a trickle, and the enormous cost of flying privately, the trend simply will not change.

    It is true that training has never been better; in fact,light years better than in my generation. Still, some “old heads” grumble that nothing replaces time in the air making decisions that have real consequences, rather than a “tut tut” in the debriefing; and coping with real, not simulated, situations.

  2. “Of course, depressed people have a higher likelihood of suicide, particularly if the depression is severe. But they don’t usually take 149 other people with them.”

    Malevolent hostility is the only explanation for that level of cruelty. Other than conversion to fundamentalist Islam, I think that the Charles Whitman scenario is a real possibility. Perhaps with a bit of the copycat scenario thrown in as well.

    But regardless of the specifics, a conscious decision to murder 149 innocent human beings, almost all random strangers, including infants and children, indicates malevolent motivation. Remember that, to board the aircraft, he had to pass through the waiting area and see his victims without remorse.

    Oldflyer,

    The ‘old heads’ life experiences have taught them that for mastery to be achieved, reality must be experienced.

    This man consciously embraced evil.

  3. oops, should be;
    “Remember that, to board the aircraft, he had to pass through the waiting area and see his victims without remorse.

    This man consciously embraced evil.

    Oldflyer,

    The ‘old heads’ life experiences have taught them that for mastery to be achieved, reality must be experienced.”

  4. A query: unlike the aftermath of the aircraft attacks on 9/11/01, I’ve not heard of any air-to-ground telephone or other electronic communications from passengers or crew in the Germanwings plane to either kin or corporate headquarters or the like. Have any of you heard of any such communications? And if not, I’m left wondering why not?

  5. sdferr,

    According to the French investigator, the audio tapes indicate that the passengers did not realize that the jet was about to crash until seconds before impact.

  6. And the crew? I suppose this means that the Captain’s absence for a piss took the bulk of the eight minute descent, and reaching the conclusion he was not getting back into the cockpit too great the remainder of the available time to respond with communications to ground by flight attendants or otherwise? Seems a reasonable account, on the whole.

  7. The early reports were that Lubitz was a recent convert to Islam. So there’s that too.

  8. I worked in Germany for a summer back in 1965. My fellow workers were Italian, Spanish, and African, with a few Germans from the local farms. What I recall is that there were two doctors in town that folks went to, a “worker’s” doctor and the “company” doctor. The worker’s doctor would find the workers sick so that they could take the last two weeks off before returning home, allowing them to collect on the medical taxes they had paid. I wonder if a similar situation pertained with Lubitz’ doctor?

  9. About that doctor’s note: there are two parts, one stating the diagnosis, which is retained by the doctor and goes to the patient’s medical insurance, the second part only gives the stating and (presumptive) end dates of the illness for the patient’s employer; the employer legally has no right to be informed of the patient’s diagnosis. Of course this does not apply if a potentially serious condition turns up during an employer-mandated assessment by a company doctor.

  10. Lubitz was having vision problems. That would support the brain tumor hypothesis, wouldn’t it?

  11. We know a little more about him, though–the most salient fact so far being that investigators found a torn-up “doctor’s note that called for him to go on medical leave on the day of the tragedy.” He was being treated for some sort of illness, but authorities either won’t say what it was or don’t know yet what it was. I believe it’s the former.

    I think it’s the former, too–something so embarrassing “authorities” aren’t quite ready to release it yet. Obviously I’m speculating, but here’s what I think the “doctor’s note” said:

    Germanwings (URGENT):
    I have examined Mr Lubitz and determined that he is currently experiencing serious mental illness, including depression, delusions of grandeur and other significant breaks with reality. He should NOT be permitted to pilot or co-pilot a plane at any time in the foreseeable future.

    -Dr Schmidt
    ———————–

    Then the good doctor gave the note to Lubitz (!??) and orders him to deliver it to his managers.* But Lubitz reads it, is offended by the contents and rips it up. At that point, Lubitz realizes he has one last shot at fame; as quoted by his ex-girlfriend: “One day I’ll do something that will change the system, and then everyone will know my name and remember it.”

    Two things come to mind:
    1) I’ve known of several people diagnosed with “depression,” for whom that was just the tip of a big, dreadful iceberg. They had all kinds of other serious problems going on (including very bizarre notions of “reality”), but the official diagnosis was simply “depression.” My point being that “depression” is sometimes (not often) just the label given to a whole complex of very dire mental problems.

    2) Evidently Lubitz craved fame (“…everyone will know my name and remember it.”). These days, there is this non-uncommon nihilistic attitude that any kind of fame will do, even infamy. Perhaps Lubitz subscribed to this belief. His actions would save him from the unthinkable fate of living and dying as just an anonymous nobody. Right now, everyone knows his name.

    * Nice system, having the mental patient be responsible for informing management of his illness. Gideon Rosenberg pointed out that Germanwings would have been informed in a serious case like this, but evidently wasn’t, or didn’t react in time. This might be what authorities are so embarrassed about.

  12. I blame the TSA for mandating that cockpit doors be made so “safe” that the good guys can’t gain access in an emergency.

  13. …and another thing. Why not put a small “comfort station” in the cockpit? Oh, female pilots might be offended, you say? Well what about the Space Shuttle? Those had a built-in uni-sex porta potty on the middeck, right?

  14. 630 hours seems like a good number to me, especially if that involves more take-offs and landings due to more intracontinental flights, which I believe is Germanwings’ normal fare. I assume those 630 hours were flown as a fully trained pilot.

    Experience wasn’t a factor, anyway. Lubitz was the co-pilot, not the head pilot, after all. A career has to begin somewhere and simply sitting in a cockpit of a plane in flight or simulator practice doesn’t count as flight hours. At some point before the head pilot accrued his 6000 hours of flight time, he had only 630 hours of flight time, too. By all accounts, Lubitz was a highly rated pilot by skill. Certainly, incompetence related to inexperience was not the reason for the crash.

    The most similar case, which is also the most recent case, is Mozambique Airlines Flight 470 (November 29, 2013), where it was the head pilot rather than the co-pilot who committed the act, motive unknown.

    http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/26/travel/germanwings-crash-death-by-pilot-cases/

    There seems to be lately a spate of ‘black swan’ multiple, spree killings for mysterious reasons that stand out because they’re committed by persons – like Lubitz – with the earmarks of good citizens, unexpected to commit a petty or victimless crime, let alone mass murder. There’s hardly a discernible pattern. Outwardly normal or at least ordinary, and then suddenly, an explosion of killing.

    A few recent examples: 14-year-old Jaylen Fryberg, well-off, well-loved, from a leading family in the community, and pegged to be a leader of his generation, yet killed his closest friends then himself; 31-year-old lawyer Myron May, seemingly on a fast track to success before mental illness overtook him, who entered his undergrad alma mater’s library shooting people at random … Chris Dorner, Navy officer and cop, James Holmes, graduate physics student, Robert Bales, respected Army sergeant. The list goes on.

    A depressed person committing suicide is one thing. I could even understand a suicidal Lubitz killing himself in the cockpit in flight, like a teacher who kills herself in her classroom, in the place he most identified with. Killing a planeful of passengers and crew – the biggest taboo for an airline pilot – as part of his own suicide, though? That’s entering Nidal Hasan territory of an Army officer and doctor who murders soldiers. I don’t think the thing that causes depressed people to commit suicide is the same thing that causes murder, let alone random mass murder, even when coupled with suicide. At least, as far as I know, psychotic mass murder is not normally a symptom of suicidal depression.

  15. Add: “Maria”, who apparently is not Lubitz’s latest or recently broken-off girlfriend, seems suspect to me.

  16. In terms of air safety, it should not matter what ailed Lubitz.
    What matters is that he was able to act when alone in the cockpit.

    Having a second pilot (not a fight attendant) in the cockpit seems essential. Even better would be bringing back the flight engineer as a 3rd flight-competent person in the cockpit.

    And to heck with female pilots if they don’t like peeing into a tube.People died because someone just had to leave the cockpit to take a leak? Are you kidding me?

    Evil will almost always find a way. The job is to make it as hard as we can for evil to succeed.

  17. ANY evidence that Lubitz had ‘reverted’ to Islam would also be taboo in Germany, France, Europe.

    I read on the Internet, so it must be true, that Lubitz scrubbed his Facebook page and such more than a day before his crime.

    If so, then this is a STEELY crime of resolve.

