Germanwings A320 on BCN-DUS flight crash near Nice, France

[Peter Kesternich]

Bild reporting in an interview with his EX-girlfriend (...)

Fixed

[Peter Kesternich]

(...) I see a pilot with ideals that were reduced to tasks and no one really taking him under their wing. Am I wrong in that assumption?

If you ask me, yes, you're wrong. If this (possibly idealistic) young pilot had spent any time researching the conditions of his employment (with Lufthansa or any other airline in the world operating more than 10 aircraft), he would have known what it would be like... being schedule with a new captain and a new cabin crew every other day, working with hundreds of different individuals...
Honestly? I don't think that if he really was a bright-eyed (naive?) aviation romantic (who only 630 flight hrs later realizes the hard truths about his everyday job), he would have even passed Lufthansa's entrance exam...

[Observer]

Can't think of any solutions to this scenario that do not have inherrent weaknesses to other scenarios.

I fear whatever solutions to come will further erode the pleasure that was the freedom of flight and travel.

Exactly and the cockpit door loking mechanism shows the tradeoff issues in this particular case.
Also, we can ellaborate in the medical side of the event by trying to answer for example if he had shown previous signs, if he was bi-polar or had depression, why he did it at work, why he took other people,etc. But from the aviation safety perspective, these answers will not help a lot.
From the aviation safety perspective,what matters is that, as far as we know (keeping in mind that future additional information may change the current scenario), the Swiss Cheese theory doesn't fit here because there are only three things to discuss and recommend changes:
1) how to allow full access to the cockpit for authorized people in an emergency situation.
2) How to avoid to have only one person in full control of the aircraft
3) how can the industry expand its control to avoid unauthorized/incapacitated persons to take full control of the plane. The industry has implemented such controls for terrorists, non-certified persons, training pilots, etc. But the new scenario refers to incapacitation due to medical leave that was not mentioned to the airliner.

[Gabriel]

1. Lufthansa's CEO said in one of the press conferences that it is not unusual for fully trained pilots within the company to work as a flight attendant after completing pilot training while they are waiting a piloting position to open.

Yes, and in many other airlines too. Absolutely nothing bad with that, on the contrary.

[Brainsys]

The 27 year old Co-pilot went to work last Tuesday although he did not have to?!

As it was an early morning flight from BCN he must have been working Monday night at least to get there. We don't know when the sick note was issued but we do know that was in Germany and he must have completed at least one flight beforehand without issue.

To take time off he would have had to hand the note in. If what it said was potentially career ending he would be mightily tempted to ignore it and fly on. Or in itself it could have induced the crisis.

We don't know the contents and probably will not until at least a preliminary report has been issued. We need to be careful that friends and family memories of him will also be influenced by the event. People will see many trails to the tragedy. Some may be real, some may be imaginary but distinguishing between them is, at best, difficult and may be impossible.

As others said if his name had been Mohammed a lot of people would have jumped to a particular explanation. In this case a wrong one.

[Gabriel]

This is nothing new. I wonder why we didn't discuss all this (and why the industry didn't take the measures that they are likely going to take now) after the almost identical case in Africa last year. And pilot suicides (in airplanes) in general, and starting when the other pilot leaves the cockpit in particular, are nothing new. I would even say that it's not the least common cause of airplane crashes either. There were only two fatal accidents for the rudder hardover, only one for the fuel tank blow up, and those were given much much more resources to investigate and fix.

Someone posted this link in this thread a couple of days ago.

http://news.aviation-safety.net/2015/03/26/list-of-aircraft-accidents-and-incidents-deliberately-caused-by-pilots/

26 September 1976 – 12 fatalities
A Russian pilot stole an Antonov 2 airplane directed his aircraft into the block of flats in Novosibirsk where his divorced wife lived. (ASN Accident Description)

22 August 1979 – 4 fatalities
A 23 year old male mechanic who had just been fired entered a hangar at Bogotá Airport, Colombia and stole a military HS-748 transport plane. He took off and crashed the plane in a residential area. (ASN Accident Description)

9 February 1982 – 24 fatalities
A Japan Air Lines operated DC-8 crashed into the shallow water of Tokyo Bay after the captain cancelled the autopilot while the aircraft was on final approach to Haneda Airport, pushed his controls forward and retarded the throttles to idle. The co-pilot tried to regain control but the aircraft crashed. The captain had recently suffered a psychosomatic disorder; preliminary reports suggested that the captain experienced some form of a mental aberration. He had been off duty from November 1980 to November 1981 for these reasons. (ASN Accident Description)

7 April 1994 - 0 fatalities
A FedEx employee was due to be fired and took a jump seat on a flight to San Jose. He was intending to murder the flight crew with hammers and then to use the aircraft for a kamikaze attack on FedEx Headquarters in Memphis. A struggle ensued and two crew members overpowered the man while the first officer maintained control of the plane. (ASN Accident Description)

