German Co-Pilot Commits Mass Murder

Posted on | March 26, 2015 | 62 Comments

The co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings jet locked his captain out of the cockpit before deliberately crashing into a mountain to ‘destroy the plane’, it was sensationally revealed today.
French prosecutor Brice Robin gave further chilling details of the final ten minutes in the cockpit before the Airbus A320 plunged into the French Alps killing 150 people.
Revealing data extracted from the black box voice recorder, he said the co-pilot — 28-year-old German Andreas Lubitz — locked his captain out after the senior officer left the cockpit.
At that point, Lubitz used the flight managing system to put the plane into a descent, something that can only be done manually — and deliberately.
He said: ‘The intention was to destroy the plane. Death was instant. The plane hit the mountain at 700kmh (430mph).
‘I don’t think that the passengers realised what was happening until the last moments because on the recording you only hear the screams in the final seconds’. . . .
Responding to revelations, Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said all pilots undergo annual medical checks, but not special psychiatric assessments beyond training.
He added: ‘He passed all medical exams, all checks. He was 100 per cent fit to fly without any restrictions.
‘I am not a lawyer. I am the CEO of a big company. If one person takes 149 people with him to death, it is not suicide.’
However, it emerged today that Lubitz had to stop his pilot training in 2008 because he was depressed and suffering ‘burnout’.
A schoolmate told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he had taken a break because of depression.
The woman said: ‘Apparently he had burnout, he was in depression.’

Breaking News: Crazy people are dangerous.

Interruptions during Lufthansa pilot training were common and trainees are required to provide an explanation for their absence, Spohr said. However, German law prevents Lufthansa from obtaining information on an employee’s medical history. The chief executive said only that Lubitz went on hiatus for a period of “a few months,” adding that he was later deemed fit to return to training and that he passed all subsequent physical and psychological tests.

You might think that this incident seven years ago — when Lubitz was 21 and “depression” interrupted his training — would have caused someone to question his fitness to be a commercial pilot. Oh, but that would be discrimination against the mentally ill, which is unacceptable. Misguided ideas about “human rights” thereby result in putting a murderous psychopath in the cockpit so he can kill 149 innocent people by flying into a mountain at 400 miles an hour.

“You only hear the screams in the final seconds.”

(Via Memeorandum.)

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Category: Crime

Comments

62 Responses to “German Co-Pilot Commits Mass Murder”

Evi L. Bloggerlady
March 26th, 2015 @ 11:58 am

Why?

I suspect a flying slot with Lufthansa is a very competitive spot to get. So if you suffer from depression, why didn’t the next candidate take over?
Quartermaster
March 26th, 2015 @ 12:17 pm

Lufthansa approaches flight training like the Military does in most countries. You apply, then if they like the app, they put you through the same sort of ringer the military does here. If you pass, then they give you pilot training. Ab initio just like the Luftwaffe, USAF, US Navy, Army, etc.
Yes it is highly competitive. When I applied for pilot training in the Army they looked at my military record, medical fitness, and then they put you in front of a board of officers and they dig into you and they make an assessment of your metal fitness as well. If I had any history of mental problems, or any red flags waving, I would have been rejected, and rightly so. After all, I would be trusted with a multi-million dollar aircraft and the lives of anyone in the back. They would have been fools to do anything else.
Obviously, Germany is run by fools these days. Depression is a good reason to reject someone as an airline pilot.
Dana
March 26th, 2015 @ 12:18 pm

Because no one was allowed to ask.
M. Thompson
March 26th, 2015 @ 12:18 pm

Sir, your reaction is just about right. There are times when medical, including psychological, history is important in employment. This is one.
Adobe_Walls
March 26th, 2015 @ 12:28 pm

Burnout and depression are not the same thing, and that was seven years ago.

From the linked article ”Earlier in the flight, Mr Robin said Lubitz’s responses were initially courteous, but became ‘curt’ when the captain began the mid-flight briefing on the planned landing of the plane.”
If this is revealing of the immediate motivation for his actions, one would think there’d be some indications in his background. If he had some sort of problem with ”authority” such as older more experienced supervisors making him follow procedures and protocols you’d think getting through training would have been difficult. He was apparently an avid glider pilot, which is pretty much a one man show once you’re in the air.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
March 26th, 2015 @ 12:38 pm

We only have a tiny bit of the information. But burn out through pilot training is still a bad sign. As QM notes above (and as a cursory viewing of “An Officer and a Gentleman” will show) washing people out of pilot/aviator training is a critical part of the training.

While airlines are operated from the passenger perspective mostly as low cost transportation, Ralph Cramden was suited (barely) to operate a bus–you would not want him operating a jet aircraft.
RS
March 26th, 2015 @ 12:52 pm

It’s very early to be attributing his behavior to a single episode of depression seven years ago for a few months, especially where the training was completed an there were no other incidents of any sort to raise eyebrows. There a lot of people who have suffered single episodes of depression as a result of bereavement, illness or whatever who get over it and move on. They don’t kill themselves or 150 other people. We shouldn’t be too hasty to tar such people of the brush of one lunatic.

