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They say that flying is the safest way to travel,
and 2020 aside that's actually largely true.
Traveling by air is superior by far
to more common means like driving when it comes to safety.
But that doesn't stop us
from conjuring up the worst case scenario in our heads.
Be it a hijacking or a malfunction.
Those are probably the first two things to come to mind
for anyone anxious about flying,
but another thing to consider is the amount of trust
that you're putting into the pilots themselves.
Surely they're beyond qualified to do their jobs
and wouldn't accidentally crash,
but what if you take that a step further?
Would a pilot ever intentionally crash their own plane?
The overwhelming answer of course is no.
It's extremely rare, but it has happened.
And today we're here to talk
about one such story from 2015.
The intentional crashing of Germanwings Flight 9525.
(gentle music)
On March 24th of 2015,
the world was left in shock after eight Germanwings plane
carrying 144 passengers,
along with six crew members and two pilots
collided with the French Alps.
What was once a commercial aircraft
was now a shattered mess of scrap metal and debris.
- Hello and welcome to BBC World News.
We have breaking news at this hour
and a plane is reported to have gone down
over the Southern French Alps.
It's operated by Germanwings, an A320 Airbus.
Germanwings is the low-cost subsidiary
of the German national carrier, Lufthansa.
- [Woman] To anyone watching at the time,
there was no answer as to why this happened.
Given that we're talking about the Alps,
could the pilot have accidentally flown
into them and due to poor visibility?
Was this a possible hijacking?
The only way to know for sure was to recover
what's known as a black box.
A recording device specifically made
for instances just like this one.
Luckily it took no time at all for investigators to find it.
But what they uncovered once they played the tapes back,
revealed a disturbing minute by minute reality
of what had taken place that day.
9:00 a.m. Flight 9525 would lift off from Barcelona, Spain.
It's destination being Dusseldorf, Germany.
Manning the plane that day where two German men.
The pilot in command 34 year old, Patrick Sondenheimer
and co-pilot 27 year old, Andreas Lubitz.
By 09:02, autopilot had been engaged
and with a steady altitude climb in motion,
all seemed to be going as planned.
10 minutes later at 9:12 a.m you hear the sound of a buzzer,
the one that gets pressed when requesting access
to the cockpit.
It's a flight attendant.
They stay and chat for a few minutes before leaving.
Following this, the two men that continued chatting
and again, all is going according to plan.
09:30 is when things change.
Sondenheimer gets up to use the bathroom
leaving Lubitz in charge and alone in the cockpit.
It's then that air traffic control
tries to contact the plane, per routine,
but they get no response.
At 09:34, the cockpit buzzer goes off once again.
It's Sondenheimer trying to get back inside.
Air traffic control tries yet again to get ahold
of Flight 9525 but to no avail.
It's hard to picture what anyone thought
was actually going on in this moment.
Maybe Lubitz had somehow passed out
or had a medical emergency.
Two parties were witnessing this simultaneously
and while Sondenheimer was undoubtedly concerned,
what air traffic control noticed was downright alarming.
Unbeknownst to the captain, crew and passengers at the time,
the plane had started a descent.
Its altitude was reprogrammed from 38,000 feet
all the way to just 100.
Meanwhile, the captain tried again.
He knocked and knocked now verbally asking
to be let back inside.
By this point it was 09:39.
And this is when Sondenheimer began to panic.
The recordings captured several banging noises,
clearly the captain's attempt to either knock down the door,
or get Lubitz to open up.
And then the one sound,
no one on a plane ever wants to hear.
(siren wails)
- [Voiceover] Terrain, terrain.
Pull up, Pull up.
(siren wails)
Terrain, terrain.
- [Woman] The plane sensors indicated
that it was heading straight for the Alps.
The warning continued on repeat
until the recording abruptly ended.
In the background, the sound of Sondenheimer
begging to be let back in,
along with passengers screaming, then nothing.
At 09:41, the recording ends.
(gentle music)
It was now undeniable that co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz
had intentionally locked Sondenheimer out
and crashed the plane.
But why?
As investigators look deeper into the man's history,
it became abundantly clear that what they had on their hands
was a murder-suicide.
It turns out that Lubitz had been suffering
from depression and psychosis behind closed doors
and while no one will ever truly know
exactly why he chose to do what he did,
investigators had some theories.
Lubitz had a passion for flying
and in 2008 he began attending pilot school in Germany,
eventually getting both his personal
and commercial licenses.
Along with these were his medical certificates
which deemed him suited to man a plane.
By December of 2014,
Lubitz had already been recruited to the Germanwings team.
But this is when things really began to spiral for him.
Lubitz began experiencing both vision and sleep problems
and the official investigation on the incident
states that, "Several eye specialists
"came to the conclusion
"that there was no organic reason for it."
This to many is something that possibly heavily contributed
to Lubitz deciding to do what he did.
The fear that his eyesight
would eventually be the death of his lifelong dream.
In the following months,
Lubitz was referred to psychiatrists
and prescribed medication,
something that had been routine for him
for the last several years at that point.
According to the BBC, leading up to the crash,
Lubitz had searched for things online
like ways to commit suicide
and the security of cockpit doors.
Now, before we talk about anything else,
it's important to know that having depression
doesn't turn you into a mass murderer.
This case is as rare as it is tragic.
But the real question is how no one
picked up on the warning signs
and how Lubitz was still permitted to fly
despite having psychiatric and vision problems.
Lubitz obviously hid his diagnoses from his employers,
but as it turns out,
his doctors didn't report his conditions to anyone either.
That might sound a bit absurd,
but keep in mind that patient confidentiality laws do exist.
And the final report on the incident
even brings up the dubious nature
of trying to balance a patient's right to privacy
with public safety,
at least when it comes specifically to German law.
In the end, self-reporting is really the only reliable way
to know what's going on with any employee.
And that applies to other industries and countries as well.
Simply put, short of an actual threat of violence,
there really wasn't much anyone could have done.
Again depression doesn't turn you into a mass murderer,
so in the end, as bleak as it sounds,
there really wasn't any way for anyone to have stopped this.
(suspenseful gentle music)
The victims aboard plane that day
came from all ages and backgrounds.
Infants all the way to grandparents.
Among them were 16 German students heading home
from an exchange program in Spain
and citizens of the UK, Australia, the US, Iran,
Colombia, Argentina, Israel, Mexico, Belgium and Japan
were also killed that day.
In response to the tragedy,
Germanwings, along with several others
decided to adopt the so-called rule of two.
Meaning that two people must be present
in the cockpit at all times.
If someone has to leave for any reason,
then an authorized member of the crew
must now take their place.
As stated at the start of this video,
suicide by pilot is extremely rare
and even more so if you only count commercial flights.
Only a handful of similar stories like this exist
in the entire history of the business.
Still what happened to the passengers and crew
of Flight 9525, was undeniably tragic.
And while nothing is ever truly set in stone,
we can only hope that nothing like this happens ever again,
and that history chooses not to repeat itself.
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