    It doesn’t fit with my notions of clinical depression-thence-to-suicide — which always involves simple, direct, actions with implements near to hand — upon the impulse to withdraw from the world.

    Lubitz would fit jihad to a tee.

    Social misfit
    Previous life trajectory torpedoed
    Grandiose exit
    Allah as exit ‘plan’

    It has to be said: the terminal jihadists have a propensity of life-failure/ nihilism — which becomes redirected towards the hyper-simplistic ethos of Mohammed.

    They also profile as beta if not delta males — never alphas; killer monks if you will.

    Unlucky at love:: tragic in war.

    Lest we get optimistic, there are now tens of millions of Muslims that map to that profile. It’s the natural consequence of rising expectations in a world (the ummah) of flat to negative economic, social and intellectual growth.

    Islam hatches despair like army ants.

    Consequently the LAST thing that they and the world need is exposure to the West.

    &&&&

    With Ayatollah Soetoro at the controls, and imam Brennan as navigator, the future will be full of impact, that’s for sure.

  18. “Isn’t there some requirement that the employer be notified by the doctor?”

    No, and why should there be? Forcing healthcare professionals to report anything will cause those who need help to not seek help.

    Pilots and others in similar professions are required to undergo a physical every year.

    The best thing to do is require that there always be at least two in the cockpit at all times – until we have two pilots/co-pilots take down their own plane and then we can all demand that there must be more to be done!

    I’m not blaming you Neo; but, I still think there is too much speculation in the press about this. Most news reports are he MAY have been depressed, He MAY have had eye problems, he MAY have committed suicide. He MAY, MAY, MAY – nothing but the facts please MSM.

    Oh, and BTW, all this talk about him “locking” the pilot out doesn’t sound correct to me. Wouldn’t it be standard practice when one of them leaves the cockpit for the other to lock the door afterwards? If for no other reason to keep others who don’t belong there out. And since there isn’t any word from the co-pilot when the pilot was trying to get back in, how do we know he didn’t pass out or something? Why do they all jump to the conclusion that he was sinisterly locking the pilot out?

    I’ve got Benghazi on my mind too much to believe that jumping to such conclusions – such as Benghazi was the result of a video – so quickly isn’t part of a cover-up. Get everyone talking about the co-pilot so they don’t notice something else.

    Okay, now were did I leave my tinfoil hat?

  19. charles, I agreed with you at first that the investigators were jumping to conclusions, but now I think the evidence is overwhelming that the co-pilot had serious mental problems.

    (Freudian slip alert: I mistyped “mad” instead of “had” before correcting it.)

    As for the cockpit door, see this article about how the locking mechanism works.

    When the door is locked, crew members have a numeric access code they can use to unlock the door. Unauthorized personnel wouldn’t know the code.

    But that can be overridden by a crew member inside the cockpit, which seems to have happened in this case. That was the clincher for me. It strains credulity to think the co-pilot would have flipped the switch to prevent the pilot from getting back in, then proceeded to have a heart attack. No, that clearly indicates intent.

    I wonder if that switch movement would have been recorded on the flight data recorder?

  20. And that cockpit door design is a perfect example of governments’ stupefyingly wrongheaded approach to preventing terrorism after 9/11, focusing on things instead of people.

    Now we have the TSA treating everybody as a potential terrorist, instead of concentrating on the individuals who are most likely to be terrorists. Children are forced to remove their shoes and surrender shampoo bottles, and old ladies in wheelchairs have their colostomy bags prodded. This is expensive, ridiculous, an affront to liberty and human dignity, and does exactly nothing to prevent terrorism.

    It would be much better to allow the airlines to operate their own security, and refuse service to anyone they consider suspicious. But that might run afoul of anti-discrimination laws, and we can’t have that. Better to risk the deaths of hundreds than “discriminate”.

    Anti-discrimination laws are at the root of this madness. Eliminate them, and people will be able to apply common sense to these types of situations.

  21. I forgot to note in my 9:47 comment that the lockout switch was probably intended to prevent a scenario where a terrorist captured a crew member outside the cockpit and threatened to kill him/her unless he/she gave up the access code.

  22. Geoffrey Britain Said:

    “According to the French investigator, the audio tapes indicate that the passengers did not realize that the jet was about to crash until seconds before impact.”

    According to French investigators the pilot was knocking on the door, then pounding on the door, shouting “open the damn door,” then can be heard trying to break it down, shouting “for God’s sake open the door.” I think the passengers would have noticed that. I don’t know about the rest of you, but if I see the captain of the plane shouting and trying to break into the cockpit I’m not going to think everything is just fine. I also don’t know how long that was going on, but clearly more than just a few seconds. I think the prosecutor said they didn’t realize the jet was going to crash until seconds before impact for the benefit of the families.

  23. Of course, the time between the captain leaving the cockpit and hitting the ground was 8 minutes. That’s 480 seconds.

    I guess even if the pilot spent the entire time trying to regain entry you could say “the passengers did not realize that the jet was about to crash until seconds before impact” and be technically accurate.

    I’m not opposed to using these kind of conventions to reassure families their loved ones didn’t suffer. It’s not going to make anything any better if you give them graphic details about how they spent the last long minutes of their lives in terror.

  24. In the good old days there would have been a Flight Engineer in the cockpit. He sat behind the pilots and in addition to his normal duties, kept a beady eye on them. Then the pilot’s thought it would expand job opportunities for them if the FE was replaced by a 3rd pilot. But pilots are expensive creatures and the airlines replaced the 3rd pilot by technology.

  25. sdferr, Steve57, Geoffrey Britain:

    On 9/11, the passengers were able to use phones for several reasons. The first was that most of the calls made were not on private cellphones; they were on special airplane phones that used to be in most airplanes at the time but are not any more (see this and this). As for personal cell phones, if you read the articles just linked, you’ll find that the ability to make calls on them from an airplane is very spotty, and dependent on a host of factors, including where the towers are, how high the plane is, and how fast it’s going. In general, the higher the plane the more difficult, the faster the plane the more difficult, and in particular the plane has to be in an area with cell phone towers. The 9/11 flights were mostly over very populated areas, such as the Boston to New York corridor.

    On the lost Malaysia flight, for example, the last factor would have been a great hindrance to any calls that might have otherwise been made.

    On the Germanwings flight, the report from the flight audio record is that passengers’ screams are only heard in the last seconds of the flight. I have no reason to believe that’s a lie, although of course it could be (if there were screams the whole time, they might have just not mentioned it rather than lying about it). But my guess is that the passengers way up front saw the captain pounding but didn’t process the information as “the co-pilot is going to purposely crash the plane.” So it wasn’t until they all could see out the window that they were flying low and about to crash that they realized the situation. In fact, it’s remotely possible that this may have been part of the reason the co-pilot programmed in such a gradual descent: to forestall general panic on the plane and to make it so that a group of passengers didn’t get together to try to rush the cockpit with brute force.

    At any rate: cell phone calls may have not been made because the passengers didn’t understand the extreme danger they were in until the last moments, plus they were in a somewhat remote and mountainous area and perhaps were not near towers.

  26. charles:

    I’m not talking about reporting all medical issues to employers. I’m talking about an extreme situation in which the pilot needs to be grounded because of a health condition. You say mandatory reporting of such conditions would discourage pilots from going to the doctor. I say that non-mandatory reporting discourages them from reporting it themselves after they’ve gone to the doctor. It’s not clear which system would lead to more reporting in cases where reporting is needed.

    As far as the locking out of the cockpit goes, the pilot on the outside could have overridden the usual automatic locking system. The fact that he couldn’t get in indicates the pilot inside had purposely used a special locking system that blocked the override. What’s more, it is clear from the co-pilot’s lack of any voice response to the frantically banging pilot that he was not interested in letting him in, and the programming of the flight system in order to crash the plane had to have been voluntary and conscious on the part of the co-pilot.

    We have a situation in which we know the co-pilot was conscious and functioning because he programmed the plane to crash, we know he did not respond to the pilot’s pleas, and we know that the pilot could not override the locked door. That’s where the conclusions come from; they are not idle speculation; they are based on recorded information from the airplane itself as reported by those investigating.

    Some new (although unverified) information here, that Lubitz tried several times to get the pilot to leave the cockpit.

  27. Eric:

    I see this as a possible example of workplace murder-suicide (“going postal”), where a goodly part of the motive is anger at the company. Usually in that case, of course, the victims are employees or executives of the company. In this case they were passengers who had nothing to do with it, but the mass murder still has the effect of harming the company and harming aviation.

