Tag: lufthansa
Investigators: Germanwings Co-Pilot Tested Descent On Earlier Flight

Investigators: Germanwings Co-Pilot Tested Descent On Earlier Flight

By Jessica Camille Aguirre, dpa (TNS)

PARIS — The co-pilot suspected of deliberately downing a Germanwings jet in March tested the controls of the plane during an earlier flight the same morning, French investigators said Wednesday.

On March 24, co-pilot Andreas Lubitz is believed to have crashed flight 4U 9525 into the French Alps killing himself and 149 others on board. The plane was en route to Dusseldorf from Barcelona.

French aviation safety authority BEA said that on an earlier flight, Lubitz conducted seconds-long descent maneuvers.

The report said he brought the plane’s altitude down to 100 feet multiple times over a four-minute period before returning to normal altitude.

During those maneuvers, the captain was absent from the cockpit.

Much of the information in the BEA report, which reveals further details about the flight and Lubitz’s medical history, is based on the black box, consisting of the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder found at the crash site.

Earlier, prosecutors in Germany said that Lubitz searched for suicide methods and cockpit-locking mechanisms on the Internet in the week before he locked himself alone in the cockpit and accelerated the aircraft into the mountainside.

A flight training school for Lufthansa, Germanwings’ parent company, also said earlier that it was aware Lubitz struggled with depression.

Wednesday’s BEA report showed that Lubitz was twice refused a medical certificate re-validation in April 2009 by Lufthansa aeromedical center because of depression and the medication he was taking for it.

When he was issued a new certificate in July 2009, it had a note specifying that it was with the limitation stating regular medical examinations. The limitation also requires the medical examiner to contact the license issuer before conducting an evaluation for a medical certificate renewal.

Lubitz’s most recent medical certificate was issued in July 2014 and was valid until August 2015.

“We are in a situation where the medical problem was known, was investigated, and a decision was made,” French civil aviation authority director Remi Jouty said while explaining the findings.

Lubitz had struggled with depression and had a doctor’s note for the day he allegedly downed the plane, but he had hidden the note and been cleared for flying by Germanwings parent company Lufthansa.

The case has raised questions in Germany about privacy practices after Germanwings and Lufthansa said they were not aware of Lubitz’s doctor’s note.

The BEA report said it was considering “how and why pilots can be in the cockpit with the intention of causing the loss of the aircraft and its occupants, despite the existence of regulations setting mandatory medical criteria for flight crews, especially in the areas of psychiatry, psychology, and behavioral problems.”

It also said it was considering the effect of regulations imposed after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, on cockpit safety procedures.

BEA investigators reiterated prosecutors’ findings that the flight’s captain tried to re-enter the cockpit several times as the plane descended.

Lubitz also did not respond to multiple calls from air traffic controllers and the French Air Defence system, the BEA report said. Starting approximately two minutes before impact, investigators said, “noises similar to violent blows on the cockpit door were recorded on five occasions.”

Photo: Fanden selv via Flickr

Aggression, Not Just Depression, Led Co-Pilot To Crash Plane, Experts Say

Aggression, Not Just Depression, Led Co-Pilot To Crash Plane, Experts Say

By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Mental health experts say that it was aggression — not just depression — that would have driven 27-year-old Andreas Lubitz to deliberately crash a Germanwings airliner into a mountainside, the co-pilot breathing evenly as passengers screamed and the plane’s frantic captain pounded helplessly on the cockpit door.

Unless investigators recognize the toxic role of aggression and hostility in some patients’ depression, they say, such troubled individuals will continue to elude detection — to the public’s peril.

Lubitz’s history of depression, acknowledged by his employer in the days after the March 24 crash of the Airbus A320 with 150 people aboard, left many mental health professionals in the United States openly skeptical that Lubitz’s psychological troubles stopped there. In the parade of garden-variety depressives who march into their offices, psychiatrists, and psychologists often hear about the physical symptoms of mental distress — sleep problems, stomachaches, even changes in vision. They routinely see sadness, guilt, and hostility.

But a murder-suicide on this scale, they said, requires an explanation that goes beyond a simple diagnosis of depression.

“We need to stop talking as if this was a suicidal guy with access to an airplane,” said Dr. Jeff Victoroff, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine and a leading researcher on aggression. “This was a murderous guy who probably had elements of a mood disorder and personality disorders.”

