Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz ‘wanted to make everyone remember him’

[Surya Gayatri]

(moved from LBN)

Source: The Guardian

Lubitz told his former girlfriend that he wanted to do something to ‘change the system’, Bild reports, as investigators find torn-up sick note covering the day of the crash.

According to the German newspaper Bild, a former girlfriend of Lubitz, identified only as Mary W, said he had told her last year: “One day I will do something that will change the whole system, and then all will know my name and remember it.”
She added: “I never knew what he meant, but now it makes sense.”

She told the paper: “At night, he woke up and screamed: ‘We’re going down!’, because he had nightmares. He knew how to hide from other people what was really going on inside.”

As legal experts warned that the airline’s parent company, Lufthansa, could face compensation claims for hundreds of millions of dollars, Düsseldorf prosecutors said they had found the torn-up doctor’s note covering the day of the disaster – Tuesday 24 March.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/27/germanwings-co-pilot-andreas-lubitzs-background-under-scrutiny

Other links from other 'serious' outlets:

http://www.france24.com/en/20150328-germanwings-pilot-lubitz-history-name/

http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2015/03/28/crash-de-l-a320-l-ex-petite-amie-du-copilote-se-confie_4603129_3214.html
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And yet, there are still many on this forum who would argue that this guy had a complete right to medical privacy and that his mental health should not be highlighted.

Go argue that with the hundreds of grieving family members and friends.

Hundreds of lives destroyed becasue of this guy's twisted delusions of grandeur--delusions that were not legally bound to be reported to his employer.

[Nye Bevan]

1. It's kind of tricky. Say you passed a law that mental health privacy did not apply to pilots,

and then pilots would probably never seek mental health care, ever.

[Surya Gayatri]

2. Yes, very charged and vexed question, but as I opined elsewhere:

'If a doctor judges a pilot unfit to work, he/she
by definition is categorically unfit to fly, and the employer should automatically be informed of that 'unfit' status.

In this case, the subject purposely withheld his medical status from his employer and his doctors were not legally bound to disclose the facts.

Being judged unfit to work/fly means that the subject is a potential danger to the passengers and public.'

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026424398#post28

And:

'Sweeping issue, wide scope: the rights of the individual in direct conflict with the good of the many.'

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141051549#post14

[DFW]

3. As someone who flies a whole lot, I see the question in simple terms

An airline has as much responsibility to guarantee the physical and mental health of their pilots as they do the perfect state of their engines.

Being lax in either one puts their passengers in mortal danger. As that means me, I maintain that the people responsible for the airworthiness of an aircraft are equally responsible for the physical and mental stability of the people who fly it. If they don't, they have no right to operate an airline.