On the 24th of March 2015 at around 10:41am
Germanwings flight 9525 crashed in the French Alps resulting in the death of
every single person on board. An investigation revealed that the crash
was caused deliberatel, but not by sabotage or a terrorist attack. In the
case of the Germanwings disaster the crash was caused by the co-pilot Andreas
Lubitz, who purposefully and calculatedly flew the plane into the side of a
mountain.
Germanwings was a popular low-cost carrier owned by Lufthansa which
operated multiple routes within Europe. Germanwings flight 9525 took off from
runway 07R at Barcelona El Prat Airport at 10:01am local time, approximately
half an hour late. It was bound for Düsseldorf Airport where it was
scheduled to touch down at 11:39am local time. On board were 144 passengers,
two pilots, and four members of cabin crew who altogether represented more
than 18 different countries ranging from Japan to the Netherlands. After an
uneventful takeoff the pilots on board confirmed instructions from Air Traffic
Control at 10:30am. At 10:31am the aircraft left its assigned cruising
altitude of 11,600 meters (or 38,000 foot) and without approval began to
descend rapidly. Air traffic controllers swiftly declared that the aircraft was
in distress after finding themselves unable to contact it. The plane's descent
lasted just 10 minutes. During this time a French military Mirage jet was
scrambled from the Orange-Caritat air base to intercept the aircraft. Before it
could do so, however, the aircraft had descended to 1880 metres (or 6,175
foot) and subsequently crashed in a remote part of the Alps northwest of
Nice killing everybody on board. At the time it was unknown what exactly had
happened on board, but a subsequent investigation revealed the entire
chilling narrative. The flight's pilot in command was 34 year-old captain Patrick
Sondenheimer, with 27-year-old Andreas Lubitz as co-pilot. Cockpit voice
recordings revealed that Lubitz was initially polite to Captain Sondenheimer
during takeoff but became somewhat short-tempered when the captain began
the mid-flight briefing on the planned landing. When the captain stepped out of
the cockpit to use the toilet Lubitz locked the cockpit door and then
disabled the lock. Captain Sondenheimer requested re-entry using the intercom. He
knocked on the door with increasing urgency but received no response.
Attempts were made by the captain and the cabin crew to break down the door,
but like all cockpit doors in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks
it had been reinforced to prevent intrusion. As Lubitz steered the plane
steadily towards the ground the cockpit voice recorder captured the frantic
attempts to break down the door, constant calls from Air Traffic Control, and
Lubitz's own steady breathing. He made no other sound. He did not speak a word.
In the final moments before impact the voice recorder captured only the final
screams of the passengers as they realized what was about to happen.
While the facts of the matter were clear enough one question remained: why? Why had
Lubitz done this? A search of his home and a thorough psychological profile
provided some answers. Lubitz had recently been declared unfit for work by
a doctor but had not revealed this information to his employer. He was also
taking prescription medication which he had not disclosed to his employer and
suffering from a psychosomatic illness - that is an illness which manifests with
a range of symptoms but which cannot be traced to any particular cause. In
Lubitz's case the main symptom was a powerful and unfounded fear that he was
going blind. Lubitz consulted more than 40 doctors
about this but none were able to uncover a problem with his vision or a reason
for his extreme fear of the same. Terrified that his encroaching blindness
would cost him his pilot's license Lubitz became suicidal. The investigation
determined that his situation was worsened by the fact that there was no
specific insurance for pilots covering the risks of loss of income in case of
unfitness to fly. To be declared unfit to fly would have ruined him financially.
Worse still, at the time, there was a lack of clear guidance in Germany as to when
a pilot had to disclose a medical condition and when a pilot's
confidentiality should be respected. This meant there was little pressure for
Lubitz to disclose his medical issues and no way for his employer to find out
about them unless he did disclose them.
Lubitz, it emerged, had run searches on a tablet computer for "ways to commit
suicide" and "the security of cockpit cabin doors".
Chillingly he had also practiced the sequence of commands he would use to
crash the plane whilst alone in the cockpit on the outbound flight he had
worked just before Germanwings 9525.
Lubitz was thoroughly prepared. Once he began
his suicide attempt nothing could sway him from his plan, and
nothing could save the 149 people he took with him to the grave. In the
immediate aftermath the parent airline of Germanwings, Lufthansa, canceled a
number of flights solely because so many of their pilots were grief-stricken or
too distressed to fly. They retired the flight number 9525
permanently and brought into force regulations to require that two pilots
were present in the cockpit at all times during all flights. Many other countries
brought in similar legislation to echo this. While these changes make an exact
repeat of the Germanwings crash unlikely, the incident nonetheless made many people
painfully aware of how precarious flight can be. On board a plane the lives of
hundreds are placed in the hands of just one or two individuals - strangers, at
least as far as the passengers are concerned, but strangers who we
implicitly trust... never knowing what might really be happening inside their
heads.