13 July 1994 – 1 fatality
A Russian Air Force engineer stole the aircraft at the Kubinka Air Force Base to commit suicide. The aircraft crashed when there was no more fuel left. (ASN Accident Description)

21 August 1994 – 44 fatalities
A Royal Air Maroc ATR-42 airplane crashed in the Atlas Mountains shortly after takeoff from Agadir, Morocco. The accident was suggested to have been caused by the captain disconnecting the autopilot and directing the aircraft to the ground deliberately. The Moroccan Pilot’s Union challenged these findings. (ASN Accident Description)

19 December 1997 – 104 fatalities
Silk Air Flight 185, a Boeing 737 en route from Jakarta, Indonesia to Singapore, crashed in Indonesia following a rapid descent from cruising altitude. Indonesian authorities were not able to determine the cause of the accident. It has been suggested by among others the U.S. NTSB that the captain may have committed suicide by switching off both flight recorders and intentionally putting the Boeing 737 in a dive, possibly when the first officer had left the flight deck. During 1997 the captain experienced multiple work-related difficulties, particularly during the last 6 months. Also at the time of the accident the captain was experiencing significant financial difficulties, which was disputed by the Indonesian investigators. (ASN Accident Description)

11 October 1999 – 1 fatality
An Air Botswana captain who had been grounded for medical reasons took off in an ATR-42. He made several demands over the radio and finally stated he was going the crash the plane. He caused the plane to crash into two parked ATR-42 aircraft on the platform at Gaborone Airport, Botswana. (ASN Accident Description)

31 October 1999 – 217 fatalities
Egypt Air Flight 990, a Boeing 767, entered a rapid descent some 30 minutes after departure from New York-JFK Airport. This happened moments after the captain had left the flight deck. During the investigation it was suggested that the accident was caused by a deliberate act by the relief first officer. However, there was no conclusive evidence. The NTSB concluded that the accident was a “result of the relief first officer’s flight control inputs. The reason for the relief first officer’s actions was not determined.” The suggestions of a deliberate act were heavily disputed by Egyptian authorities. (ASN Accident Description)

17 July 2012 – 1 fatality
A commercial pilot wanted in connection with the killing of his girlfriend in Colorado Springs went up to the Saint George Municipal Airport, Utah and managed to board a Canadair RegionalJet plane and start the engines. A security guard saw the airplane starting to taxy. It reportedly struck part of the terminal building and ended up in a parking lot. The pilot then shot himself once, killing himself inside the plane.

29 November 2013 – 33 fatalities
LAM Flight 470, an ERJ-190, entered a rapid descent while en route between Maputo and Luanda and crashed in Namibia. Preliminary investigation results indicate that the accident was intentional. The captain made control inputs that directed the plane to the ground, shortly after the first officer had left the flight deck. (ASN Accident Description)

8 March 2014 – 239 fatalities
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China went missing after all contact was lost about 40 minutes after takeoff. It is assumed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean. Experts have theorized that the accident may be the result of a deliberate action by one of the pilots, but the accident is still under investigation, also pending on finding the wreckage.

24 March 2015 – 150 fatalities
A Germanwings Airbus A320 crashed into a mountain while on a flight from Barcelona, Spain to Düsseldorf, Germany. Preliminary information from the chief Marseille prosecutor in France indicates that the captain was locked out of the flight deck and the copilot directed the airplane to a continuous descent towards mountainous terrain. (ASN Accident Description)

Time for action? Me thinks we are already overdue.

[Gabriel]

This accident is a copy-paste of this other one:

Minutes before the crash the co-pilot left the cockpit for the lavatory. The captain then manually changed the altitude preselector from 38,000 feet to an altitude of 592 feet. One the cockpit voice recorder sounds were heard of someone pounding on the cockpit door.

Guess which one is it? Why didn't that accident trigger the level of discussion (and possibly action) that the Germanwings is triggering?

We lost an opportunity to prevent Germanwings.

[Observer]

True.
The action (suicide) is not new.
The new scenario in this case is that the co-pilot was "not-certified"" from the medical point-of-view (leave note from doctor)

[EconomyClass]

Right or wrong. Lufthansa relies on a SELF-EVALUATION of state of mind of its pilots on the "honor system"? Gee, I hope nuclear power plant operators are screened a bit better than that. And is this a GLOBAL standard for those who will control planes and hold the fates of their passengers in their mortal hands? I mean, honestly, the human is always the weak link in the chain. I suppose they are (a)indispensible and (b) dangerous simultaneously. Once I worked in a hospital and by punching a wrong button, I took down a terminal network supporting all wards, even the ICU. That was a beginnger's goof (it was a temporary job). But let's say I'm bitter about something. What could a person in my position do if I REALLY wanted to cause chaos. I talked to a regular employee after the event. They said that, as important as computers are in hospitals, the medical staff will fall back on their professional knowledge to save lives when there is a computer outage. But when a plane goes into a dive towards mountains, I don't see the flexibility. My goof, at the extreme, might have cost a life or two. A diving plane ends the lives of scores of people. The standards should be sort of "stringent" in my book.

