The Suicidal Pilot

The true-crime incident about a co-pilot named Andreas Lubitz who killed 150 people, including himself, and led to the fall of a giant airline company named Germanwings.

The Crash

Even after so many disastrous airplane crashes in the aviation industry, the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 is yet the most horrific one. 24 March 2015 is considered one of the darkest days in the history of Europe. After a few days of research on the internet about this crash, I finally cultivated a fear of airplanes or, most specifically, the fear of “airplane pilots” within me.

On 24 March 2015, the flight Germanwings 9525 took off from Barcelona and was due to arrive at Düsseldorf Airport, but it never did. It was a beautiful day with a bittersweet temperature of 20 degrees celsius with short exposures of cool breezes. It was the day anyone could have barely thought could become the darkest day of the town. On the flight, there were 144 passengers and six crew members. Among the passengers was a group of enthusiastic students, excited to return to their homes after a long and exhausting semester at Giola Institute.

Very talented opera performers Oleg Bryjak and Maria Radner were also onboard their career was about to push off with a popular opera company Deutsche Oper am Rhein, which was situated in Düsseldorf. Overall, it was a beautiful day for everyone, and no one could have even imagined what happened 40 minutes after the takeoff. Aircraft was a trusted Airbus A320, which had an excellent flight record with no defects. No one knew that they had only 40 minutes to live except one person. Both the pilot and co-pilot were experienced with flying Airbus A320, but the co-pilot Andreas Lubitz had a different purpose of flying today.

Half an hour had already passed, and the airplane was cruising at 38,000 ft. Now here’s the conversation recovered from the black box after the crash:

Lubitz : If you need to go to the bathroom, now’s your chance.

Captain : Good idea, I think I will go.

As the captain left the cockpit, Lubitz changed the settings of the aircraft. Aircraft started to descent steadily towards the alps. After a few minutes, the captain returned from the bathroom but observed that the cockpit is locked. He started knocking on the door, but there was no answer. Air traffic control observed flight's cruising altitude was lower than expected and tried to contact the pilots multiple times, but there was no answer. All the attempts to contact the co-pilot Lubitz were unsuccessful. There was complete silence inside the cockpit. After few minutes passed and Lubitz didn’t respond captain started banging the door of the cockpit. He tried to breach using the ax, but according to the new regulations after the 9/11 attack, it was almost impossible to break inside the cockpit.

Now, passengers could hear the bangings, and they started to panic. None of the ways to contact the co-pilot was successful. After a few minutes, the flight crashed into the mountains and killed everyone inside the plane.

Investigation

It was the most unexpected crash anyone could think of. All the things were perfect, the aircraft condition, pilot experience, and weather condition. The investigation was started by FBEA, and couldn’t possibly think about what went wrong. But weeks after the crash, the flight's data recorder and black box were recovered from the alps' debris. The black box contains all the conversation of the cockpit and complete analytical data of the flight. The initial phase of the investigation revealed that none of the aircraft equipment failed. BEA thought maybe the oxygen level dropped inside the cockpit, or Lubitz fell asleep, and headphones fell from his head. The data revealed nothing was wrong inside the cockpit, and all equipment was working absolutely fine. Soon, the cockpit recordings were translated and revealed extremely horrifying truths. Some of the facts that came forward were:

• It was confirmed that Lubitz's headphones were on his ears until the flight crashed because Lubitz’s breathing patterns were audible in the recordings.

• The banging on the doors of the cockpit was recorded.

• Even the last screams of the passengers were also recorded in the flight recorder.

So, it means Lubitz was listening to all the things ATC was saying and everything the captain was saying. He could hear the passengers crying, the captain shouting, and ATC too. Why didn’t he react? On top of that, why did he changed the cruising altitude of the flight? Oxygen level was also normal. He was wide awake and steadily breathing.

After further investigations, an abnormal thing was discovered. On the same flight from Dusseldorf to Barcelona, Lubitz had practiced a similar setting for the aircraft multiple times whenever he was alone in the cockpit but reverted back as soon as the captain re-entered. So, he was practicing his suicidal plan on a plane with more than 100 passengers.

It was finally revealed that the cause of the crash was a weird alteration of the cruising altitude of the plane in the middle of the flight.

The question was, why?

After searching Lubitz's apartment and laptops, few pieces of evidence were found. A burnt letter which declared him “unfit for work” by the doctors and the internet search history which included “ways to commit suicide” and “cockpit doors and their security provisions.” The mystery was finally solved. He was suffering from a mental and psychosomatic problem. He feared that he might lose his job due to vision problems, which lead to severe depression.

Doctors knew his profession and illness, so why didn’t they inform the authorities? Now, here comes the political vice. According to some german law, even if you become blind and tell your doctor you will fly a commercial aircraft with 500 passengers, they won’t inform the authorities to maintain the “patient’s confidentiality.” The most unbelievable thing about this case is the German “Law.”

Many reforms were made in the aviation rule. Germanwings was discontinued. This crash shook the world. The airplane pilots have the lives of thousands of people in their hands. How could german doctors risk the lives of those peoples? Many such questions were raised.

Now, you might have understood why I said this crash was the most horrific aviation disaster. Various reforms were made after this crash. For example, in the cockpit, at least two pilots need to be available throughout the journey. But I thought about the people who use to travel around the time when the crash happened. Following thoughts might have crossed the minds of the passenger at least once who boarded flights in 2015 :

• Maybe the pilot is sad and no one knows it.
• Maybe the pilot is suffering from some mental illness, just like Lubitz.

The Aviation board didn’t consider the mental status of the pilot as a significant factor around 2015. After this incident, various alterations were made to the rules, and this was taken into consideration.

The more you think about this, the worse it gets. I don’t know what happened to me after reading about this. I am afraid of airplanes and pilots.

The documentary about the crash came out under a TV series, “Mayday (Air Crash Investigation),” and was named “Murder In The Skies.” The title, quite appropriately explained what happened. It was not the suicide of one Andreas Lubitz… it was the planned murder of 149 people.