“People who have depression alone are much, much more likely to bring harm to themselves alone,” said forensic psychiatrist Dr. Steven E. Pitt, who consults with the Phoenix Police Department and conducted the Columbine Psychiatric Autopsy Project after the 1999 high school shootings in Colorado. “There has to be a maladaptive character defect, a character disorder here.”

In recent days, sketchy reports of Lubitz’s behavior in the weeks before the crash have hinted at some of the emotional distortions and likely underlying mental illness that may have motivated him, said several forensic psychiatrists in interviews. While a full diagnosis cannot come from such bits of information, they are piecing together Lubitz’s history of depression, possibly heightened by an unraveling romantic relationship and a perceived threat — vision problems — to his career.

In the preliminary accounts of Lubitz’s life before he killed himself and 149 others, they see a highly unstable and emotionally sensitive young adult who probably felt his world was coming apart.

A well-designed personality inventory alone — the kind of detailed questionnaire used by many employers — would probably have flagged traits that diverged dramatically from the standard profile of a pilot: emotionally stable, resilient, and self-disciplined. To have declared Lubitz “100 percent fit to fly,” as Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr initially did, “was like pronouncing the Titanic unsinkable just after it hit the bottom of the ocean,” Victoroff said.

The German newspaper Bild reported last week that Lubitz, despite fearing for his job, purchased two expensive cars in recent weeks. In the paper’s account, Lubitz tried to give one of the two cars to Kathrin Goldbach, his girlfriend of seven years, in a bid to cement their failing relationship. Another German news report cited a former girlfriend saying Lubitz told her, “One day, I will do something that will change the whole system, and then all will know my name and remember it.”

Such details offer evidence of what mental health professionals call a “disordered personality” coming undone. With the right tools, they said, the danger he posed might have been identified and stopped.

“This is a mass-murder/suicide,” said Victoroff. “It appears to have been premeditated. And it was preventable.”

Lubitz’s apparently intentional act bears little resemblance to virtually all of the roughly 41,000 suicides that took place in the U.S. in 2013, experts said. Rather, they say, it more closely — in all but the weapon used — resembled the murderous handiwork of Seung-hui Cho and Adam Lanza, who carried out mass murders at Virginia Tech in 2007 and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.

The perpetrators of these mass murders were intent on taking their own lives, according to the notes they left behind. While as many as 90 percent of suicides are thought to be impulsive acts, the murder-suicide is virtually never impulsive, said Florida State University psychologist Thomas Joiner, author of “The Perversion of Virtue: Understanding Murder-Suicide.”

Joiner says murder-suicides, which he estimates claim the lives of 1,000 to 1,500 in the United States each year, are almost always the result of extensive rumination, planning, and self-justification. In cases where the perpetrator expects the death toll to be high, he added, that is especially so.

“Two things we’re deeply afraid of in our bones: One is death, the other is killing, and these kinds of events combine those very scary thoughts into one act,” he said. “That takes all the more planning. We’re just not wired that way, and it’s hard to overcome that wiring.”

Overwhelming that wiring requires a perpetrator to recast his actions as a means to more virtuous end, said Joiner, who cited mercy, justice, duty, and glory as common justifications. By this reasoning, a jilted lover must kill himself and his beloved because he reasons she will be unhappy without him; a parent committing suicide must take her children with her, lest they be left alone; or a government’s actions must be avenged.

Those willing to kill others when taking their own lives are generally male and are extremely hostile, psychiatrists say. Most have a history of mental anguish that may extend back to childhood.

In personality assessments and in sessions with mental health professionals, they also tend to exhibit callousness and narcissism. They often have an inflated view of themselves and their powers, and a powerful sense of entitlement.

In manifestoes and personal accounts they leave behind, their sense of victimhood — and their vengeful drive to punish their tormentors — are common themes, experts say. And yet, they wish to be remembered for a grand and even glorious accomplishment.

Much of that is evident only in hindsight.

“Everyone wants us to believe this guy had a sign around his neck saying I’m depressed, I’m angry, and I’m ready to commit murder-suicide — that it’s that obvious,” said Pitt. “The reality is that it’s seldom that obvious…. These people, while troubled, can seemingly hold it together for a protracted period of time and not raise any substantive red flags till it’s too late.”

But Pitt said the lessons of hindsight are increasingly informing the ability of forensic psychiatrists and psychologists to spot red flags.

