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
“Darren is the mascot for the think tank, simple, looks innocent, but is chiefly responsible for the direction this site is spiraling down to. You have to understand people with three incomes and possibly benefits from another country.”
That’s ridiculous. Darren only intervenes when the fighting gets egregious, and then he deletes comments from all sides. Do not blame Darren for the incivility on this blog, or attack him, which is terribly ironic, by the way.
And who has 3 incomes and a revenue stream from another country? Based on what?
This is Professor Turley’s blog, and his civility rules indicate the type of venue that he, the owner, would like this to be. Anyone who disagrees is free to start their very own blog just the way they like.
Karen S
With you on the Comment regarding Darren Smith – our Nightime Shaman and JT’s Blog
David – what I think will be telling is if the Black Box indicates the switch was turned to Lock again during the descent. Some sort of catastrophic system failure could keep the door locked and crash the plain, but even if the co-pilot was so frightened as to be unable to speak, he would not have “normal” breathing.
I just want them to complete the entire investigation before coming to a conclusion, because if they’re wrong, that’s a terrible thing to do to the families. And I agree with Randy that it is a mistake to give the plane ultimate control, because technology can fail. Before they say the co-pilot did it in purpose, they should have exhausted the evidence, and by then I would want his background thoroughly investigated.
If he did do it, that’s really scary.
http://uomatters.com/page/3 Campus cop shit-cans First Amendment
I guess we are going to read that this was workplace violence.
German news reports state that Lubitz, during his unexplained break from training, converted to Islam. A radical mosque, located in Bremen, where he spent much of his time, is being investigated. Is this why, when questioned, the authorities stated that his religion is irrelevant? Once they said that, it was painfully obvious that it was not irrelevant.
Prosecutor: Co-pilot on doomed flight hid psychological treatments
“Ralf Herrenbrück, a senior prosecutor in Düsseldorf, said it appears Lubitz had “existing illness and medical treatment” and that had tried to conceal them from the airline and colleagues.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/report-co-pilot-on-doomed-flight-had-psychological-treatments-in-past/2015/03/27/b1818c48-d40b-11e4-8b1e-274d670aa9c9_story.html?wpisrc=al_alert
William Berry says
“The vile bigotry and racism on these threads is so pervasive “”
and then
“You could try Storm Front””
On the left, on this blog, disagreement can only mean hate, racism, whatever-phobia, etc.
And those insults aren’t -to them- insults at all.
Nor are other insults like ‘try Storm Front’.
I keep hearing about the vaunted articulate and reasoned discussions that took place here before dissent arrived, but this is all I have seen of it.
Rather unimpressive thus far, save a few.
Ken,
“I’m of the firm persuasion that the best response to stupid speech is intelligent speech, rather than censorship disguised as “blog moderation.””
Well said.
Yeah, the normal breathing gets me, too. The only way you’re breathing normally in that situation is if you’re unconscious, but we know he wasn’t if he was changing these settings.
Darren sez: “There are many important issues inherent with the subject of this article. Unfortunately the conversation among some has devolved into mutual insult.”
****************************************
Sorry Darren, but that train left the station well over a year ago. Brilliant debate and witty repartee devolved into passive-aggressive one-liners, refusal to back up outrageous claims while demanding others provide a bibliography to back up theirs, and gratuitous snide insults with no support from management.
Recall Gresham’s Law: About four hundred years ago, Sir Thomas Gresham, economist for Queen Elizabeth I wrote, “Bad money drives out good.”
Chuck – Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.Oscar Wilde
Oh, look at that up there, the New York Times Covering up for 9/11 – isn’t that nice!!!! some of us where actualy adults then you know~
@ William Berry
@Ingannie:
“I hear you.
“Ultimately, this has to be laid at JT’s door. His vaunted “civility policy” will stop you saying the naughty words, but when it comes to the really reprehensible, hate-inflected crap that inundates these threads, the good professor is conspicuously MIA.”