[Peter Kesternich]

Right or wrong. Lufthansa relies on a SELF-EVALUATION of state of mind of its pilots on the "honor system"? Gee, I hope nuclear power plant operators are screened a bit better than that. And is this a GLOBAL standard for those who will control planes and hold the fates of their passengers in their mortal hands? I mean, honestly, the human is always the weak link in the chain. I suppose they are (a)indispensible and (b) dangerous simultaneously. (...) The standards should be sort of "stringent" in my book.

Well - if there are humans involved, things can go wrong. Will always putting two people in the cockpit prevent a recurrence of 4U9525? For a while, probably. Until one of those gun-carrying pilots on the flightdecks of a US airliner decides to off his colleague before putting the plane into the ground... There will never be absolute safety. But I agree, it can be improved, when it comes to leaving a person alone on the flight deck.

[Gabriel]

True.
The action (suicide ) where the one pilot goes to the toilet, the other one locks himself in the cockpit and starts the suicide descent, and the one left out tries desperately to re-enter the cockpit and fails, is not new.

Fixed.
The background condition that led to the suicide might be different. The execution are copy-paste. And nothing was done on the execution side in the previous accident.

Maybe it was "just" an African airline... Now it's a German one.

Nonsense.

The policy of "never alone" in the cockpit dates from before the LAM murdercide. And the weakness of the current cockpit door in this scenario are known at least since then.

Nobody should be really surprised of this Germanwings event. It's just another instance of a known failure mode that was not addressed. It was just a matter of time, as it will be just a matter of time for the next one if it's not addressed.

Addressing it will not prevent a "new" modus operandi. But hopefully it will reduce its occurrence and give more time until it happens for the first time.

Once one modus operandi is established and proves successful, it's easy for others to copy if not addressed.

Let's render this modus operandi unfeasible and let's give the murdercidals hard work to try and figure out a new one. It will happen, but let's not give it served in a golden tray.

[Gabriel]

Right or wrong. Lufthansa relies on a SELF-EVALUATION of state of mind of its pilots on the "honor system"?

And what are the alternatives?

We can (and I am all for that) add recurrent psyco-screening to the current medical one, and it is done in some countries (at least it was done in Argentina).

But 1st psyco-screening is not 100% reliable. Nowhere even remotely close to that. And 2nd, but in between regular checks?

[Evan]

Fixed

SInce he is an ex-person, I guess that goes without saying.

I do realize Bild is a magazine with big pictures for small minds. I just thought since this was a direct interview they might be trusted. Probably naive of me.

Time for action? Me thinks we are already overdue.

And don't forget FedEx 705. There's some full-on crazy for you.

(BTW, 'methinks' is one word. Separating them just comes off as bad English.)

[Observer]

Right or wrong. Lufthansa relies on a SELF-EVALUATION of state of mind of its pilots on the "honor system"? Gee, I hope nuclear power plant operators are screened a bit better than that. And is this a GLOBAL standard for those who will control planes and hold the fates of their passengers in their mortal hands? I mean, honestly, the human is always the weak link in the chain. I suppose they are (a)indispensible and (b) dangerous simultaneously. Once I worked in a hospital and by punching a wrong button, I took down a terminal network supporting all wards, even the ICU. That was a beginnger's goof (it was a temporary job). But let's say I'm bitter about something. What could a person in my position do if I REALLY wanted to cause chaos. I talked to a regular employee after the event. They said that, as important as computers are in hospitals, the medical staff will fall back on their professional knowledge to save lives when there is a computer outage. But when a plane goes into a dive towards mountains, I don't see the flexibility. My goof, at the extreme, might have cost a life or two. A diving plane ends the lives of scores of people. The standards should be sort of "stringent" in my book.

I am not blaming Lufthansa, nor the doctor, neither the co-pilot. If the information we have is correct, they all played by the rules. I consider the co-pilot a victim just like the others onboard. He probably had a disease and cannot be blamed for that nor by the actions he took (hidding his medical condition, ripping the leave note, locking himself alone in the cockpit, altering flight to ground, etc). Even more, I can imagine the burden his family, friends and everyone directed involved in his life/work are carrying after loosing him without having the chance to intervene and help.
What I put for discussion is that: if everyone involved (the airline, the doctor, the co-pilot) played by the rules why a "temporary non-certified by medical conditions" FC member caused this tragedy? Certainly there are flaws in the control process of medical leaves in the current regulation. Should the industry take actions to improve this control?

[Peter Kesternich]

(...) What I put for discussion is that: if everyone involved (the airline, the doctor, the co-pilot) played by the rules why a "temporary non-certified by medical conditions" FC member caused this tragedy? Certainly there are flaws in the control process of medical leaves in the current regulation. Should the industry take actions to improve this control?

As I stated above, this won't guarantee safety either. Pilots who suspect that they have a career-ending illness would just stop seeing a doctor... and a small fraction of these might be inclined to chose going out in flames...