    Charles Whitman was certainly a suicidal person who wanted to take out a lot of people in the process (not workplace violence, however). It’s not unusual for a mass murderer (as opposed to a serial killer) to be suicidal and to have both the homicidal and suicidal impulses at once. It’s certainly not usual for suicidal people to do this—there are a lot more suicides than mass murderers—but it’s not at all unusual for a mass murderer to know he’s going to die and have that as part of the plan.

  28. Never heard those Whitman facts before … wow. Interesting how central Whitman was to the fast changing psyche of America then. His event should probably be (is?) included with JFK, MLK, RFK, LSD (etc), SDS & Viet Nam (etc) and the Beatles as the leading catalysts.

    Folks who have never experienced the hellacious, insistent magical reality of psychosis (whatever the cause) can never fully understand the power.

    Evil begins where our understanding ends, where an abyss separates apprehension and comprehension. God can judge, we can only take prudent and proportionate measures.

  29. The passengers and crew would have noticed the premature descent, so even if they didn’t notice the captain locked out of the cockpit and/or other abnormal behavior by the crew, they would have noticed they were descending from cruising altitude too soon and without usual landing protocols or at least updates about the unusual happening.

    So even if the passengers were only screaming in the last moments, I doubt they didn’t know something was wrong, then very wrong earlier than that.

    I also saw a graphic (NY Times, I think) that indicated the descent, while controlled, was steeper than a normal landing path.

  30. Eric:

    I’m not at all sure most would have noticed until fairly late in the descent, for a number of reasons. Flyers don’t necessarily know the usual angle of descent; what they would be looking for would be turbulence or alarms or fire or something that caught their attention. The descent was apparently smooth. The first few minutes, even those looking out the window would not necessarily have noticed the fact that things on the ground were getting slightly bigger.

    The flight was supposed to be about a 1 1/2 hour flight. When I’ve flown shortish hops like that, it seems almost as though we ascend, cruise for just a little while, and then start a descent. I’ve been on flights where the descent seems to start about an hour before scheduled landing. In the Germanwings crash, the plane took off at around 10 and the co-pilot’s programming the descent happened almost exactly a half-hour later, with about an hour left in the scheduled flight.

    I am pretty sure the passengers noticed at some point that things were going wrong, and probably significantly before the last few seconds. But I wonder whether it wasn’t only during the last minute or two (which of course can be a long time). And the people way in the front certainly noticed things were wrong much earlier.

    Of course, people can be very apprehensive without actually screaming. It is possible most on the flight knew something was wrong for a long time, and just were relatively silent. But the cockpit voice recorder would have been more inclined to pick up the voices of those very near the cockpit, and they apparently weren’t actually screaming till close to the end (if authorities are telling the truth).

  31. charles: “Wouldn’t it be standard practice when one of them leaves the cockpit for the other to lock the door afterwards? If for no other reason to keep others who don’t belong there out. And since there isn’t any word from the co-pilot when the pilot was trying to get back in, how do we know he didn’t pass out or something?”

    From how it’s explained in the news, the door automatically locks in normal function for the reason you said – so no one can just slip in the cockpit when one of the pilots steps out. It sounds like normal protocol is to request entry into the cockpit, whereupon the pilot inside toggles the switch to unlock the door. However, in an emergency, the pilot (and other crewmembers, I assume) outside can punch in a code to unlock the door unless a pilot inside disables coded entry with a time-delay switch. I think the FDR would confirm that, but short of FDR confirmation, I doubt the captain and other crew would forget the entry code.

    I had the same question about the conclusion that Lubitz was deliberate. The conclusion he was deliberate seems based on, one, the descent was programmed into the autopilot rather than, say, a passed out pilot leaning the wrong way on an instrument or combination of instruments. But without the FDR, how do they know the descent was by autopilot, and if it was by autopilot, how do they know it was reprogrammed for that purpose?

    And two, his breathing was normal. I don’t know whether breathing awake and aware sounds different from breathing passed out or otherwise impaired, but I guess it is.

    I agree with you that simply functioning in a no-trust culture is very difficult.

  32. Neo,

    That’s the distinction I’m getting at: mass murderer/spree killer who’s suicidal as opposed to mass murder/spree killing being part of the same package as suicidal depression.

  33. The area in which Lubitz crashed the plane was very familiar to him. He had been there on several occassions with his glider club as a glider pilot.

    The doctors don’t necessarely know of which profession the patient is, they only know that his employer is Lufthansa/Germanwings. For them he could also be a officer at the check-in counter at the airport or an employee in the account staff.

    There is no whatsoever evidence that Lubitz had converted to Islam. The only “source” for this is a convicted right wing extremist with the name Karl-Michael Merkle who writes under the nome du guerre “Michael mannheimer” at Speisa.net, a blog. His conclusion goes this way: the training center for Lufthansa pilots is in Bremen and there is also a radical mosque (at the other end of the city) and therefore Lubitz is a convert. His second claim is that Lubitz did have a Muslim girlfriend but he has no evidence for this. Not a shred.

    It seems that Lubitz was very angry about working conditions at Germanwings (to much stress, low payment) and that his dream of what it meant to to be a Lufthansa pilot didn’t match with reality.

    (Sorry for my bad English but English isn’t my mother tongue)

  34. neo-neocon Says:
    March 29th, 2015 at 9:15 am

    I see this as a possible example of workplace murder-suicide (“going postal”), where a goodly part of the motive is anger at the company. Usually in that case, of course, the victims are employees or executives of the company.

    On that note, see this video:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlMiznyItS0

    Somebody linked it in a comment at Ace of Spades several months ago. I started watching it and got sucked right in.

    Like this crash, in that one the airplane was turned into confetti by the force of impact. It’s a riveting detective story, where the investigators had to first find the pieces of the puzzle before they could put them together.

  35. Eric; Charles:

    The information about the co-pilot intentionally programming the flight change comes from this:

    Information released by FlightRadar24 shows when the reprogramming occurred. According to the playback video, between 9:30:52 a.m. and 09:30:55 a.m. UTC the autopilot was manually changed from 38,000 feet to 100 feet. Nine seconds later the aircraft started to descend.

    More information here.

  36. This copilot was very clever and longed for fame and recognition in accomplishing much destruction. Seems vaguely familiar in how America has been set on slow descent which likely wont get noticed till its too late.

  37. Whitman defense is out… today we have MRI and yes, whitman would have been held responsible because such a thing could only be known from autopsy at the time of his actions. he had tried and tried to get treatment and eventually ended up in the texas tower. its interesting to note that its also an example of people with their own firearms coming to help the police. if it wasnt for the hunters with high powered rifles and scopes keeping him pinned down, it would have been unlikely for the police officer (and i think a civilian with him) to shoot him upon climbing the tower. whitman was an incredible shot. the distance and complexity with which he selected and shot shows this and that he was not average in that way. brain tumors can cause all kinds of things and there is no usual in terms of what they can do other than most of the time its not subtle stuff. its WELL documented as to things that cause passive people to become violent, but not change other parts of their personality. I got into this subject after meeting Oliver Sachs (and Joseph Arezzio) who at the time were in the Bronx and web things were just starting.

    i will vote out on copycat syndrome well… copycats express that in their homelife as well, not just crimes. wanting to be like a star, or something else does not just pop up and start with a criminal, like sociopathy/pychopathy coupled with sadism and the tendency to act out first with animals.

  38. here is my take… Just as you say, its all just dreaming up an answer.

