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

[Surya Gayatri]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by DonViejo (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

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

---

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.

[DFW]

1. The right to medical privacy is important, but not absolute

Lufthansa had no business NOT thoroughly investigating the mental health of every single commercial pilot that flies for them, and from reports out of Phoenix, they dropped the ball seriously on Lubitz.

The mental (and physical) health of someone applying for a job upon which hundreds of lives depend every day is NOT sacrosanct.

Lufthansa needs to face the music here. They had a chance to bar this guy from being in a situation where he had the chance to do what he did, and they opted not to exercise it. What happened is NOT the result of a justifiable risk.

I take German Wings between Düsseldorf and Barcelona a lot. I'll be taking them on that route again in two days. Lufthansa has a responsibility to me, my family, and to everyone else on that plane and their families, to ensure that no one with a history of severe depression is sitting in the cockpit of that plane.

[Surya Gayatri]

2. Wish you could pin this reply to the front page! Many on this

forum have been vigorously arguing just the opposite.

They hold that highlighting Lubitz's mental health is an infringement of his privacy, and that examining mental illness in general equates to marginalizing and stigmatizing.

YES!:
"The mental (and physical) health of someone applying for a job upon which hundreds of lives depend every day is NOT sacrosanct."

[DFW]

11. I haven't seen all those posts

I did see a post asking that we all accept that some people have mental health issues, that they deal with it as best they can, and that they are basically functional among us, and don't deserve to be made pariahs. All this I agree with fully.

My outfit knowingly employs people like that, and places them in position commensurate with their capability to handle them. However, someone who can't handle stress is not put in a position that would require handling stress. Just like someone who lost a leg would not be hired to lift heavy weights and lug them around.

By the same token, someone with a history of being treated for clinical depression should not be in a situation where an incident going on inside his head, which no one could ever see or detect, would permit him to kill 149 others on a sudden whim.

[Surya Gayatri]

12. Again, really enjoy your lucidity on this topic...

Totally agree that mental health sufferers 'don't deserve to be made pariahs'...

But also agree 100% with this:
'By the same token, someone with a history of being treated for clinical depression should not be in a situation where an incident going on inside his head, which no one could ever see or detect, would permit him to kill 149 others on a sudden whim.'

[LittleGirl]

5. While CNN interviewed the CEO of Lufthansa

I kept thinking that he looks like someone that is going to get fired soon for letting this happen and he had a look of terror in his eyes. It's not his fault this happened but you're spot on that they and all of the airlines need to change their "fitness to fly" testing. We're flying within Europe next week as well and I'm a bit shaken by this 'accident.'

It's downright awful what happened but I have to ask you, how would anyone know this would happen except maybe his girlfriend? I mean no disrespect either, just curious. A lone wolf is a lone wolf and there are many people that suffer with mental illness that are not being helped considering all of the awfulness that is happening around the world these days.

[DFW]

7. No one would KNOW this would happen

Just as no one would KNOW that a classroom full of schoolkids carrying firearms might erupt in a fatal gunfight. However, a school has the responsibility to make sure that chance never presents itself by forbidding schoolkids in the classroom from carrying firearms.

Lufthansa couldn't KNOW this would happen. What they COULD (and apparently DID) know is that a pilot flying passenger planes for them had suffered clinical depression. This alone should have led them to disqualify him from ever sitting in the cockpit. You don't have to slap the guy in the face with it. Just apologize to him for not letting him realize his lifetime dream and explain that while they didn't consider HIM specifically to be a risk, they couldn't deviate from the guidelines of policy, etc etc.

[LittleGirl]

10. totally agree with you

I don't believe medical records should be sealed either especially when you, literally, have other lives in your command. I hope your anxiety (right word?) for your flight is overcome and that efforts to avoid this happening again are at a high level now. I know you use this flight quite often and remember your first post about this tragedy. Big old cyber hug, man <<<Hug>>>

[DFW]

15. Wrong word actually (and luckily)

I really don't have a lot of anxiety. All German commercial flights are (as of last week) now required to have at least two crew members in the cockpit at all times. Statistically, air travel is still the safest--just try driving here!!--and German airlines have an impeccable safety record. I have had several hairy incidents while flying. Nearly crashed in a tiny commuter plane in Belgium when a wind gust turned the wings from horizontal to vertical 5 seconds prior to landing, "was lucky to land alive" at Havana in a rickety Cuban Soviet-made Ilyushin-62, once landed in a hailstorm in Kansas City in an old 727 where the plane's engines were barely still functioning.

