It would be hard to run that far accidentally.
Depression is hard to believe, but if it turns out the doctor suspected he was some sort of high functioning schizophrenic, I’d buy that. People like that can sometimes fool everyone around them, can’t they?
Man, are there going to be lawsuits flying around this tragedy!
This is unusual even for a suicidal pilot. The other pilot suicides I’ve known about or actually know the guy in question was either the pilot flying solo deliberately crashing the airplane or the guy used some more conventional way to off himself, like blowing his head off with a shotgun.
Think about that - even most of the pilots who deliberately kills themselves don’t take passengers with them. It’s not that it never happens, just that this is a minority of suicidal pilots.
The hitch, of course, is that a commercial airline pilot who does decide to take the passengers down with him will kill a crapload of people, much more than, say, someone who crashes their car with a bunch of people in it.
Sounds like suicide with intent to make a statement. If he’d hung himself at home, his death would be unnoticed by the public.
Not really - it’s not just a matter of the triggering situation being resolved some additional time has to go by as well. In the case of a death of a family member, let’s say a child, 6 months of mental symptoms of one sort or another - trouble sleeping, lack of pleasure in activities, sadness, etc. - is not at all unusual. Not everyone has significant symptoms that long but it wouldn’t be considered wildly abnormal, either. In the case of a pilot, any pharmaceuticals would have to be discontinued, out of their system, and some observation to confirm symptoms did not resume without those drugs.
Not to call bullshit or anything, but someone who can’t do a job they LOVE for 6 months (and all this guy ever wanted was to fly) has got problems. Too many problems to be flying.
Actually, it’s quite a bit more, but most of them were pilots in small prvate planes. I saw a story last night claiming 24 in the last 20 years, but without any identifiers. The only one that sprang to mind was a guy who plowed his plane into an IRS building a few years back. Functionally, it’s more like a suicidal driver plowing into a bridge abutment.
There are a bunch of things that are “minor” in other context but can get you medically grounded for 6 months or longer. That’s the rules.
For example, let’s say you need eye surgery of some sort, maybe an incipient cataract, maybe an injury of some sort. Most folks could go back to work in a week or two at most, but the FAA usually says 6 months.
It’s not enough to be simply functional, you have to be HIGHLY functional.
From the viewpoint of the airlines pilots are a disposable commodity. It’s not worth fixing a broken one, just throw that one out and get a new one.
Those are only the knowns and probables. There likely have been many more.
Even in the airline world, the list of known suicide/murders only accounts for cases in which the CVR proves what happened. There may have been more in the pre-black-box era.
Peter Garrison of *Flying *estimated 2 or 3 a year in the US alone in this 2005 article.
The guy was in training, and it looks like he chose the length of the break. Assuming that’s true, I don’t see how he should ever have been allowed to fly. And if the rules cleared him to fly, then I’ll just not fly that airline until the planes are entirely computer-controlled.
The thing that *really * is concerning is that this airline’s policies on mental health are so different than those used by airlines based in the US. That speaks of a worrying cultural problem in this case, one that may pop up in other ways later. Unsafe ways.
It’s not unusual for people to have breaks in flight training, though. I’d have to know more about what was actually going on with the guy before I felt comfortable making a judgement on it.
Flight training is both expensive and stressful. People sometimes have second thoughts along the way. I prefer a system where people are allowed to take a break without a hard time limit.
I’m still curious about why he was declared unfit to fly the day of the accident, though. Could it be that, after going through flight training, doing some soul searching, and putting the time, money, and effort into his career it was about to end due to some strictly physical cause? While that’s not an excuse it could help explain why he did what he did.
When I was a kid in grade school at the end of WWII we were taught that the Kamikaze killed thousands of US troops. I don’t recall ever seeing actual numbers.
Are you dense? The motherfucker was crazy as a shithouse rat, to use the proper term. Off his nut. Bonkers.
I don’t fully understand how you don’t realize that someone this crazy would get noticed and dealt with. The worrying problem with this situation is that the German version of getting “dealt with” apparently doesn’t preclude flying a fucking plane.
I’m all for compassion for the mentally ill. Compassion does NOT include being allowed to fly a plane, though.
What are the US airlines mental health policies?
I guess you missed the part where we don’t know why he was declared unfit that particular day.
Or do you think “crazy” people are somehow immune to physical ills?
Maybe you take some comfort thinking this is an unusually bizarre situation but while pilot suicides are rare they are not unknown. A pilot suicide with passengers on board is even more rare but, again, not unknown. If we don’t try to understand WHY these things happen we will certainly have no chance to prevent them in the future.
And no, I don’t think he was “crazy as a shithouse rat” (whatever that means, exactly). I used to have a neighbor when I lived in Rogers Park who’d actively hallucinate and have arguments in the middle of the street with talking animals that weren’t there. THAT’s crazy. Depression - which is most likely this guy’s mental problem - is actually a lot more common in this world than people suppose.
Even mentally normal people can have extreme reactions to having a career-ending illness or injury. Maybe people who have had a history of susceptibility to mental issues should be watched even more closely when that happens to them than the norm. I would think that could have applications beyond just aviation.
Anybody that would kill 150 people over having their career ended is already crazy. The appropriate response, from a SANE person, would be tears, anger, getting drunk, etc… Considering suicide, but not acting on it, would also be sane, while not especially stable. This guy was not SANE.
Fine, dismiss this as the act of someone impossible to understand, make no attempt to learn anything, and consider yourself magically protected from such a bad thing occurring in the future.
Me, I’d rather we learn something from this tragedy that can help others in the future if at all possible.
And what statement would that be?
As far as what the co-pilot was suffering from that was the source of the Dr.'s note, apparently it was “mental burn-out”. “Burn out” from the training. :dubious: Which begs the question of why he was ever cleared to be in charge of the lives of 150 people, if the training of becoming a pilot was enough to trigger “burn out”.
Another question this brings up is, if a pilot is being put in such an important position, being charged with caring for hundreds of peoples lives, shouldn’t there be a system in place that goes over the head of the patient and delivers the “doctors note” to the employer, informing them of the pilot’s inability to perform his./her job safely?