    We live now in a world in which certain political ideas are not just national local but are somewhat global. Feminism, multiculturalism, socialism, etc. not only are those ideas national international, but they also borrow things from each other, and try each others ideas as to what to do. So a rule in spain is tried, they watch, if it comes out well for spain, someone in each place copies. you can be sure that this young mans early life and schooling was more than likley different than the old tradition: self sufficiency, responsible, etc. vs social sufficiency, collective responsibility, etc.

    this is a point very hard to make in such a small place without the ability to justify where or what supports it. but its the difference between the experiences of youth being seen as character building even if regretable, to feeling them character destroying, and so, society let you down in experiencing them. women are raped because we live in a “rape culture”, and so society is on trial for even letting such exist on any level, not that that society is a mental construct of our living, and that we have no way of finding such people prior to such acts, and that this is as with everything human, individual action and individual responsibility. society is not to blame, any more than fraternity clubs as a whole are to blame for actions of their members, or catholic church responsible for individual priests actions, while ideologiclaly favored are “lone wolves” not connected to the larger entity they are acting out for just as individually. remember the goal was always stated to be to end the age of the individual.

    where people in the past would not dream of taking others with them in an accident, people who internalize this new order ideal are not responsible for anything (lower inhibition from acting), and society and so forth is responsible (taking them with you is punishing the failure of society, they being a small slice of it). Add to that the idea that life is not sacred in societies that abort and support it or they would feed their opposition. and collective ideas shrink the me in our own lives to in significance, so we are all insignificant, disposable, destined to die anyway. heck, given human thinking he could even think that he was saving all the passengers from the pain of living and doing them a service.

    such ideas are nothing more than exercising ones mind if a citizen, and working for state funds and pretending that they are real, rather than the product of the expanse of the groups imagination ability. no way to prove that any of those explanations and a lot others (some of them more wacko today than in the past: like men not smiling is sexist, men smiling is benevolently sexist too)

  39. Oh, and the reason that the plane did not drop faster is the same as the reason a new luxury car will slam on the brakes if you go into a parking place too fast.

    the plane will not allow a roll of more than a certain degree. so the classic roll over and pull the stick to go straight down is not possible.

    the plane also does not allow nose dive, so the co-pilot had no choice but the decent he took as the plane will take over if you try to dive it faster by pushing the stick too far forward.

    part of the fly by wire and assist systems.

  40. Neo,

    The tweeted image at businessinsider.com infers that FlightRadar24 recorded a data-stream from the A320 showing the autopilot altitude setting being manually changed from 38,000 feet to 96 feet.

    I’d like to see some more explanation about that, but I can accept it from where I sit (ie, speculating at home rather than on a jury).

    I saw reference to FlightRadar24 in other stories, but they didn’t clarify that the conclusion was based on data from the autopilot instrument as opposed to speculation, even educated speculation, based on no more than a radar reading of the plane’s descent.

    Another piece of information I’ve read in conjunction with the FlightRadar24 information is that the autopilot altitude is changed from 38,000 to ~100 by turning a dial several times, so Lubitz couldn’t have spasmed or passed out while unwittingly pressing a button to change the altitude like that – while presumably some other part of his body unwittingly pressed the door switch into the locked position.

  41. Discussions are going all over the place.

    First, 630 hours is a very low experienced airline pilot. Trust me on this; because I have trained a lot of them, from various parts of the world. That is incidental to this tragedy because training was not a factor. Just clearing up one point.

    The door design is what it has to be. As I said earlier, the door locks; the lock can be released by entering a code from the outside. This is mainly to prevent a lockout on the ground when no one is in the c/p to release the lock. The cockpit can over ride the code, for a period between 5 and 20 minutes. It can be over ridden multiple times if necessary. This is obviously to prevent a potential intruder from forcing a F/A to give him the code.

    The U.S. requires two people in the C/P simply so that one can look though the peephole and insure that all is well before the door is allowed to open; without the pilot controlling the plane having to leave the seat. This person needs no skills in piloting. It is so obvious that I do not understand why the Europeans have not followed this protocol.

    Talk of a FE or a third pilot on flights of moderate duration is simply nonsense. Modern cockpits are simply not designed to operate with another person on the flight deck. Systems are no longer designed for three person operation. It would make more sense to put some muscle on the jump seat, than to put a superfluous trained pilot/FE in there. There is already a pilot shortage which will only get worse. (Who the hell would want to go into an airline career these days?)

    There have been five episodes of pilot suicide in something like 40 years. I am sure there will be some tightening of controls; but, compare this to the number of people who have gone “postal” in other scenarios. This does capture the imagination, especially of the media; and the carnage is certainly greater. There is one fairly reasonable change that could be made–some companies already do this–and that is to require that all pilot medical exams be conducted in a company owned, or contracted clinic.

  42. rickl: “And that cockpit door design is a perfect example of governments’ stupefyingly wrongheaded approach to preventing terrorism after 9/11, focusing on things instead of people.”

    My thoughts exactly. Every time I stand in line at a TSA checkpoint, I wonder why we citizens have put up with this assumption that everyone is a hi-jacker. This approach is punishing the innocent and ignoring who the hi-jackers really are.

    This company punishment, reactive, brain dead defensive posture against terrorism is just like what is going on in the Seattle area these days. In the last year the Seattle/Tacoma area has seen a burgeoning of crime (mostly burglary, car prowls, shoplifting, purse-snatching, armed robberies, etc.). The authorities, in their infinite wisdom, are instructing people to not carry anything valuable with them and not to leave anything valuable in their cars so that the thugs (bless their larcenous black hearts) won’t be “tempted” to steal from us. I suppose the next step will be for the authorities asking that we not have anything of value in our homes because it just “tempts” the perps to commit break ins. All this is transpiring while the Seattle Police Department is under the supervision of the DOJ, which has resulted in cops just going through the motions rather than doing aggressive law enforcement.

    The PC approach to Islamic terrorism has been to blame ourselves for tempting the terrorists to strike at our success. To take the stance that we must treat everyone as a terrorist to be “fair and even-handed.” To act as if there is not much we can do about the rageaholics from the ME except cower defensively and restrict the freedoms of all in the face of the Medieval barbarians.

    I have always believed that aggressive, hard-nosed policing coupled with tough courts has been successful in reducing crime. In just the same way, I believe the best defense against terrorists is an aggressive offense. Because of PC and bleeding heart progs we have not really fully gone on offense. Bush tried but was hamstrung at every step of the way.

    But I digress. This evil act by Lubitz is deeply disturbing to me. I mourn for all those innocent, passengers who placed their trust in him. And for all their families and friends who lost loved ones. Never, in all my years in the profession, did I ever meet a man/woman who didn’t consider the trust reposed in us as a holy commitment. It was an honor to be in a trusted profession where the safety of our passengers was of the utmost importance. Lubitz’ actions are a travesty that damages the sense of pride I have in being a professional pilot. He has done immense damage to the profession and to the industry. A pox on his miserable soul.

  43. “putting a small ‘comfort station’ in the cockpit”….consider two pilots, each of whom has just flown a 6-hour mission and who now needs to fly the aircraft to a landing with minimum ceilings and visibility, an icy runway, and a gusty crosswind.

    Pilot #1 has been able to get up, stretch, and walk back to the restroom a time or two during the flight.

    Pilot #2 has been constrained to the cockpit for the entire 6 hours.

    Which of the two would you think would be more likely to complete the landing without incident? Most of the time, they would both be okay, but I expect that at the margin, Pilot #1 would be a better bet.

    Fixing one set of problems often creates or amplifies other problems.

  44. Oldflyer: “First, 630 hours is a very low experienced airline pilot.”

    A career has to begin somewhere. How does a trained and certified pilot acquire the flight hours from 0 to X-threshold other than by being a co-pilot until his promotion to captain?

    Oldflyer: “The U.S. requires two people in the C/P simply so that one can look though the peephole and insure that all is well before the door is allowed to open; without the pilot controlling the plane having to leave the seat.”

    Is the A320 perhaps equipped with CCTV so that the pilot doesn’t need to leave his seat to identify what’s outside the door?

  45. J.J.:

    I also have long thought that airline pilots regarded the passengers’ lives in their hands as a sacred trust. I am certain that is still true for almost every single one of them. But I think you are correct that Lubitz (and a few pilots before him who have done the same) have damaged that trust in a terrible, terrible way. To pilots, his act would be a particular outrage.

    There have been a few similar incidents, dating back to the 90s, where a pilot or co-pilot appears to have deliberately crashed a plane full of passengers, usually when the other pilot was out of the cabin (see this article). The Mozambique one (2013) is especially similar in its fact situation to the Germanwings one.

    However, the main difference between those earlier crashes and the Germanwings one is that the earlier incidents involved third-world pilots and airlines, except for Japan 350. Germanwings is the only one of the murder-suicide crashes that occurred in a Western nation and with a Western pilot (even though Japan is a modern, first-world nation, similar to Western nations, it is traditionally associated with suicide, and the death total in the Japanese incident was smaller). I think those factors have helped make the Germanwings crash much more noticeable to Westerners. But the phenomenon is not new; it is just so ghastly it’s understandable that we wouldn’t want to think about it overly.

