A French prosecutor has issued a statement that the co-pilot of Germanwings 9525, Andreas Lubitz, 28, locked out the pilot of the plane and then intentionally crashed the plane in the French Alps. The conclusion adds a new horrific detail to an already horrific crash. It was not an accident according to a review of the record from the black box found at the crash site.
The cockpit voice recorder revealed the pilot politely knocking to be allowed back into the cockpit and then frantically banging on the door as Lubitz directed the plane into the ground. Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said that Lubitz “wanted to destroy this plane.” He killed 150 passengers and crew, who can be heard in the background screaming in terror. New reports indicate that there may have been issues in the past with regard to depression.
Germanwings, a low-budget carrier operated by Lufthansa, will likely face litigation over the crash and this adds a new issue. Companies will often offer a “rogue employee” defense of an employee acting outside the scope of their employment or clearly against the rules and wishes of the employer. This would clearly appear to fit since this is a senseless criminal act. However, there will remain the question of whether the airline had any indication or should have uncovered the type of mental imbalance that would lead to such an suicidal and murderous act.
Source: WSJ
Pilot unions have fought hard not to have cameras in cockpits. This will end that nonsense. And, I see po jumped up and down w/ joy on this. Pretty desperate and a bit depraved. “Nanna nanna boo boo, he wasn’t Muslim, ha ha ha.”
My father, who was in the Air Force, bet me $10 that Lubitz will turn out to be a gay guy who was going through a personal crisis like whats-its-name Manning. Sooo, I think the guy will just turn out to be a run-of-the-mill nutbar psychopathic narcissist. Time will tell.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter.
po – I said CAIR had an office in the White House which it does. Do you have a problem with that?
“But are those any reasons to disagree with them?”
The leftist’s favorite debate tactics are to:
(a) mock or deride the speaker personally
(b) call them a “hater” or “whatever-phobe”
(c) shout them down.
Choose one logical fallacy, rinse, repeat.
” all just speculation right now”
Indeed.
I wondered about the speed at which conclusions were drawn from the initial reviews of the the black box recordings.
Unusual.
“Inappropriate touching?” Really? What has Po been smoking today? And, who “cairs” about that, anyway? This post is about the cause of a tragic plane crash, which is all just speculation right now.
I agree that we (and Lufthansa and the media) should wait until all the facts are out before stating with certainty that the co-pilot deliberately crashed the plain. Although how we can verify a medical emergency without a body is a puzzle. Lufthansa has declared it was deliberate, and I cannot imagine they would make such a statement unless they were absolutely certain. But I want to know WHY they feel it is certain. What a frightening proposition. If any good comes out of this, I hope that airlines around the globe take a closer look at their own protocols and make any changes necessary to protect themselves from a similar tragedy, whether deliberate or not.
Po – if people would automatically suspect terrorism if a Muslim pilot deliberately crashes a plane, it is because we were all so deeply affected by 9/11, and all the terrorist acts that have happened since then. Terrorism has been effective in that we now associate such events with radical Muslim extremists. Of course that is not the only source of terrorism – there are also separatists who engage in terrorism, among others. And there was the Irish IRA and all the mini wars. Anyone with an Irish accent at a bombing during those times would probably also face increased scrutiny.
Personally, I would not assume a Muslim pilot was a terrorist unless he shouted “Allahu akbar!” Otherwise, I would have no idea if he had a medical emergency. This copilot allegedly said nothing while he was in there alone, and I have heard nothing about either his ethnicity, religion, or contacts.
But the international view on terrorism has been affected by the events since 9/11. Case in point, on one of my father’s many trips to the ME, he flew next to a Muslim woman who started hyperventilating and frantically praying on the plane because she had never flown before, and was having a panic attack. He engaged her in conversation and just kept her talking throughout the entire flight to keep her calm. But the time they landed, she was able to remark on how green it was from the window view. Nowadays, if a Muslim passenger starts worrying that they’re all going to die, all the passengers would probably freak out. That is because terrorism has been very effective at TERRORIZING the entire world in the name of Muslim extremism.
In fact, if a passenger on a plane shouted “Allahu akbar”, I assume that Muslim passengers would be rushing to restrain him along with everyone else!
So focus your ire on the terrorists traumatizing the entire world, not at the people sincerely affected so deeply by such violence.
One might call it speculation, but Flight 370 and this German crash were the result of pilot mental illness. The primary aspect of this case is that DISTURBED individuals are in cockpits globally.
A parallel consideration is that airlines and governmental agencies obfuscate, cover-up and perpetuate false explanations. As in the cover-up of the very shot -down Flight 870, which occurred shortly before the re-election of Bill Clinton as Benghazi occurred shortly before Obama’s re-election, the truth is buried and hidden in perpetuity – by the government no less.
Abuse of power against the people is what motivated Madison to produce the Bill of Rights. There’s trouble in River City. Yet again, freedom is thwarted. The freedom of the facts and the truth are suppressed.
Surreptitious machinations occur to produce politically desirable results, beginning with something as simple as precluding the embarrassment of “leaders” and extending to the re-election of incompetent and nefarious politicians, “community organizers,” for example, and the most “transparent” administrations in history.
@Darren “capital murder not suicide”
If indeed this turns out to have been a suicide, it may not be unlike those murders committed by psychotically depressed women who kill their own children.
As randyjet noted above, much remains unseen.
Absent a suicide note or manifesto surfacing, I suspect the final conclusion is months away.
randy – They were talking on the radio this morning about the procedure you mentioned: when the pilot or co pilot is out of the cockpit, another member of the flight crew sits there until he returns, and the door is not locked until he or she is back.