William,
If you’ve read any of my substantive (as opposed to my jocular) posts here, you’ve seen that I’ve energetically challenged the “vile bigotry and racism” to which you refer.
I’m of the firm persuasion that the best response to stupid speech is intelligent speech, rather than censorship disguised as “blog moderation.”
I’ve participated in a few blog comment sections, and I appreciate the freedom to express whatever I’ve had to say here, without worrying that I might be stepping on partisan toes or dealing with the ego of one or more moderators.
Sure, several of the people who regularly comment here have a great deal of animus toward Afro Americans, gays, Muslims, and Democrats but it’s good to know where they’re coming from as representatives of Eric Hoffer’s “True Believers” and Robert Altemeyer’s “Authoritarians.”
Besides, consider what they might be doing if they didn’t have a forum like this in which to ventilate their relentless animosity and to commiserate with one another regarding all the dangerous degenerates and enemies of America out there.
Do you remember Benjamin Smith? I am emphatically not suggesting that any commenters here might act out as violently as Smith did if they were denied a venue in which to express themselves verbally, but am pointing out the psychology of being denied expression of one’s thoughts and feelings, particularly if they are vilely bigoted and racist thoughts and feelings:
“A chapter of Lone Wolf (a study of spree killers), by Pan Pantziarka, is devoted to [Benjamin] Smith and his crimes. “Invisible Revolution,” a documentary by filmmaker Beverly Peterson, features an interview with Smith less than two weeks before his killing spree. The film includes scenes of Smith distributing World Church of the Creator leaflets in his home town and saying, `If they violate our constitutional rights and say we can’t put out our literature, we have no choice but to resort to acts of violence and really to plunge this country into a terrorist war they’ve never seen before.’
Baudner, David (July 8, 1999). “Interviews with racist aired on TV”, Associated Press
I hope you’ll stay on and make some positive contributions of your own to help combat the racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia that I agree is so much in evidence in this comments section.
Remember, Professor Turley’s blog has a very wide readership, and a large number of people read the comments and integrate them into their own thinking to one degree or another, even if they don’t comment themselves, so positive contributions to political and social thought have a much wider audience than that comprised of regular commenters here.
Ken
Highly recommend this article for those who wish to know how the door locks work.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/26/world/europe/germanwings-cockpit-door-lock.html
No one should be puzzled if they read this.
Wadewilliams, I think you are the only one still on track here. LOL. The article about the door locks was very helpful. I had seen videos of how they work, but suspected there was information not being shared in them. Your article explained one key element that they left out. The pilot could keep anyone out by moving a switch to lock. It would keep people out for five minutes, so he only had to move it one more time during the 10 minute descent. I tend to agree with your perspective that this must have been intentional. So much attention has been paid to keeping others out of the cockpit, but not much attention to a bad apple pilot. This guy was reported to have suffered depression and burnout. He had several breaks from aviation, the last one unexplained. He deleted his Facebook account two days before the incident. It seems to me that the guy was mentally and emotionally broken. Yeah, he passed the psychological tests, but what does that really mean?
@Darren
True. Someone should put up some appropriate music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whIYv3_CvqU
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Darren – np
Inga, et al. – this isn’t high school. Nobody cares whether they are liked or not. Nobody gets voted Prom King or Prom Queen. Frankly, I have been hated by better people than you and your clique.
There are many important issues inherent with the subject of this article. Unfortunately the conversation among some has devolved into mutual insult.
This type of behavior is not beneficial to the readership and those who wish to engage in voicing their beliefs and comments about the tragic loss of nearly one hundred and fifty souls.
Please refrain from this bantering or take it to another venue.
randy…
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/27/world/europe/germanwings-crash.html?contentCollection=world&action=click&module=NextInCollection®ion=Footer&pgtype=article
During the descent, Mr. Robin said, air traffic controllers repeatedly tried to contact the aircraft but got no response. Nor did anyone on the plane convey a distress signal, even as the captain desperately tried to break down the door and, at the last, people began screaming.