I just don't want to be at the mercy of something or someone that is a totally avoidable risk. An airline can't control wind or weather. They CAN screen who flies for them. Lufthansa did, and STILL let this guy fly. For that, there is no excuse, and no rationalization. If relatives and friends of those who died want someone prosecuted for negligent homicide, I'd understand fully.

[LittleGirl]

17. I will

be driving here again real soon but our vehicle is on a ship from LA (that was delayed 3 months because of the port strikes) so I 'get' you. The fastest I've ever driven (120 mph) was on the German autobahn. Whoo hoo.

I know that flying is safest, that's why we will fly next week. Too far to drive.

But we left AZ last fall because of everyone packing heat in that state and frankly, I was afraid to flip off a driver because of suicidal road rage. Or go to the grocery store with someone else carrying a rifle because they 'could' legally. I have much less fear here. I walk after dark here. It's not the only reason we left the states, job security, or rather the lack of it, was the #1 reason. But feeling safer was an added perk to coming back to Europe. This mass murder doesn't change that.

Peace.

[treestar]

33. Why so?

Even suffering from clinical depression doesn't mean you will do this. Many people do, only a small fraction do something like this. Why shut down lives over it when by itself it is not an indication of likely future mass murder? Like others have said, it just gets them to hide and not admit to it.

This is a freak occurrence even amongst those suffering from clinical depression.

This guy would have killed some number of people another way. There's no way to know who is going to snap.

[Delphinus]

37. I admit

to not reading all the posts about this - just happened to start reading this one. I suffered from a major depressive episode twenty-five years ago. It was only my life I wanted to end, not anyone else's. I have healed from that and am off medicine and, yes, being human, still have my ups and downs, but am OK.

Maybe we (society) need to have a conversation about depression - mental illness - stop whispering about it and treat it as the disease it is.

[Surya Gayatri]

9. ^^^This!^^^

Especially:
"...all of the airlines need to change their "fitness to fly" testing..."

[Demeter]

3. Your right to privacy ends where my right to live begins

[Surya Gayatri]

4. Preach it, sister, especially to those on this very forum

who argue from their high horses that his right to mental health privacy should take precedence.

In their view, highlighting this guy's mental instability equates to marginalizing and stigmatizing all those who suffer from mental health issues.

Go figure...

[joshcryer]

6. See the Rosenhan experiment.

Mental health is a crapshot, especially and most importantly due to people who can fake it "just enough." We see this time and time again with mass killings. It happens because we just don't know how to handle it. (And no, having some national database of mentally ill people won't magically solve it.)

It's a daunting problem.

[Surya Gayatri]

8. Yes, a vexed question with no pat answers...

[joshcryer]

13. I'm not completely against a national database, mind you.

I just think that people would be able to still fall through the cracks. And more often than not those people are the killers, in my humblest of opinions. The people who recognize their issues try to deal with them. It's the ones who have issues but aren't treated adequately who wind up creating tragedy.

Holmes, the Aurora theater killer, is a good example. Dude was working on his PhD when his mental capacity went to crap, he lost it sometime after starting his PhD and before the killings. I don't know how to select for someone like that. And I don't know if we want to have a database that selects for that. It's really hard to think about. I can see the good and bad of a system that tries to track down such people. And I'm not sure I'm comfortable with either side of the argument.

I mean, I think I'd not be against preventing people with mental health issues (very risky people) from getting a gun. That's reasonable, I think. But to set that up you'd need a national database, and that's probably reasonable, too. But how about people falsely accused? It's a murky subject.

And I fully admit I don't know the answer to something like that.

[Surya Gayatri]

14. Sweeping issue, wide scope: the rights of the individual

in direct conflict with the good of the many.

[joshcryer]

16. +1

Mental health after climate change and a basic income is the third most pressing issue this country (and any country, at that) faces. I'm not opposed to tracking mentally unstable people, but I argue it wouldn't be necessary if we had facilities to treat the mentally ill. They'd get help. But thanks to Regan and the Republicans that dosen't even exist anymore (not that back in the late 70s and 80s that were good at it, not by a long shot, but we have improved somewhat, bring it back, let's get people treated).

[Shrike47]

18. He won't be remembered, just the crash and the victims.

[Surya Gayatri]

20. As I said elsewhere, at least he will have had his '15 minutes of fame'

albeit posthumously. (credit to Andy Warhol)

[oldlib2]

31. I agree

I haven't committed his name to memory and I cannot repeat it now. He will be known only as the co-pilot who killed 150 people.

