Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot deliberately crashed the Airbus A-320 into the ground taking 149 innocent people with him. Rot in hell mass murderer.
My sympathy to the families of those who suffered a loss in this tragedy.
When the news broke, it sounded like a depressurization accident to me, and I was hoping that everyone in the plane was unconscious or dead even before the plane started descending, like the Payne Stewart crash. 
This had to be as terrifying to everyone on that plane as the 9/11 hijackings.
I’m not sure if we know enough to conclude with certainty that this was intentional by the co-pilot. It looks that way at this point, but the investigation is not complete.
Read the article. The CEO of Lufthansa made a public statement that Lubitz crashed the plane purposely. He must be pretty damned certain.
Does anyone have any theory as to why?
Silk Air 185, EgyptAir 990, MH370 (possible suicide,) LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470, and now this Germanwings flight; what’s up with so many pilot suicides in a span of just 20 years?
They’ve (investigators) heard the passengers screaming in the moments just before the crash. What horrible last moments for 149 lives.
In the cockpit all they hear is Lubitz’s steady breathing. Cold blooded, murdering bastard.
So many? How many flights total have there been in those 20 years?
Since Lubitz is dead, I propose that Juan Manuel Álvarez be whipped in his place.
So if we take these suiciding pilots into account, do they rank at the top of any list of mass/serial killers? 150 people is hard to stab and shoot
The suicide bombings in Yemen last week killed 137. If you count coordinated suicide bombings then this doesn’t push the envelope much.
If you want to factor in terrorist attacks, then add in 9/11. There was apparently no terrorist agenda here, at least none that I’ve seen mentioned.
Now people getting on planes have to wonder about the sanity of the flight crew and assholes with Russian supplied anti-aircraft missiles. What a world.
McVeigh killed more. 9/11 had more on a per person basis. Although both are close.
Last time I checked, we were flying over a billion passengers a year. Who knows what it is now? Two billion? We’ll have to get used to more accidents, even though flying isn’t really getting more dangerous.
Apparently, this SNL skit cannot be said to be true any more:
I have no strange compulsion to intentionally crash a plane.
Ok, well, this is one more airline I can’t fly.
Why? If it is indeed a suicidal pilot I can’t see how this puts Germanwings in a higher risk bracket.
In fact, they are probably less of a risk seeing as you can be sure of intense psychological screening on their air crew in the very near future.
(disclosure…I booked October tickets on Germanwings from Rome to London just 2 days before this crash, I confess it hasn’t given me a moments pause for thought)
I don’t know the source of the flaw that allowed his mental break to remain undetected. So really, there’s not enough data to make a decision. He did have to take time off for depression a few years ago, though. I don’t know why he was allowed to fly after that.
Pilots suffering from “situational depression” - that is, depression for an external reason such as family death or divorce or some such - have been allowed to return to flying once the situation resolves for quite some time now. In part, this makes it easier for them to seek treatment rather than trying to tough it out, suppress their depression, or otherwise hide it. For the most part that hasn’t been a problem.
That is, of course, different from endogenous depression, from internal causes, but it isn’t always easy to distinguish them.
He took 6 months off. That sounds long for situational depression, to me.