“How you tell the difference” between depressed and dangerous, said Pitt, “is where the art meets the science.”

But experts are also guided by an increasing body of science.

Researchers are beginning to discern physical markers that suggest an individual’s propensity to harm himself and others. Recent studies have linked low levels of the “feel good” neurotransmitter serotonin and the hormone oxytocin to a propensity for suicide as well as aggressive behavior.

Neuroscientists have also identified a small number of differences in the structure and wiring of key brain regions that distinguish extremely violent offenders. Victoroff said such abnormalities in the brain’s prefrontal cortex — the seat of planning, initiative, self-control, and social judgment — and in connections between the prefrontal cortex and brain structures responsible for emotional regulation and threat response could be detected on a magnetic resonance imaging scan that could be conducted at any community hospital.

Genetic science is also increasingly yielding clues about a propensity for aggression. Last October, researchers canvassing a large prison population in Finland identified two sites on the genome that might serve as red flags for extremely violent behavior. One genetic variation they found was almost three time more common in prisoners convicted of 10 or more violent crimes than it was in a large comparison group of non-offenders.

Collectively, experts predict that a panel of such biomarkers — augmented by a psychiatrist’s examination and by personality inventories that can help detect subterfuge and distorted thinking — might someday be used to keep problematic employees from positions in which they hold others’ lives in their hands.

While it’s too late to conduct an MRI scan of Lubitz’s brain, said Victoroff, a licked envelope or a hair left behind might reveal the presence of such a genetic red flag.

Experts acknowledge that predicting whether an individual is on a path toward suicide, violent behavior — or both — is anything but simple. And efforts to do so are likely to draw resistance from employee, privacy, and civil liberties advocates. Victoroff, for his part, contends that such tools should be used where public safety is at stake.

“We don’t want to pull people out of their careers for minor personal quirks, or even having had an episode of depression,” said Victoroff. “But the combination of problems this guy was exhibiting was too much.”

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo via Flickr

French Officials Refute Claims Of Plane Crash Video Recording

French Officials Refute Claims Of Plane Crash Video Recording

By Jessica Camille Aguirre and Sebastian Kunigkeit, dpa (TNS)

PARIS — French prosecutors said they did not possess a cell phone video recording of the final moments of Germanwings flight 4U9525 on Wednesday, telling dpa that remnants of mobile phones found at the crash site were likely too damaged to yield footage.

“In the event that someone has such a video, they should turn it over to police without delay,” Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin told French media on Wednesday, repeating comments he made to dpa late on Tuesday dismissing media reports claiming to have seen footage.

France’s Paris Match and German tabloid Bild published minute-by-minute accounts of the plane’s last minutes late on Tuesday, which they say are based on quotes and information drawn from a video found on a mobile phone at the crash site.

The accounts largely reflect statements Robin gave to press last week after listening to a recovered cockpit voice recorder, from which he surmised that 27-year-old co-pilot Andreas Lubitz intentionally crashed the plane into mountainside in southern France killing himself and 149 others.

Site of the crash

Data from the cockpit voice recorder is one of the key pieces of evidence used by prosecutors to reconstruct the flight’s last moments. The rest of plane along with the contents of a second black box shattered on impact into thousands of pieces.

Germanwings CEO Thomas Winkelmann and Carsten Spohr, the CEO of parent company Lufthansa, travelled to a memorial near the site of the crash on Wednesday where they stood in silence for several moments before laying flowers.

On Tuesday, Lufthansa said its flight training school knew of Lubitz’s problems with depression, producing a 2009 email in which he explained he was ready to resume flight training after a break. In it, he informed the school of a “previous episode of severe depression.”

At the memorial site, Spohr expressed his grief and thanked French authorities for their work, but declined to answer journalists’ questions about when the air carrier found out about Lubitz’s 2009 email.

Lufthansa provided the email along with other documents to prosecutors in the German city of Dusseldorf and said it was cooperating fully with the investigation.

National memorial service

Earlier, Spohr said Lubitz had passed all his medical tests, and that he “was fit for flying without any restrictions.”

Prosecutors said that Lubitz had been in treatment with psychiatrists and neurologists and that a doctor had noted a suicidal tendency in him before he received his pilot’s license.

In the town of Haltern in the west of Germany, families and friends were to gather late on Wednesday for an ecumenical religious service in memory of the 16 school pupils and two teachers from a local school killed in the crash.