[Turbineguy]

19. It seems in this day and age

doing something nice will not get you remembered.

[Surya Gayatri]

21. Well, you know the adage: 'If it bleeds, it leads'...

And people's nefarious motivations are a constant and bankable source of fascination.
Just witness the perennial popularity of TV series based on forensic psych investigations.

[Tom Ripley]

22. Who?

[Scott6113]

23. Depression, a nebulous concept

Here's the problem:
Depression is to mental health what the common cold is to physical medicine. So common, so easily treated. Anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs are the most commonly proscribed psychiatric drugs.
If you bar people who have gotten or are getting treatment, you'll have UNTREATED depressed people in the pilot's seat. Just as if you bar those who have entered alcohol rehabilitation treatment, you have untreated alcoholics in the pilot's seat. Pilots know how to keep their records inaccurately clean.
This came about in part because we were chasing the last problem. That is, terrorists breaching the cockpit.
If we chase the last problem again, we'll have more closet cases of pilots with mental problems.
I like focussing on the behavior, the two pilots in the cockpit rule. There is an easy solution to the physical need: http://www.sportys.com/pilotshop/little-john-pilot-urinal.html
Flights long enough to need relief for the other physical needs have two crews anyway.

[Surya Gayatri]

26. True, that...

'This came about in part because we were chasing the last problem. That is, terrorists breaching the cockpit.'

Nevertheless, as we speak, airlines are revising and potentially tightening their health screening and reporting procedures.

See this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026426952

Call for more exhaustive psychological testing of airline pilots intensifies...

[Skidmore]

24. Bild is a tabloid and this morning's news

here noted that much of that report has not been verified.

[Surya Gayatri]

25. Being quoted by all manner of 'serious' outlets...

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

Germanwings co-pilot told ex ‘one day everyone will know my 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

Crash de l'A320 : l'ex-petite amie du copilote se confie

[Skidmore]

27. Perhaps they shouldn't quote until

information has been vetted?

[Surya Gayatri]

28. I suspect they have back channel methods of checking

the veracity of another outlet's reports, or they wouldn't run with it...

Especially, the well-respected, venerable and fairly conservative 'Le Monde'.

[KingCharlemagne]

30. Without casting aspersions on the OP for posting this thread, when I read

the purported (former) girlfriend's alleged comments, I was struck by how lurid they seemed and how they seemed so conveniently to satisfy the perhaps-unconscious desire among the audience that this co-pilot be a raving megalomaniac instead of one of the far more banal diagnostic categories. Not saying that the GF "made it up," nor that Bild 'coached' her by how it posed the question. But this account seems both remarkably melodramatic and titillating.

[dolphinsandtuna]

29. A year from now, people will remember the crash, but no one will remember his name.

[treestar]

32. So your point was to turn this into a debate on medical privacy?

What's your position exactly? Should be do away with our medical privacy laws and make everyone's medical record public?

[Surya Gayatri]

34. As more and more details pertaining to Lubitz's mental

status have been reported on this forum, a whole contingent of 'privacy' advocates has weighed in.

My remarks simply anticipated the arrival of these same people in this OP. And they have already begun to appear.

See the arguments in this thread, for instance:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026424398

ETA:

My personal position?

'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:

'Where high-speed, instantaneous decisions are called for, the need is greater. The higher the speed, the more people's lives directly at risk, the greater the need.

That said, yes, commercial trucking companies, high-risk public works concerns, etc. should be able to access the psych and physical health status of their employees.'

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141050533#post56

[treestar]

35. In that thread you anticipate more opposition than you actually get too

I don't see much opposition in that thread.

Pilots and surgeons are two groups that should be checked extensively, I agree. There should have been a way for those doctors to get Lubitz off work by reporting his condition to the employer. Yet we wouldn't really need that for cashiers or janitors or whatever. It's just where the nature of the job makes it necessary. Come to think of it, never heard of a case where a surgeon did something that killed somebody out of craziness - there you'd be more concerned with being high or something.

The nature of the airline industry justifies more regulation. But we don't need that to spread to everybody. Just people whose job really does put people's lives into their hands.

[Surya Gayatri]

36. Read on, read on...some even insisted that highlighting Lubitz's mental status

was tantamount to saying that:

1) all people with mental problems are potential murderers,

2) mental illness automatically equates with violence.

[Surya Gayatri]

38. True about docs. My brother is one, and after a major

medical incident, he had to undergo complete mental and psychometric testing before he could go back to work.

[DonViejo]

39. Locking...

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