Suicidal Germanwings pilot had struggled in US flight school

[webfact]

Suicidal Germanwings pilot had struggled in US flight school

By JOAN LOWY

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The German pilot who deliberately flew his airliner into a mountainside last year had struggled with learning to fly and had failed a key test of his skills during training in the U.S., according to FBI interviews with his flight instructors.

 

Andreas Lubitz was promoted anyway. But his training difficulties were one more "red flag" that should have caused Lufthansa and the airline's Arizona flight school to take a closer look and discover his history of depression, asserted attorneys representing families of crash victims.

 

Lubitz was a co-pilot for Germanwings, a regional airline owned by Lufthansa, when he locked Flight 9524's captain out of the cockpit and set the plane on a collision course with a mountain in the French Alps last year. All 144 passengers and six crew members, including Lubitz, were killed.

 

One instructor, Juergen Theerkorn, described Lubitz as "not an ace pilot," and said he failed one flight test because of a "situational awareness issue." In aviation, loss of situational awareness usually means a pilot becomes absorbed in something and loses track of what else is happening with the plane.

 

Another instructor, Scott Nickell, told the FBI that Lubitz lacked "procedural knowledge" and had trouble with splitting his attention between instruments inside the plane and watching what was happening outside. But while Lubitz struggled with training, he would achieve passing scores enabling him to continue the program, Nickell said.

 

Lubitz failed one of five check rides, which are important tests of a pilot's flying skills, and one of 67 training flights, Matthias Kippenberg, president and CEO of the Airline Training Center Arizona, told the FBI. However, Kippenberg dismissed the failures as unremarkable, saying students are given the opportunity to retake the tests. Only 1 or 2 percent of students fail to be promoted, he said.

 

The FBI conducted the interviews a week after the March 24, 2015, crash. Summaries were only recently released by prosecutors in Germany, according to attorneys with Kriendler & Kriendler in New York, who are representing the families in a lawsuit against the flight school. The lawyers provided copies to The Associated Press.

 

Lufthansa spokeswoman Christina Semmel declined to comment "due to the ongoing legal proceedings." The flight school referred calls to Lufthansa.

 

Officials for Lufthansa and the flight school didn't immediately reply to requests for comment.

 

An investigation has revealed that Lubitz was being treated for a relapse of severe depression and suicidal tendencies but had hid the information from Germanwings.

 

Germany's strict patient privacy laws didn't allow doctors to share medical information with an employer without the patient's permission.

 

Lubitz had had a previous bout of depression in 2008 and had informed Lufthansa, taking a leave of absence two months after starting ground school training in Germany. He was allowed to resume training ten months later after providing a statement from his doctor that he had recovered.

 

Lubitz was originally scheduled to begin his training at the flight school in Arizona in September 2009, but was rescheduled for September 2010. He didn't actually start until November. Lufthansa told the school in an email that the delay was due to "a long illness," Sherri Harwood, the school's administrative services manager, told the FBI.

 

The FBI summaries don't contain a copy of that email, so it's not known whether Lufthansa told the school the nature of Lubitz's illness, said Brian Alexander, one of the attorneys representing the families.

 

The FBI interviews show that flight school officials "acknowledge knowing (Lubitz) struggled in training, had a long illness and was delayed for over a year," Alexander said. "They also admit he failed a check ride due to a loss of situational awareness, which may very well have been caused by the very same anxiety and severe depression which were symptoms of his mental health disorder."

 

It remains unclear what specific information the school had about Lubitz' medical condition. But If the school had checked, Alexander said, it might have learned that German authorities had twice turned down applications from Lubitz for a pilot medical certificate because of his history of depression before issuing him a certificate in July 2009. That certificate stated it would become invalid if he had a relapse.

 

In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration also initially declined to grant Lubitz a student pilot medical certificate because he said on his application that he hadn't been treated for any mental disorders, and he failed to list doctors who had treated him as required. After a medical examiner working for the FAA in Germany caught the discrepancy, Lubitz refiled a corrected application.

 

The FAA could have refused to issue the certificate because Lubitz lied on the application, but he was allowed to provide a statement from his doctor that he was fit to fly and that medications for depression had been discontinued.

 

John Goglia, an aviation safety expert and former National Transportation Safety Board member, agreed with attorneys that Lubitz's struggles were a warning that should have caused the school to look closer, although "not a bright red one." It's not unusual for students to fail a single check ride, he said.

 

The school's washout rate of only 1 or 2 percent seems low, he said.

 

-- © Associated Press 2016-08-31

[HLover]

Seems he struggled after flight school as well, tragic.