The students from the town’s Joseph Koenig Gymnasium had been returning from a trip to Spain.

The service was to be held in the Catholic church of St Sixtus, the same venue as used for a memorial service last Friday with Germany’s President Joachim Gauck.

Germany’s national memorial service for the dead is to be held April 17 in the Catholic cathedral of Cologne with Chancellor Angela Merkel attending.

Photo: GE Deutschland via Flickr

Lufthansa: Flight School Knew Of Lubitz’s Depression

Lufthansa: Flight School Knew Of Lubitz’s Depression

By Jessica Camille Aguirre and Jean-Baptiste Piggin, dpa (TNS)

PARIS — Lufthansa’s flight training school knew of Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz’s problems with depression during his training, the air carrier reported Tuesday.

The company produced a 2009 email Tuesday in which Lubitz explained that he was prepared to resume flight training after a break. In it, he informed the school of a “previous episode of severe depression.”

Lufthansa provided the email along with other documents to prosecutors and said it was cooperating fully with the investigation.

The revelation is likely to raise questions about why the news didn’t raise red flags at Lufthansa, which had insisted last week that Lubitz — who is believed to have intentionally crashed Germanwings flight 4U9525 in the French Alps on March 24 — “was fit for flying without any restrictions.”

“His performance was without criticism. Nothing was striking,” said Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr on Thursday.
Germanwings is the budget subsidiary of Lufthansa.

Data from the recovered black box prompted the Marseille prosecutor, who is leading a criminal investigation, to say that Lubitz locked himself alone in the cockpit and manually changed the plane’s course — intentionally causing its demise.

Speculation has been rife as to what prompted Lubitz to bring the plane down, and German authorities have been reluctant to share information about the young pilot’s personal life.

Prosecutors in the German city of Dusseldorf said Monday that Lubitz had been in treatment with psychiatrists and neurologists, and that a doctor had noted a suicidal tendency in him before he received his pilot’s license. Lubitz began working for Lufthansa in 2013.

Though he possessed notes from a doctor excusing him from work on the day of the crash, prosecutors said they had not found evidence he suffered from a physical illness. A hospital where Lubitz was treated said earlier that reports he was treated for depression were false.

The disclosures triggered debate in Germany about whether doctors should flag mental illness issues to employers. Under confidentiality rules, German sick notes for work do not disclose any diagnosis.

Several politicians have said doctors should routinely warn employers whenever a worker in a high-responsibility job such as a pilot has mental health issues, but the president of the German Chamber of Psychotherapists, Rainer Richter, rejected that.

He told dpa that German law already overrides confidentiality if a therapist learns that a patient intends to harm people.

“Doctors and psychotherapists are already empowered to breach confidentiality if that would avert harm to third parties. In cases where it’s a matter of life and death, that’s not just permission, it’s duty,” he said.

Tuesday’s news came after French aviation officials narrowed their probe, focusing on cockpit rules and psychological screenings, as experts worked to formally identify victims from pieces of human remains recovered at the plane’s crash site.

Aviation authority BEA is attempting to reconstruct the history of the flight from the cockpit black box voice recorder. The contents of a second black box, the flight data recorder, are still being sought amidst the wreckage of the plane, which had been carrying 150 people when it slammed into a mountainside in southern France.

“The safety investigation will be oriented towards the cockpit door locking system logic and cockpit access and exit procedures, as well as the criteria and procedures applied to detect specific psychological profiles,” the BEA said in a statement.

The BEA will submit its findings to French authorities, along with possible recommendations for changes to national flight safety regulations.

Last week’s crash has already reverberated widely, as airlines around the world introduced new rules requiring two people to be present in the cockpit.

Separately, an insurance consortium has set aside $300 million to meet claims connected to the Germanwings crash, a Lufthansa spokesman said.

The sum is to cover compensation claims by the families of the 150, the loss of the Airbus A320 and associated personnel costs, he said.

Patricia Willaert, the head of the prefecture where the crash site is, said at a news conference that there were 2,000 available lodging places for victims’ relatives who wanted to travel to the region.

French authorities in Paris are working to identify the victims, and officials have said they hope to have DNA from every victim by the end of the week. Francois Daoust, the head of the lab in charge of tracing each victim using DNA technology, said the process of formal identification could take up to four months.

Workers finished a road up to the crash site Tuesday, which should make collecting the remains and other evidence easier.

Photo: Jens via Flickr