  46. Thanks for providing the info and links, neo, much appreciated. I still wonder about the crew’s knowledge, whether taken from the knowledge of the captain (who I assume knew instantly that changes had been made to his preplanned flight expectations) or otherwise determined on their own. This morning, it seems, reports suggest that passengers were aware of their untoward circumstances somewhat earlier than reporting had previously suggested. Definitive answers as to the particulars of communications on this flight will have to wait, I suppose — i.e., in time the airline or investigators may reveal what (if any) sort of communication the plane carried available to crew or passengers. Quite possibly none.

  47. Eric:

    It has been my understanding (although I no longer remember on what this was based) that pilots and co-pilots have worked their way up to large planes from smaller commuter planes. It also used to be that most pilots had been military pilots prior to that, although apparently that is less true than it once was, and is not true in Europe because of their relative lack of trained military.

    Lubitz, in contrast, had no other flying experience except as a student. Nothing, nada. That 630 hours of experience was all as a Germanwings pilot of large passenger airplanes. That seems very odd to me, but perhaps it’s the way things are done these days.

  48. US regulations now require 1500 hours (with certain exceptions) for both Captain and First Officer. There has been concern in the industry about what this will do to pilot supply.

    Many pilots build hours by working as flight instructors, flying news and traffic reporting aircraft, flying freight or charter operations.

  49. Lubitz also spent some time working as a flight attendant. Is that something that happens very often with pilots?

  50. In a few years self-driving vehicles will become available. I think people will be surprised how quickly the transportation system switches from manual (people driving themselves) to automatic. This will be true for trucks, cars, busses and airplanes. There are many reasons for going automatic, but a primary one will be safety. Will it be perfect? No. Will there be fewer deaths? Yes. Accidents due to tiredness, drugs, texting and mental issues will be greatly reduced.

  51. The best explanation up today was given by brilliant Richard Fernandes, who cited a French peasant witnessed the event:
    “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning.” It was evil – pure and simple, and satanic in its nature. No psychology can and ever will be able to understand evil.

  52. Eric:

    Well, Lubitz seems to have bypassed all the steps except student and getting his license. It seems bizarre to me.

    It’s true that more experience might not have mattered. But more experience at lower levels of the airline world gives you the chance to be tested and observed with a smaller number of lives riding on your stability.

  53. Neo,

    From what I gather, the difference is like that between the free-agent/draft hiring model used by US pro basketball teams versus the academy-type in-house training model used by European pro basketball teams. Which isn’t to say US teams don’t train in-house and European teams don’t hire free agents, but their basic business models are different.

    Lubitz was ‘homegrown’ by Lufthansa/Germanwings, which apparently in their formula is just as good as hiring experience from outside.

  54. Eric, that “stand out detail” is what I suspected.

    The prosecutor assuring the families that the passengers didn’t know the plane was going to crash until seconds before impact could be parsed several ways so it isn’t technically a lie.

    When I read the reports of the pilot’s efforts to get into the door, knocking, pounding, yelling, it just struck me that we must be talking about quite a few seconds before impact indeed. The rest of the flight crew certainly must have known what was about to happen.

    The prosecutor’s assurance to the families reminded me of the etiquette in 19th century/WWI British Army condolence letters.

    http://www.army.mod.uk/firstworldwarresources/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/102882.jpg

    “…your husband along with five others was sitting down at breakfast when an enemy shell came through the dug out & burst in their midst. I’m sure your husband suffered no pain & death must have been instantaneous.”

    Yes, it always was.

    Sometimes the letters reported their loved one died with a smile on their face.

  55. A couple more examples:

    http://www.lidgate.suffolk.gov.uk/ww1.html

    SGT George Crann:

    “It is with the deepest regret that I have to inform you that your son, Sergt G.Crann was killed in action on Sept 25th while leading his platoon into the attack. His death was that of a soldier and a brave man, but fortunately it was painless as he was killed instantly…”

    PVT Edward Foreman

    “He was killed by a shell when taking rations to his Company. He was a very brave lad and I am sure he never suffered..I saw him the previous day reading his pocket testament in the trench.”

    It really was a convention. First the next of kin would get a telegram that basically informed them w/regrets their loved one had been killed, then an army form in the mail with a few more details and an address to send for the soldier’s personal effects. Then a personal letter from the CO or a friend, and no one ever suffered.

  56. As reported in the NY Times:”Mr. Lubitz waited 11 months for a pilot’s slot after completing his training, filling the time by working as an airline steward during that time, said Mr. Spohr [Lufthansa CEO], adding that there was nothing unusual about that.”

    At least two questions come to mind:

    Did the CEO mean it was not unusual to wait 11 months to get a pilot’s slot and working as a steward during that time, or just the former?

    Why didn’t Lubitz do some actual piloting work during that 11 months?

  57. Why didn’t Lubitz do some actual piloting work during that 11 months?

    Pilot training is even more expensive in Europe than it is here. $200 per hour for a crappy little C-172??? I really doubt that a fast food cook like Lubitz could afford it unless his employer was footing the bill.

  58. This incident has me wondering: With all of the cars on the road every day around the world, how often does a driver decide to commit suicide by veering into the opposing lane and hitting a random car head-on?

    I’m sure it happens, but since we can’t know what went through the mind of a dead person, many such incidents are probably chalked up as a heart attack or some other medical emergency. Also, the prevalence of airbags makes death less certain in such collisions.

  59. Steve57: “The rest of the flight crew certainly must have known what was about to happen.”

    That, too. If the Bild unofficial summary and other accounts so far are to be believed, Captain Sondenheimer at least quickly realized something was wrong. I can’t imagine the rest of the crew not realizing the same, more so since their captain was in the cabin with them.

    Here’s something else to consider. Lufthansa, and I assume Germanwings, crewmembers are respected, proud professionals.

    Even if the passengers only belatedly realized something was amiss, as Neo speculates, airlines have emergency protocols for unusual landings. If the crew at least had an inkling that the plane was going down for an unusual landing and possibly a crash, I imagine they would have initiated the emergency protocols – seatbelts on, secure items, remove items from body, position children, assume crash position, etc..

    While I imagine the captain would have continued trying to enter the cockpit, I also imagine in those ~10 minutes, the flight attendants would have professionally prepared the passengers as best they could for a possible crash.

  60. Eric, wrt to your comment there is virtually no way to get significant experience prior to being hired by an airline. Lubitz fits the European model. We have not quite reached that point in the U.S. but we are getting there. Whether the model is good or bad is irrelevant; it is the model of the future.

    I am afraid that folks who criticize the cockpit door arrangement are simply engaging in knee jerk anti-government bias. It seems to me that the arrangement is about as good as you can get. Already noted my puzzlement that the Europeans do not follow the U.S. protocol of bringing another crew member into the cockpit.

    I know of no CCTV arrangement to view the area outside of the door. Keep it simple; how much more complexity do you want in the C/P?

    Of course a certain number of pilots in the U.S are armed. That would not have helped in this case, of course, and will probably be used as fodder to disarm the relative few are willing to go through the wickets to qualify for the program. My A320 Captain friend is an avid shooter, but says it is not worth the hassle.

    The thought of driverless cars give me the chills. I don’t want one, and I don’t want them on the road with me. Besides, I can only imagine the cost. People who make and sell electronics will be on the bandwagon. Made in China?

  61. David Foster,

    So what to make of this?

    http://aviation-business-gazette.com/A44/B58/Pilot-Andreas-Guenter-Lubitz-Rheinland-Pfalz-.html

    Updated September 18, 2013, 11:01 a.m. ET

    FAA recognizes Andreas Guenter Lubitz
    Rheinland Pfalz-based pilot sets positive example

    The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is recognizing Andreas Guenter Lubitz with inclusion in the prestigious FAA Airmen Certification Database.

    The database, which appears on the agency’s website at http://www.faa.gov, names Lubitz and other certified pilots who have met or exceeded the high educational, licensing and medical standards established by the FAA.

    The article recognizing Lubitz links the FAA press release you linked.

  62. Eric…the link makes no sense to me. Perhaps the FAA is considering people who meet other certain other countries’ standards as “virtually” meeting US standards in some way. Or maybe…note that the Aviation Business Gazette article specifies that Guenter has a Class 3 medical—that is the medical that is required for *private* pilots in the U.S….so maybe the item is really just about him holding a US private pilot’s license, in addition to whatever he held in Germany.

    It seems extremely odd that there would be a press release on a common, garden-variety pilot certificate…I did a little googling and came up with this:

    http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=79251

  63. Eric,

    Newsweek says that article is a fake:

    …the FAA database in question only shows that Lubitz held a private pilot (foreign based) license, only valid with his German pilot license number. This was confirmed by an FAA spokesperson, who said: “He only has a private pilot certificate, he does not have any honours or awards to his name given by the FAA.”