[ezzra]

With acute shortages of civil aviation pilots, they allow inferior and unqualified pilots

through the door turning a blind eye..... at the expenses of the flying public,

[mohinga]

Not being an ace with regard to "situational awareness" and "procedural knowledge" could be a contributing factor. But the drugs he took (perhaps to compensate for a sense of inadequacy) might have been even more relevant.

http://ind.pn/2bQIpYX  A recent article in The Independent refers to his case:

"On 13 March 2016, French investigators released a report on the case of Andreas Lubitz, the German wings pilot who locked himself into the cockpit of a plane and crashed the plane carrying 150 people into the Alps. When I opened it I felt sick; just nine days before the accident, he was put on exactly the same antidepressant medication that I had been on when I became psychotic and nearly killed my kids. It was clearly stated in the toxicology report – citalopram, mirtazapine and zopiclone sleeping tablets.mentions

Edited August 31, 2016 by mohinga

[boomerangutang]

In response to Mohinga's post, above.  You're right.  Pharma drugs can be awful.  They contribute to many suicides, particularly among youngsters in the US.  Much worse than illegal drugs.  I don't blame only pharma drugs for the tragedic German flight, but it's surely a factor.

 

re; the pilot:  what a piece of shit he was.  Take your own life, ok, but take 150 people with you?!  Lowest of the low.   That's on par with Saddam Hussein torching Kuwaiti oil wells and polluting the region for decades.

[Dustdevil]

Looks like even the 9/11 human trash could fly better.

[Guitar God]

Even the person who graduates at the bottom of their class in medical school still gets to be a doctor. 

[williamgeorgeallen]

47 minutes ago, Dustdevil said:

Looks like even the 9/11 human trash could fly better.

9/11 crowd could spend more time on flight skills as they skipped having to learn landing procedures.

[Kiwi1]

In the clear view of hindsight the problems the man encountered during training were symptomatic of depression eg inability to multitask, problems with concentration. 

Mohinga does well to point the possibility that the medication my have made the condition worse instead of better. This seems to be a common experience among patients but there seems to be a lack of research on the question, which does no credit to the psychiatric profession and big pharma.

As far as the decision on suicide plus murder is concerned: an all too common scenario is where a parent (often but not always the father) kills his much loved family before killing him/herself. Survivors of unsuccessful suicides of this sort report that at the time they felt that life was so terrible and the world such a horrible place that they were doing a mercy killing.

On a more positive note, pilot suicide rates of all types are very low by comparison with other professionals with similar social profiles eg doctors and dentists.

[sandrabbit]

3 hours ago, Kiwi1 said:

In the clear view of hindsight the problems the man encountered during training were symptomatic of depression eg inability to multitask, problems with concentration. 

Mohinga does well to point the possibility that the medication my have made the condition worse instead of better. This seems to be a common experience among patients but there seems to be a lack of research on the question, which does no credit to the psychiatric profession and big pharma.

As far as the decision on suicide plus murder is concerned: an all too common scenario is where a parent (often but not always the father) kills his much loved family before killing him/herself. Survivors of unsuccessful suicides of this sort report that at the time they felt that life was so terrible and the world such a horrible place that they were doing a mercy killing.

On a more positive note, pilot suicide rates of all types are very low by comparison with other professionals with similar social profiles eg doctors and dentists.

Pilot suicides are not that uncommon either, there was an ex fighter pilot in Singapore who  crashed a plane due to personal problems including gambling debt. There are a few more examples than that and some 'unusual' crashes which were never fully explained.

[boomerangutang]

The missing Malaysian flight was also a suicide / mass murder.  Two clues, among many, are;

 

>>>  the pilot used to have a busy calendar, yet his calendar had  nothing scheduled beyond the flight date.  Nada.  
 

>>>  the pilot was a big fan of Malaysia's would-be PM who, the day before, was given a dire sentence on trumped up charges.

 

>>>  the pilot had a simulator and had practiced going that route into no-man's-area far west off Australia.

 

Safeguards should be put in place, as much as possible, to defend against potential mass murderers.   

[Dustdevil]

18 hours ago, boomerangutang said:

The missing Malaysian flight was also a suicide / mass murder.  Two clues, among many, are;

 

>>>  the pilot used to have a busy calendar, yet his calendar had  nothing scheduled beyond the flight date.  Nada.  
 

>>>  the pilot was a big fan of Malaysia's would-be PM who, the day before, was given a dire sentence on trumped up charges.

 

>>>  the pilot had a simulator and had practiced going that route into no-man's-area far west off Australia.

 

Safeguards should be put in place, as much as possible, to defend against potential mass murderers.   

And the Malaysian government assures us there was absolutely nothing wrong with their world-class pilot--a sure sign to believe the opposite, as you can never believe anything the Malaysian government says, especially when it comes to their air crashes.

[Prbkk]

While the initial flight training struggles are not so uncommon , as even those who later become talented and skilful pilots may have found similar difficulties ( the 'late bloomers'), really it's Lufthansa's failure: the onus was on them to test, certify, monitor, evaluate on a repeating cycle. One hopes it wasn't a culture of lower standards/scrutiny just because it was Euowings rather than 'head office'