And contra QM above, the Germans and Lufthansa are not stupid. They would not risk their reputation by knowingly putting someone who’s unstable in the cockpit. The regimentation required for a mere private pilot’s license in Germany puts the U.S. to shame.
CrustyB
March 26th, 2015 @ 12:56 pm

Shades of the Bud Holland B52 crash in ’94.

https://youtu.be/r2OIxo00UeM
texlovera
March 26th, 2015 @ 1:07 pm

I’m reserving judgment of Lufthansa and/or whoever let this guy fly a passenger jet. Hopefully some additional information comes out.

I think it’s fairly obvious this guy intentionally crashed the plane. He was obviously nuts. It’s not apparent to me whether this was suicide with collateral homicide, or vice versa.

It’s also not apparent to me when, exactly, this guy went off the rails.

And sometimes, there is no reasonably recognizable warning sign that a guy has gone ’round the bend…
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March 26th, 2015 @ 1:21 pm

[…] German Co-Pilot Commits Mass Murder […]
Evi L. Bloggerlady
March 26th, 2015 @ 1:34 pm

The regimentation for getting an automobile driver’s license in Germany is pretty amazing.

I agree we do not have enough information yet.
Adobe_Walls
March 26th, 2015 @ 1:41 pm

Yeah, I always have trouble with those types of evaluations. Apparently when asked ‘do you ”suffer” from dizzy spells’, responding ‘no I find them relaxing’ is incorrect.
Adobe_Walls
March 26th, 2015 @ 2:00 pm

Flying a plane with 149 other people on board, into a mountain side, is an awful long distance around the bend to make in ten minutes or so.
texlovera
March 26th, 2015 @ 2:04 pm

Oh, I’m definitely. not suggesting that.

But if he’d been nuts/homicidal for a month, a year, 10 years? Some people are extremely good at masking their insanity/anger…
Evi L. Bloggerlady
March 26th, 2015 @ 2:06 pm

Yeah, but that was purely an accident/pilot error event wasn’t it?
Dana
March 26th, 2015 @ 2:12 pm

Then how would you ever know?
Adobe_Walls
March 26th, 2015 @ 2:37 pm

He was definitely cool as a cucumber and if he was trying to make a statement he let the act itself do the talking. His breathing was reported to be regular and he said nothing which to my mind tends toward precluding terrorism. Unless he knew the pilot made a habit of going to the head shortly after takeoff or he brought the means to subdue him, this appears unplanned.
AMartel
March 26th, 2015 @ 2:41 pm

Ban airplanes! (Much more deadly than guns.)
MrPaulRevere
March 26th, 2015 @ 2:42 pm

OT: Psycho ‘married’ lesbians starve and torture 10 year old boy in Kansas City: http://www.kshb.com/news/crime/women-charged-with-child-abuse-in-court-capa-says-we-should-all-look-for-signs-of-abuse
CrustyB
March 26th, 2015 @ 2:44 pm

The pilot was unstable and had a history of “hotdogging,” violating safety measures, that kind of thing. In other words, they should have know this would happen.
concern00
March 26th, 2015 @ 2:48 pm

So this raises the important question of whether a feminist should ever be permitted to pilot a commercial airliner.
Sort-Of-Mad Max
March 26th, 2015 @ 2:55 pm

Lufthansa would like you to look on the bright side; yeah, it was a bad move letting a depressive pilot a plane. On the other hand, the plane landed ahead of schedule.
ISH @ Mininerd
March 26th, 2015 @ 2:58 pm

Are we sure he wasn’t yelling “allahu akbar” as the plane entered it’s final descent? I know, I know, it’s terribly Islamophobic of me to even ask… But there is a long history of Islamists pulling this exact stunt and a shorter (but more odious) history of the European press white-washing Islamic identifification of criminals it reports on. First with euphemisms like “Asian youths,” but now just stone silence.
RS
March 26th, 2015 @ 3:03 pm

Not that names mean that much these days, but “Andreas Lubitz” does not immediately conjure up visions of ISIS. He would have had to have been a deep plant to pull that off.
Adobe_Walls
March 26th, 2015 @ 3:05 pm

I wouldn’t think a B-52 would be the airplane of choice for hot dogging aerobatics.
Adobe_Walls
March 26th, 2015 @ 3:08 pm

According to the reporting he never said a word.
texlovera
March 26th, 2015 @ 3:28 pm

Well, that’s my point: there’s no “system” that will always reveal every crazy/homicidal nut before they act.
ISH @ Mininerd
March 26th, 2015 @ 4:32 pm

Neither does “John Lindh,” “Bryant Vinas,” “Mike Finton,” or “Carlos Almonte” sound like a typical Islamic name… And yet…

I’m not saying this was his motivation. I don’t think the suspicion is unreasonable however. I will await a full and complete investigation by the experts, I’m just a keyboard quarterback on this.
Quartermaster
March 26th, 2015 @ 5:01 pm

It isn’t. He got himself into a situation he may have been able to power out of had he been in a fighter. As it was, he got himself into a situation where adverse yaw combined with an accelerated stall finally got its pounds of flesh. Tragically, the navigator on the flight was on his last ride before retirement. Bud Holland, OTOH, got what he had coming to him.
Quartermaster
March 26th, 2015 @ 5:04 pm

I wasn’t saying Lufthansa was stupid. They are not allowed to get into a guy’s head to determine if he is mentally fit to fly. Germany has some stupid PC laws as well.