    The article itself links to comments made by U.S. transportation secretary Anthony Foxx regarding the qualification rise for pilots who fly U.S. passenger airlines. However, Lubitz flew for Lufthansa, a German airline, discounting that the FAA ever lauded Lubitz for his flying ability.

    Furthermore, the 2013 rule says that, to meet the qualification requirements to become a co-pilot for a U.S. airline, the increased minimum amount of flight hours is 1,000. German authorities have confirmed that Lubitz only held 630 hours of flight experience.

    Bizarrely, the website in fact has an identical article for every member of the FAA’s Airmen Certification Database, published on the same date, 18 September 2013, as seen in the screenshot below, indicating that the FAA did not single out Lubitz for praise.

  64. Driverless cars, pilotless airliners, etc…those who believe that automated systems are inherently safer than those involving human operators would do well to read the story of Metrorail train T-111.

    Blood on the Tracks:

    http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/43911.html

    You can’t “remove the human element.” Systems are specified by people, designed and programmed by people, maintained by people according to protocols established by other people.

  65. Oldflyer: “I know of no CCTV arrangement to view the area outside of the door. Keep it simple; how much more complexity do you want in the C/P?”

    This article makes an oblique reference to CCTV that sounds like some planes have it installed:
    http://atwonline.com/security/easa-recommends-two-crew-policy

    “If a pilot needs to leave the cockpit, for example to go to the bathroom, at least one qualified pilot needs to remain at the controls of the plane. There is no requirement from the regulation that in this case another crew member must be present in the cockpit,” an EASA spokesman told ATW.

    Pilots must also be able to monitor the area outside the cockpit area. This can be done by a member of cabin crew controlling the cockpit door while one of the pilots is away from their post, or via CCTV cameras, which eliminates the need for cabin crew monitoring, the EASA spokesman said.

  66. I don’t want driverless cars, either. They sound like something out of a dystopian novel.

    Cars have always been associated with individual freedom. This is why the statists want to get rid of them and force us all into public transportation.

    Driverless cars would make the individual a passive occupant, so the statists will love them. Presumably the police would have the ability to command them to stop.

  67. This article says the Germanwings Airbus A320 has “a CCTV camera [in the cockpit] so they can see who is seeking access, and if they are under any form of duress”.

  68. Oldflyer, Ann,

    My takeaway, other than at least 1 European airline equips their cockpits with CCTV whereas US airlines do not, is that the media is making a deal out of US vs Euro practice, but in reality, the US 2-person reg wasn’t meant to guard against a homicidal pilot, but simply to manage the CCTV-less cockpit door so that the remaining on-station pilot could stay at the controls of the plane. Although now it seems eyeing the on-station pilot suspiciously is an added duty.

  69. Since it’s easy to come across the wrong way in this kind of communication, I suppose I should say I’m in no way making light of this. I find it way to easy to imagine myself in this situation. When I mentioned I thought the prosecutor might have been trying to soften the blow by saying the passengers didn’t realize the plane was going to crash until the last few seconds for the families’ sake I wasn’t being critical of him. After taking another look at the reporting, it appears the cockpit voice recorder was so badly damaged that it may have been possible to to extract only a few, final useable seconds of audio at the time he made the announcement. This more detailed transcript appears to be the result of further analysis.

    But even if the prosecutor thought he was doing the decent thing at the time, I’d find that completely understandable.

    Apparently there was some screaming when the pilot initially tried to break into the cockpit, but it appears to have stopped. That’s understandable if, as Eric says, the cabin crew initiated emergency protocols. They no doubt did. That would at least give everyone something to focus on and provide some semblance of having control over your fate.

  70. The article I mentioned earlier is “Can a DC-3 Girl Find Happiness in a VLJ (very light jet)?” in Flying Magazine. The author, Martha Lunken, is a long-time pilot and has also worked as an FAA Inspector. Excerpt:

    “I worried about the young guys and glas who struggle through rigid curricula at the Delta Connection Academies and the FlightSafetys and the Embry-Riddles. At 600 to 1000 hours, much of it in simulators, with almost no time truly “alone in an airplane and no sense of “the fun of it,” they graduate to instructing and then into the right seat of a commuter…I worried because the FAA and aircraft insurers demand ever more automation and fewer decisions that can be made from the flight deck. And probably 999 times out of 1000 that works. But I can’t help but think of United 232 and the magnificent command presence of Captain Al Haines. And I can’t help but wonder if some of the recent air carrier tragedies would have had different endings if a Wynn Baker, an Aubrey Sweezey, a Bob Strunk or a Verne Jobst had been in the left seat. Men who know and love airplanes and who fully respect the dangers. Men who not only accept but demand responsibility, authority, accountability. Captains who are captains, airmen in the most complete sense of the word.”

    Her thoughts also seem applicable to other professions, notably business.

  71. Fix at March 29th, 2015 at 9:12 pm :
    … the media is making a big deal out of US vs Euro practice, but in reality, the US 2-person reg wasn’t meant to guard against a homicidal pilot …

  72. Steve57,

    As Neo points out, it was a controlled descent. The airplane, other than the co-pilot and the captain trapped outside the cockpit, was working fine. No sudden decompression, pieces of the fuselage falling off, ominous knocking or vibrations, engines on fire or shutting off, smoke and/or fire filling the cabin, etc..

    Therefore, I imagine even with the frightening awareness of something bad happening, emergency preparation by the crew, and the captain yelling and banging on the cockpit door, there still would have been hope of a survivable landing in the otherwise healthy plane until it became clear they were flying into the Alps.

  73. Eric, it was 10:40a.m. local time when the plane crashed.

    It took off from Barcelona, flew overwater until it reached the southern French coast approx. at Marseille, which according to the Wx info for 24 March had broken cloud cover. You could have seen when you crossed the coast.

    How could you not know you were flying into the Alps?

  74. I hope my last didn’t come across as flip.

    This map may help.

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Massif_des_Alpes_map-fr.svg

    Marseille is approx. right where the coastline runs almost due south and gets cut off at the bottom center. The coastline then turns back to the southeast where it just basically curves north to join with the Riviera coastline on the Med.

    The plane would have crossed the coastline about 20k S.E. of Marseille. To connect it with CNN’s timeline, that’s about when the Captain would have started pounding on the door. It’s flight path would have taken roughly over Sainte Baume then N.E. to the impact site at Trois-Eveches. The plane should have still been descending at about 3-3500ft/min for seven minutes after it crossed the coastline, then leveled off and hit the mountain about one minute later.

    I don’t think there would have been a person on that plane who wouldn’t have known they were flying into the Alps. The French Riviera is somewhat famous for them as with the coastline and beaches they form part of the spectacular scenery. Cloud cover at the coast was about five-tenths; they may have gotten occasional glimpses. It was a controlled descent, yes, but they were heading into the Alps. And they were on the wrong heading to find a place to land.

  75. I flew over the Alps, once. It was dark so I didn’t get a chance to enjoy it.
    Point is, there’s a difference between flying over and flying into–which the folks on the Germanwings plane discovered.
    At what point do the Alps appear beside you as opposed to below you? And then above you?
    The idea that there was a problem is likely to have been pretty late into the venture.
    Lubwitz demonstrates that you can be nucking futz and still function normally. After all, you had to be trained in all aspects of civil aviation, or at least that aircraft type, and be groomed and able to meet the pilot without setting off what de Becker calls “the gift of fear”, to be able to sit there, lock the door and reprogram the autopilot.
    Somebody referred to Himmler, iirc, when speaking of the banality of evil. Perfectly normal up until the very end, or perfectly normal on the surface.
    If an aircraft can be pre-programmed, it can be evilly pre-programmed. If an aircraft can be taken over from the ground, it can be evilly taken over from the ground. In either case, it would be by some updated version of the NASA nerd, with his shortsleeve dress shirt, narrow tie and pocket protector. Whatever he’d look like today, he’d have to look like that to have access. Just as Lubwitz had to look like a pilot to get into that seat.
    Or, perhaps, he could be some techgenius in his parents’ basement. Not sure I’d like to swap the current situation for that.