Data from the plane’s transponder also suggested that the person at the controls had manually reset the autopilot to take the plane from 38,000 feet to 96 feet, the lowest possible setting, according to Flightradar24, a flight tracking service. The aircraft struck a mountainside at 6,000 feet
To repeat, this is a much longer version of what i wrote earlier.
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Amidst uncertainty that the crash of the Germanwings flight on Mar. 24 was not an accident, but a deliberate act by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, who flew the Airbus into the ground, killing 150 people, at least one thing seems clear: this was not a terrorist act. Stating this was the German minister of interior, who found “no indications of any kind of terrorist background” to the crash. French interior minister had said on Mar. 25 that terrorism was not a likely hypothesis, but that no scenario could be excluded: but when it became clear that the co-pilot crashed the plane, and that the co-pilot had no “terrorist background,” the terror motive was ruled out.
It might be surprising to some that the terrorist motive was excluded so quickly, when after these kinds of tragedies the official approach is always not to exclude any possibility. But then again, this tragedy appeared to lack what, since 9/11, has emerged to be considered the conditio sine qua non of terroristic attacks: the pilot was not Muslim.
Andreas Lubitz was not Muslim, how could he possibly be a terrorist?
“I can’t imagine what would happen if he shared my name,” commented on Facebook on Quartz’s story on the accident Mohamad Najem, Lebanese, wearing a keffieh—a traditional Arab headdress—in his profile picture. Indeed, can you imagine?
If a Muslim—or an Arab—were flying the plane, this would be a terroristic attack, until there were proof to the contrary (and even then, Muslims would probably be held responsible). Authorities would call it a “suspected” attack, but certainly the narrative in the less scrupulous media would be terrorism, jihad, fight against the West. The ancestors of the pilot would be identified, the members of his family or friends with extreme ideologies would be scrutinized in search of a confirmation of fundamentalist influences and motives.
When the Malaysia Airline flight MH370 went missing in March 2014, the possibility of a terrorism attack was immediately contemplated, although considered unlikely because Malaysia “has only a tiny number of Muslim fundamentalists.” When, in 2011, 92 people were killed in an attack in Norway, the first hypotheses—then dispelled upon arresting the author, Anders Behring Breivik, a Christian fundamentalist—were of a jihadi attack. It’s almost automatic: despite the fact that Muslims are responsible for only 6% attacks on American soil from 1980 to 2005, and less than 2% in Europe over the last five years, the word “attack” seems to immediately connote something perpetrated by a Muslim fundamentalist.
The precipitous judgment of terrorist acts is problematic even when the perpetrator is Muslim. As Glenn Greenwald noted after the Boston marathon bombing, the immediacy with which attacks conducted by Muslims are linked to fundamentalism can be misleading, as it fails to show the difference between religious and political motives.
Alas, we are not asking all Germans (or all pilots) to stand up and condemn the act of this one individual pilot. Of course they condemn it—how come we don’t need them to say it? There is a word for it: it’s prejudice.
Prejudice comes from the latin prae-, in advance, and judicium, judgment. It means to judge a person or a situation before knowing, before checking, before verifying. A judgement that should be a conclusion becomes the starting point, and since a prejudice is just as strong as a judgment it’s hard to shed it, once applied. A case like Andreas Lubitz’s, by showing how things proceed in the absence of such prejudice, highlights how unfair it is, for those who are not white, not Western, and hence aren’t afforded the benefit of the doubt.
This is not to say that the Germanwings crash should be labelled as terrorism. The definition of terrorism implies an ideological or political motive—if it’s not found, then the cause is different, and hence the labeling should be. But it’s undeniable that the speed at which we ruled out a terrorist act highlights the strong Islamophobic bias that affects the Western world.
http://qz.com/370787/why-authorities-were-so-quick-to-dismiss-terrorism-as-the-cause-of-the-germanwings-crash/
po – I think we need to wait to see what the black boxes and the wreckage tell the investigators. First reports are rarely valid. You will find this is my usual stand when there is not a lot of evidence available or the evidence is contradictory.
*of