Germany is regimented in many ways we would not tolerate (I lived there 6 years and am aware of the mindset there). Some of their regimentation is just stupid, however. I’m of German descent, but I would not live there any longer than I did.
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March 26th, 2015 @ 5:56 pm

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RKae
March 26th, 2015 @ 6:10 pm

And we’ll never know if he was on some hot, new prescription; something under a catchy, snappy name with an “X” in it… which will quietly disappear from the market… to be replaced by another “godsend” of a wonder drug.

That stuff’s just “boring” to the media. Better to say, “he suffered from depression” and leave it at that.
Aussie54
March 26th, 2015 @ 6:12 pm

we do not know that he was nuts.
I have a feeling that this has something to do with Islam. Time will tell.
Aussie54
March 26th, 2015 @ 6:14 pm

yet that does not preclude a conversion that was kept under wraps.
trangbang68
March 26th, 2015 @ 9:07 pm

How about he was just an evil, narcissistic monster? Why does every act of evil require a diagnosis from the shrinkocracy?
theoldsargesays
March 26th, 2015 @ 10:21 pm

That’s a ridiculous over reaction.
Obviously, we simply need to limit the number of passengers per flight to say….10 people?
theoldsargesays
March 26th, 2015 @ 10:22 pm

Dude
theoldsargesays
March 26th, 2015 @ 10:25 pm

Evil narcissistic monsters don’t just “show up” all of a sudden as this fellow seems to have done.
Matthew T. Mason
March 26th, 2015 @ 11:16 pm

Seems to me the guy wanted to kill himself but wasn’t satisfied with just killing himself. Which makes him a monster in my book.
Daniel Freeman
March 27th, 2015 @ 5:10 am

Welcome to the “cruel jest” club! You may regret what you said the next day, so please try to keep your funny/horrible ratio at a safe cruising altitude.
Steve Skubinna
March 27th, 2015 @ 5:25 am

I have the same kind of misunderstandings too. A friend asked me for “something for a headache,” and then unaccountably became very angry when I hit him on the temple.
Steve Skubinna
March 27th, 2015 @ 5:27 am

According to people like Shannon Watts, if they had background checks before issuing a pilot’s license this kind of thing would never happen.
Steve Skubinna
March 27th, 2015 @ 5:28 am

You’re absolutely right, Sarge! These military style high capacity aircraft are designed for one thing only, and that’s to kill as many people as possible. There’s no valid reason any civilian needs an airplane that carries more than ten people.
Steve Skubinna
March 27th, 2015 @ 5:33 am

By “evil, narcissistic monster,” do you mean a white male Republican? I think that’s the current media term of art now, isn’t it? Because if not, well then, such a creature does not exist.

He probably just wanted a good job or something. Or maybe some racist didn’t give a trigger warning before flashing jazz hands.
texlovera
March 27th, 2015 @ 7:33 am

Well, jihadis are all nuts in my book. To me if you are disgustingly evil, you are nuts. Maybe not “insane”, but still nuts.
Gunnutmegger
March 27th, 2015 @ 8:21 am

Gateway Pundit is saying the co-pilot’s facebook page indicates he is a recent convert to islam

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/03/breaking-german-news-germanwings-airbus-co-pilot-was-muslim-convert/?PageSpeed=noscript
ISH @ Mininerd
March 27th, 2015 @ 10:35 am

He’s a monster, there can be no disputing that. I do find it useful to understand the motivations of monsters —not out of a social justice warrior’s need to forgive, justify, or coddle, mind you. Oh no, I want to know why they have done what they have done so I can avoid or protect myself from such creatures in the future.

If you go hiking in grizzly country, it behooves the hiker to know what would motivate a grizzly to attack. If you live in an habitat with venomous snakes, it’s prudent to know where they prefer to dwell, in order to avoid them.

One cannot ever ignore the possibility of a single individual who just up and snaps. Such things do happen… But very very very rarely. Odds of any one of us encounting hostile terrorists are basically equivalent to lightning strikes, but we still don’t go and stand on golf course fairways when it’s raining, do we?
ericjg623
March 27th, 2015 @ 2:21 pm

As a licensed pilot, I can say that it is not uncommon for pilots to lie to doctors. For example, if asked “Have you ever been depressed?”, only a fool would answer “Yes”.
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March 27th, 2015 @ 2:35 pm

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Jeanette Victoria
March 27th, 2015 @ 3:16 pm

Muslim Convert
Co-Pilot Andreas Günter Lubitz Committed Jihad By DELIBERATELY Slamming
The Plane Into The Mountain! Murdering All On Board

http://stthomasaquinasversusnasa.blogspot.com/2015/03/muslim-convert-co-pilot-andreas-gunter.html