  76. Steve57,

    The plane was descending at the Alps, but not in a severe or out of control manner, eg, a dive, and apparently, Lubitz didn’t provide notice of his intent to crash the plane head-on into a cliff face. Ominous, frightening and growing more so, but not utterly hopeless until, as Richard Aubrey points out, there crosses the point where awareness of flying ‘at’ becomes flying ‘into’. Based on the unofficial summaries, that point of awareness may have been when the right wing struck something. Perhaps that point was crossed earlier for the crew, especially the captain, than for the passengers.

    I think the passengers were aware of a problem growing worse with an idea of what was happening, and I think it’s likely the crew initiated emergency protocols, but the passengers may not have known for sure what was going to happen until it became clear the plane was not leveling or pulling up and not skimming over the top of the Alps.

  77. Richard Aubrey,

    I dimly recall that one of our drones was captured (by Iran?) due to its flight control being ‘hacked’.

  78. As an aside, this is the kind of behavior i have complained about, the inability to say “i dont know” and the compulsion to have to come up with some made up explanation… to sound smart of course.

    Lie witness news
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_wlfQZe6L4#t=158

    in this segment people comment on Obama dumping biden for making momma jokes, the new baby boy the obamas made named marcus (and whether its ok that obama wont have him circumsized), the appointment of dennis rodman as ambassador to north korea, and a obama sleep over with kim il… to which the person said they looked cute together…

  79. another thing to be concerned with:

    Jade Helm 15: “Master the human domain”

    I figure the key things will not be covered, because they are key and together would explain a lot, and that would lead to a conclusion no one wants, so its more popular to avoid them, even more so avoid putting them together.

  80. http://nypost.com/2015/03/29/killer-co-pilots-ex-fiancee-may-be-carrying-his-child/

    If the latest report is true that his long-term girlfriend with whom he lived and has known since they were teens, was pregnant (his, or worse in a way, not his) yet just broke up with him, that would be traumatic, especially if his mental state was already brittle.

    Who knows. It points to a more ‘conventional’ explanation of an ‘I’ll show her’ or angry at life, fate, God, and the world mindset, anyway.

  81. be warned (as i warned before on this, but many find “conspiracies” a convenient thing to discount out of hand, making it easier to have conspiracies without examination)

    Vladimir Putin revealed to employ ‘trolls’ to flood websites with pro-Russian propaganda
    http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/566986/Vladimir-Putin-employ-trolls-flood-websites-pro-Russian-propaganda

    The army of workers are paid £500 a month to work exhausting 12-hour shifts, during which they must write at least 135 pro-Russian comments per day – or face immediate dismissal

  82. Eric Says: Who knows. It points to a more ‘conventional’ explanation of an ‘I’ll show her’ or angry at life, fate, God, and the world mindset, anyway.

    heck… he isnt the first to balk at 18+ years of slavery for someone else and all the bad he will get while they are apart on it… people have no idea of it given that feministts argue both sides, and if a guy wants to be candid about it, well, thats not pc, and he is negated… ie. they have no where to turn to… after all, she could have murdered his kid in the womb, and he has no rights to stop her… she could have the kid, and then give it up for adoption, and he would have a hard time if at all to get custody… and she can keep the kid, not be with him, and take a large proportion of his income (even if the kid is not his), and so, negate his abilty to have a better relationship with someone else.

    one gentleman set himself on fire on courthouse steps in protest, so crashing a plane is nothing.

    i will say that it wont draw any attention to the issue at all, he is just a deadbeat white male villian and we all know that all white males are nazis, and to be treated like jews in germany circa 1940…

    On June 15 around 5:30 pm, a 58-year-old New Hampshire father named Thomas Ball self-immolated in front of the Cheshire County Court House. Ball was pronounced dead at the scene.

    the full text of his letter is here.
    http://www.sentinelsource.com/news/local/last-statement-sent-to-sentinel-from-self-immolation-victim/article_cd181c8e-983b-11e0-a559-001cc4c03286.html

    I am due in court the end of the month. The ex-wife lawyer wants me jailed for back child support. The amount ranges from $2,200. to $3,000. depending on who you ask. Not big money after being separated over ten years and unemployed for the last two. But I do owe it. If I show up for court without the money and the lawyer say jail, then the judge will have the bailiff take me into custody. There really are no surprises on how the system works once you know how it actually works. And it does not work anything like they taught you in high school history or civics class.

    I could have made a phone call or two and borrowed the money. But I am done being bullied for being a man. I cannot believe these people in Washington are so stupid to think they can govern Americans with an iron fist. Twenty-five years ago, the federal government declared war on men. It is time now to see how committed they are to their cause. It is time, boys, to give them a taste of war.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-

    Labeling someone’s action as domestic violence in American in the 21st century is akin to labeling someone a Jew in Germany in the 1930’s. The entire legal weight of the state is coming down on him. But I consider myself lucky. My family was destroyed. But that poor bastard in Germany had his family literally annihilated.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-

    it goes on for 15 pages describing things

    heck.. they destroyed my family, my career as well, and i have never recovered… ie. been homeless twice, cant get better work, cant get raises or promotions forever, etc

    they sided with the mom who faked her murder destroying things even more… then later ended up serving two years in club fed for trying to take my son and her two new kids to rob a bank. i was told i have no rights.

    so its not so hard to see why a young man facing that kind of future, zero support, lifetime demonization if he does the right thing, prison and prison rape if he doesnt or if he falls short, no sympathy, family is against you, etc..

    oh well… not much a guy can do. we have no rights but we are priveleged and we are unprotected class.

    if a self immolation or two cant get someone attention when women can make false claims to get rewards, then there was or is no hope for him or even me.

    i will never take others out
    but ultimately, my life has been over for 30 years and i am just waiting to die… hoping it comes swiftly as its hopeless… how do you erase a false charge of murder that comes up in a job search? how do you get a job in a degree field when you been working for 30 years without a degree? nothing i can do but die…

    its even worse that my wife has to be barren while the other one got to clearn me out of what my wife deserves… eh?

    too bad for her.. eh?

    so i can easily understand actions in the extreme related to the subjecta s most are completely ignorant of what is going on there and have been so for over 20 years, and they continue to make it worse and worse under the idea that the propaganda never lets up and always claims lack of improvement evne if its been improved every year.

  83. Eric said:

    “The plane was descending at the Alps, but not in a severe or out of control manner, eg, a dive, and apparently, Lubitz didn’t provide notice of his intent to crash the plane head-on into a cliff face.”

    It depends on what you mean by severe. It was a controlled descent. On the other hand he was descending at more than the usual rate than you’d experience in an A320 on approach to an airport. Would he have had to announce it? The silence from the flight deck and the Captain desperately trying to break down the cockpit door would have spoken volumes.

    He was landing into the Alps.

  84. Richard Aubrey’s point is well taken. But I’d like to point out one crucial difference. When he experienced the Alps it was dark.

    When the passengers on Germanwings flight 4U9525 flew into them it was close to noon.

  85. How long from the view of a mountain level with wing tip to impact? From looking down at the mountains from whatever altitude which seems okay to an alarming altitude? What IS the okay view out the window?

  86. Apparently I started something. I simply found the prosecutor’s statement that the passengers didn’t know they were about to crash until the final few seconds impossible to believe from the start. This isn’t a great graphic but:

    http://static.sglinks.com/assets/pages/24/61/24619536bcb7fa6dc34c0a800c20c243_330.jpg

    From the start we knew the plane was descending at an alarming rate. A controlled descent, yes. There was no smoke in the cabin, things weren’t falling off the plane, nothing like that. But clearly from the flight profile that was no normal descent. I’ve gone with approx. 3500 ft/min because the timelines have varied a bit. The normal rate of descent for an A320 on approach to its first waypoint is 1800ft/min. You wouldn’t need to know all that; any view of the ground would tell you it was coming up at you way too fast.

    It was nearly noon. The clouds would have been broken enough to give people a view of the ground. And I can’t imagine that any of them didn’t know what was up ahead only a few minutes away.

    Since the prosecutor’s statement additional information has come out that confirms my initial impression. They heard screaming at approx 10:32. The “sink rate” alarm came on in the cockpit at the same time. The passengers wouldn’t have been able to hear that, especially given all the noise the Captain was making. But you wouldn’t need to, just a view of the ground coming up from below would have been enough. The “terrain-pull up alarm” came on at approx. 10:36. Again, just a view of the ground would have been enough.

