Dear pilots, please don’t crash my flight because you got dumped

The Herald reports:

Two different pictures of Andreas Lubitz emerged yesterday.

First there was the Lubitz who never appeared anything but thrilled to have landed a pilot’s job with Germanwings, according to those who helped him learn to fly as a teenager in Montabaur, a town in the forested hills of western Germany.

Then there’s the troubled man who suffered from depression and was struggling to come to terms with a relationship break-up.

French prosecutors yesterday said Lubitz, the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525, “intentionally” crashed the jet into a mountain on Tuesday in the French Alps.

I’d really much rather that pilots didn’t deal with breakups by crashing fully laden planes into mountains.

But German newspaper Bild reported that Lubitz took a break from flight training and received psychiatric treatment for a year and a half. He was diagnosed with a “major depressive episode”. There were also reports he was recommended to be examined by a doctor before flying but passed all his psychological assessments and was later considered fit to fly.

Well that was a pretty bad call.

Lubitz had continued to receive mental health support up until this week’s crash, the Daily Mail reported.

You don’t want to say pilots in counselling should not fly, as it may then discourage them from counselling. But there does need to be a review of policies in this area.

So very sad for families and friends of all the dead. Some plane crashes are unavoidable accidents. This one was not. It was murder.