Discussion for article #234757
Looks like he just snapped. Reports say during the last exchanges between the pilot and him before the pilot went to the rest room, the guy was pretty abrupt and strange.
Obviously there will be standards put in place to have doctors notify employers of current mental health issues, especially for sensitive jobs like this.
You know, I saw on CNN that they were expecting their to be an uproar about placing tougher psychological testing standards on pilots now because of this, and I had to wonderâŚ
Where it the uproar over demanding psychological testing on police officers??
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Agreed, although itâs more about just actually following guidelines in place instead of just filling a position without checking the past.
But on this pilot, he had passed the tests previously, you canât test once a week. The system in that case has to have the mental health professional contact the employer.
I have heard that U.S. carriers already operate under regulations that deter the cockpit lockout scenario. They canât leave one person alone in the cockpit at any time during flight. Not sure I understand why, but Lufthansa had balked at this regulation. Now they have been forced to admit that it is necessary. Seems like some pretty basic human engineering here, even if weâre just considering how to handle acute medical events and the like.
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A much more comprehensive account in The Guardian, including information from the German newspaper, Bild, which if true, is very disturbing:
You are making some rather large assumptions. We donât know enough to conclude that he âsnapped.â Individuals who hold physical power or responsibility over others (pilots, police officers, etc.) should receive regular scrutiny for medical and mental health issues. However, it is not so simple as requiring doctors to notify employers of their patientsâ medical conditions. What about doctor/patient confidentiality? Fewer people would seek mental health treatment if they knew that would be automatically reported. The situation is not quite so simple as you are inclined to make it.
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As a pilot myself, I wanted to comment on this because IMO the article is overstating the relevance of the co-pilotâs FAA medical certificate:
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration had issued Lubitz a third-class medical certificate. In order to obtain such a certificate, a pilot must be cleared of psychological problems including psychosis, bipolar disorder and personality disorder âthat is severe enough to have repeatedly manifested itself by overt acts.â
The certificate also means that he wasnât found to be suffering from another mental health condition that âmakes the person unable to safely perform the duties or exercise the privilegesâ of a pilotâs license.
FAA medical certificates come in First, Second, and Third classes, and in order to fly as an Air Transport Pilot you must have a First Class certificate. Third Class certs are for non-commercial private pilots, like myself. If he had only a Third Class certificate, then he probably got it so he could rent private planes while out here on vacation or something. He would not have been able to fly as an ATP in the US.
The process for getting a Third Class certificate is as follows:
- Fill out the form, self-certifying that you have none of the listed physical or mental afflictions.
- Undergo a routine physical by a licensed FAA medical examiner (check BP, eyes, ears, reflexes, palpate organs, used to be a prostate exam, but not in the last several years thankfully)
There is no mental evaluation required for a Third Class certificate. It is all self-certification. So to say that the certificate âmeans that he wasnât found to be suffering fromâŚâ anything is overstating the case. It means that he didnât report any mental health issues and, at least, the MD who did the physical didnât notice obvious behavioral problems while hitting his knee with a reflex hammer.
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Yeah Iâm not sure why the news is making a big deal out of the guy hiding his illness. Most people who are suffering from depression , anxiety or other mental illness do hide it. Could be how they cope or maybe they donât think they have a problem. Or maybe itâs because of the stigma associated with it.
I think this assists the airline if they choose to mount a defense against the lawsuits that are sure to come but there is nothing out of the ordinary about not advertising mental problems.
I hear that same argument from the Gun Rights people, and Iâm not buying it. If a person piloting a commercial jet with 100 plus people on board, we need to know his mental AND physical health. And the airline canât just have weekly tests, that makes no sense. There are certain conditions related to dangerous work that should not be hidden from employers in my opinion since itâs a public safety issue. As soon as he got this diagnosis, his gun rights should be suspended too.
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Certainly that report is disturbing if true. If he had such difficulties during training, itâs hard to justify putting him in a commercial jet even if he eventually met the requirements. At a minimum, this should have implied continued very close monitoring, since severe depression is not an illness that can be definitively cured.
Also, just ranting about an interview I saw with a former NTSB board member. Ugh. This woman was asked if the descent profile of the plane (steep, but straight) was consistent with a loss of power.
She answered ânoâ and said that if the engines lost power the plane would spiral into a crash. I yelled at my TV after that. A former NTSB official has no frickinâ clue, apparently, about how airplanes fly, or how they behave in adverse situations. Maybe thatâs why sheâs âformerâ and not âcurrent.â
The answer is a qualified âyesâ - if a plane is configured for level flight at, say, 400 knots, and you retard the throttles or otherwise lose engine power the plane will just start descending at a steep enough angle to maintain 400 knots. It will not stall or spin or go vertical without some sort of control input.
With their permission, I do this trick with new passengers when weâre out flying. They often have a fear of losing power, so I show them what happens by climbing to a safe altitude, leveling off, and then shutting the engine down to idle. AndâŚnothing much exciting happens. The plane still flies straight, it just starts to descend at the same airspeed we were flying at before.
Iâm sure itâs much more exciting in an A320, and in fact the groundspeed recorded while the airliner was descending indicated a descent while still under power, but to have a former âexpertâ on transportation accidents say that a plane would spiral into the ground if it lost its engines was really surprising.
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It hurts like hell when something like this happens, but we canât take all the risk out of life. No doubt, the captain couldnât get back inside cockpit because the door was reinforced as a result of 9-11. When you adjust for one possible bad occurrence, the possibility of another bad occurrence opens up.
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Agreed, but in this specific case he got a ânot fit to workâ order. To me that should be tied into the airlines, thatâs a HUGE deal for a pilot, being declared âunfit for workâ. Oh, I am saying for the future, in no way am I saying anyone was at fault hereâŚexcept the co-pilot.
Yes, some can fool screenerâs, but most canât. This guy didnât, though you can bet he tried. Thatâs why he hid that he had been declared unfit to work.
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I think the policy here is that when one person leaves the cockpit, another goes in so there are always two people in there. A pilot could have a heart attack or just pass out, best to always have two people in there. And this kind of reinforces that. And now that appears to be standard procedure being adopted globally.
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If thatâs the lady Iâve seen doing interviews on MSNBC the last couple of days then I understand your frustration. I canât believe she was a board member of the NTSB. I used to do work at the NTSB office in Dallas and every investigator I met gave me the impression they were top notch professionals who were experts in their fields.
Every other answer with the retired NTSB board member lady has been âI donât knowâ, âthatâs a good questionâ or âIâm not sure.â Iâm thinking she should aniticipate the questions and do some research or recommend someone who could answer some questions.
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We are still grasping at straws trying to understand why such a nice young man would commit murder/suicide on such a scale. Why donât we find some facts before we speculate further.
She actually said that. How does somebody get on the NTSB board and be that clueless. Training for loss of power is part of every pilotâs basic education. The first thing I learned when my instructor pulled back on the throttle is the airplane didnât fall out of the sky.
Well, cops donât kill people intention⌠oh, wait.
@MrComments - was his doctor required to notify his employer? If not, thereâs really nothing anyone can do. Perhaps thatâs one area of health privacy that could be addressed - if your job requires some level of mental or physical fitness and you donât meet the minimums, you, your doctor, and your employer have to work it out without endangering co-workers and customers.
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