    I’ve never been able to convince myself that the passengers didn’t know they were going to crash until the final few seconds. There is no place to do any sort of controlled landing where they were, and I believe most if not all of them knew where they were. I don’t know when the inevitable dawned on each and every single one of them, but I could never believe the prosecutors statement that they were sitting their in blissful ignorance until the final seconds.

    YMMV. Feel free to disagree. I won’t bring it up again. Those are my reasons I believe what I believe.

  87. Richard Aubrey, Steve57:

    It’s not my impression that the crash site is deep within the Alps. It’s not as though the plane was flying over the mountains for a while. The site is about 100 miles north of Nice (see this map). My guess is that the mountains came into view only within the last minute or minutes; the plane was going almost 500 mph when it hit.

    The crash was near the town of Digne, which is described as being in the foothills of the Alps. My sense of the situation is that he flew towards the Alps and into them more than over them. “Over them” was probably only in the last minute or two, would be my guess.

  88. Steve57:

    And I don’t think anyone is saying that none of the passengers knew. Some of them probably knew before most of the rest of them knew. Plus, more people probably sensed something was wrong but didn’t know quite what, before they realized that they were actually about to hit the Alps.

    The question is: knew what? And: how many passengers knew what? And at what point?

    In the end, though, we will almost certainly never learn what went on in their minds. And there’s no question, I think, that we would like to think most of them didn’t know, because their suffering would have been less.

  89. Neo (and others); just a quick short thank you for all your posts and the follow up links!

  90. neo said:

    “I think, that we would like to think most of them didn’t know, because their suffering would have been less.”

    That’s exactly why I wasn’t criticizing the prosecutor for saying that they didn’t know until the last few seconds.

    Who more than their families would hope that was the case?

  91. Neo: “And there’s no question, I think, that we would like to think most of them didn’t know, because their suffering would have been less.”

    If it’s unexpected death in an instant, then maybe.

    But if the alternative is even a moment of awareness, then I believe it’s better to have the chance with more time to make one’s peace as best one can before death, whether with a cherished memory, prayers, apologies, I love you’s, or good-byes, maybe scribbling out a quick note, maybe a last will. Or modern-day, maybe a recording on a cell phone.

  92. Steve57,

    I’m with you that I don’t believe the passengers “were sitting [there] in blissful ignorance until the final seconds”.

    Even if they somehow overlooked, while mid-morning wakefully aware on a clear day, the too early, too steep descent though having just reached cruising altitude, with no landing procedure or other PA announcement, and the captain outside the cockpit yelling and banging on the cockpit door, with likely other off-pattern behavior by the crew, I believe the flight attendants would have initiated emergency protocols with the passengers, which would have clarified that something life-threatening was happening even if the passengers weren’t told exactly what was wrong.

    Where I differ with you is the point where scary became doomed. Because the plane was fine and flying under control, I believe there would have been some hope that whatever bad was happening might be corrected in time to level the plane or pull up before it was too late. I’m with Neo that the point of too late was likely close to the end.

  93. Back in the day, I notified a family their son had been killed in SEA. I do survivor assistance as things come along.
    They told me he was reported to have died in surgery.
    Years later, I tracked down the unit’s website and asked around if anybody knew what happened.
    “.51 to the forehead” said his buddies.
    I don’t know what asshole told them about died in surgery but I hope I meet him.
    It’s almost certainly true…but I hope I meet him.

  94. I don’t advocate making up a story out of whole cloth. Which the prosecutor didn’t do. And to be be fair to him the final few seconds may have been all the clear audio that was available at the time.

    Apparently the investigators had some trouble extracting information from the audio file in the cockpit voice recorder. If I were the prosecutor and even if I had indications that the passengers were aware of their fate minutes earlier I’d keep that information to myself. And I would be justified, because the technicians did have to take that thing to the lab to extract the data.

    I don’t think you have to give the next of kin all the details. Especially if it’s an initial notification of some sort. If they want more info then I’ll be happy to provide it once the techs are finished working on it.

  95. Steve57,

    For what it’s worth, the unofficial summary doesn’t say the passengers screamed continuously from 10:32 until the end. If the Bild unofficial summary of the 10:32 screams is correct, if there was an initial reaction followed by relative calm as presumably the flight crew switched on their emergency mode, and if the prosecutor knew all of this, he could still follow my line of reasoning that after the initial shock, an awareness of life-threatening, but still conceivably survivable, maybe even correctable, danger is different than an awareness of imminent certain death.

    As much as I think it likely the flight crew initiated emergency protocols, I think it’s likely the crew didn’t forecast to the passengers that the plane was going to fly into a cliff face. As you inferred upthread, emergency protocols for unusual landing imply some control over one’s chance of survival. The flight crew likely had more understanding of the direness of the situation, but they also wouldn’t have known for sure with Lubitz gone silent. The controlled descent meant they still had a chance, of Lubitz – a liked and trusted pilot just moments earlier – coming back to his senses and simply flicking the nose of the plane up if nothing else. The steady flight also meant they could control the cabin, and I believe they’re trained to calm the situation within reason and head off a crowd panic using whatever defusing assurances (aka white lies) they’re trained to provide in obviously life-threatening scenarios.

  96. Richard Aubrey,

    No one told you and no one asked why the trooper was in surgery in the first place?

  97. Ann,

    Interesting. The Lufthansa spokesman (CEO?) is quoted on rigorous psychological testing as an entry requirement. Does that mean they only trust their own psych evals and set aside prior history? “Several years” would be Lubitz as a teenager and maybe that factored in setting it aside. Or maybe (more likely) Lubitz didn’t report the childhood episode to the airline.

  98. Eric,

    They knew:

    Lufthansa knew six years ago that the co-pilot of the passenger plane that crashed in the French Alps last week had suffered from a “serious depressive episode,” the German airline said Tuesday.

    The airline said that as part of its internal research it found emails that Andreas Lubitz sent to the Lufthansa flight school in Bremen when he resumed his training there after an interruption of several months.

    In them, he informed the school that he had suffered a “serious depressive episode,” which had since subsided.

    The airline said Lubitz subsequently passed all medical checks and that it has provided the documents to prosecutors. It declined to make any further comment.

    The revelation that officials Lufthansa had been informed of Lubitz’s psychological problems raises further questions about why he was allowed to become a pilot for its subsidiary, Germanwings, in September 2013.

  99. Eric.
    He was a gunship platoon leader in Laos, Lam Son 719. Hit going after a NVA mortar position. The aircraft was not damaged and returned to base.
    All I knew when I went up the sidewalk was KIA, which is all Casualty Branch is authorized to say.
    The family told me later they’d been informed he died in surgery. His brothers told me what was likely the expected lie.
    Nobody should have told the family the first story.
    The next time I went up the sidewalk, the family and neighbors–who knew what it meant when an officer parked in front of a house–all wanted to know “if it was quick.” I assured them it was, although they may have wondered later how I knew. I did not, of course, but it was my story and I was sticking to it.

  100. “serious depressive episode”? Are you the eff kidding me?
    They don’t have enough candidates who don’t have serious depressive episodes?
    How many lampposts is this going to require?
    Maybe the legal dept told them they couldn’t discriminate so don’t even try?

  101. This whole thing is beginning to stink to high heaven. Leaving aside the basic question of why Lufthansa, or anyone, would even give a guy with suicidal tendencies a commercial license, there’s the question of just why he had to wait 11 months to be given a flying assignment once he got that license, considering that Lufthansa has been plagued with a series of pilot strikes over the last several years. And the question of why during that waiting period he worked as a flight attendant, which surely has to be a very rare occurrence for a pilot. That seems to me to indicate they had some worries about him. But then even more strikes take place…

  102. Powerline (a blog well worth reading) has a comment up about this copilot’s psychiatric history and how liberals here in the US would love to use such medical records to deny people guns.

    It occurred to me that the powers that be already do that in Europe and Japan (yes, it’s possible to own shotguns in Japan and if you do so successfully for seven years then rifles).

    So Lubitz would not have been allowed to own a firearm of any sort in Germany. But that didn’t stop him from getting a job with a Lufthansa subsidiary and killing 149 other people.

    The same privacy concerns that prevent employers from accessing an employees medical records don’t apply to firearms license applicants.

    That seems somewhat strange to me.

  103. Los angeles historia nos sitéºa en Diablo
    City, Arizona, en 1879 en una encrucijada provocada por un boté­n que deja tras su muerte un terrateniente local, 4 mujeres en busca de hacerse con él y un sheriff dispuesto a todo por librarse de ellas y ser
    el dueé±o de tesoro.

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