Is that industrywide in the US, or specific to certain airlines? If the pilot IS locked out, does he have any means to open the door?
Is there some kind of uptick in deliberate crashes caused by the pilots, or are we just hearing about it more because of the media? Because what are we supposed to do to protect ourselves from the crew? They already undergo rigorous medical screening. Does that include psychological? Is there any kind of monitoring to determine if they are going sideways?
I feel so heartbroken for what those poor people endured as the plane plummeted. Just no words.
Karen S As you have undoubtedly seen, the second crew member in the cockpit is SOP on US airlines. In my previous post, I questioned the snap judgment made by a LAWYER about the cause of the accident. That any person could or would take this as good judgment is beyond rational thought. He might be correct, but until we know more from the FDR, it is just SPECULATION from an unqualified source. According to what I read, there is another way to gain entry to the cockpit by using a keypad. One has to wonder if the captain could remember the code or if it is set by him prior to flight. We did not have any such system at my airline. There were other ways for us too.
Unfortunately, there is nor will there ever be a foolproof, failsafe system since fools are plentiful and resourceful in ways to screw things up. I am just as leery of anything touted as fail safe, since in my long experience with technology fail safe only means that it WILL FAIL. Usually with worse consequences since it was never thought it would fail. Engineers are not GOD.
Down by Pilot T-error
When I pilot a plan, God is my Co Pilot. Dog is God spelled backwards. Dog was not the Co Pilot when the plane crashed. If the airlines would put a Dog on every plane in every cockpit this would not happen. Charles Lindbergh had it right.
po
Your strange and inappropriate attacks on Paul are even beneath your standards, and that is saying something.
Paul, pogo and davidm2575 are the thoughtful and intelligent commentators here. You could learn a great deal from them, but I realize that will probably not occur.
You have, unintentionally, proven a point which you would probably not do at a conscious level. Muslims make up such a large percentage of those who commit heinous acts of violence against innocents, that we have all been socialized, so to speak, to expect tragedies such as this to be related to Islamic terror. You have to ask yourself why? Why do we not automatically assume that the pilot was a nun? A Buddhist priest? An Orthodox rabbi?
Don’t blame the media: don’t blame the messenger. If people jump to the conclusion that this lunatic was Muslim, ask yourself why? Instead of insulting Paul, use some of your energy to get up in front of your mosque and preach against violence. Yeah, that will be the day.
The primary aspect of this case is that of capital murder not suicide.
My belief is that Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, will offer a generous settlement to the estates of the victims because in addition to any moral convictions it will not want to be seen as defending the homicidal action of its employee. Such defense could weigh greatly on whether prospective customers will elect to fly on other airliners and Lufthansa will anticipate this reaction.
david and DrSigne
The pilot left in the cockpit was not incapacitated.
The other pilot was INTENTIONALLY locked out of the cockpit. That is what is being reported. There is a way, allegedly, from within the cockpit, to override the outside pilot’s access to the cockpit. This is what is alleged to have happened.
po
“Bugsy, exactly my point. As of yet, no one knows the guy’s religion, but because his name is neither arabic nor suggests the islamic faith, our detectives assume from the start that it is not islamically linked. And because they assume the act unrelated to Islam, the headlines, analyses, talking heads won’t feature the word terrorism.”
I agree with your points po. This blog would be included in the headlines, unfortunately..
Do we call our illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and wars in several other countries a product of extreme state aggression or extreme Christianity?
Bugsy says:
So, po, do you know what his religion was? As far as I can tell, there has been no mention of his religious background. More specifically, when questioned, the authorities refused to answer the question, claiming that it was irrelevant.
—————————————–
Bugsy, exactly my point. As of yet, no one knows the guy’s religion, but because his name is neither arabic nor suggests the islamic faith, our detectives assume from the start that it is not islamically linked. And because they assume the act unrelated to Islam, the headlines, analyses, talking heads won’t feature the word terrorism.
Now imagine if the guy’s name was Muhamad…?
Or imagine a report comes out that the man was seen at a mosque once…What do you think the headlines would say?
David M: “Breathing is heard up until the crash, so nobody was incapacitated.”
Irrespective of whether the co-pilot intentionally crashed the plane or not, “hearing him breathing” is not a sign of his not being incapacitated. One can still breathe while having angina, a heart attack, or a seizure. So that’s not a valid argument for intention.
DrSigne, I did not hear the audio myself, but those who heard it interpret what they heard as indicative that he was not incapacitated.
The problem here was that the pilot could not get back into the cockpit fast enough to stop the crash.
davidm2575
I have heard that the US has a requirement that a flight attendant be present when one of the pilots has left the cockpit. This was, I assume, to have someone in case the pilot blacked out or had a heart attack that could immediately summon for help. In this scenario, what could a flight attendant, or a waitress in the sky, have done to prevent this lunatic from going into the mountains? A fight attendant does not have sufficient training to override his maneuvers. Perhaps a flight attendant could’ve opened the cockpit door for the other pilot, who was, by all accounts, purposely locked out of the cockpit, but that is about it.
How difficult would it be to extend all cockpits to accommodate a tiny, and I do mean tiny, restroom within the cockpit? Yes, the airlines may have to forgo a few of its precious seats for passengers, but there would never again be an instance of leaving the cockpit with only pilot one at the helm.
Hey, guess who is here… our favorite Islamophobe…welcome Pogo.