Pilots And Mental Illness

     Unfortunately, Germanwings Flight 9525 was the last flight for 144 passengers including 16 students and 2 teachers, a British engineer and a prominent opera singer with her partner and toddler child, Felix. The airbus took off from Barcelona, Spain to arrive at Dusseldorf airport in Germany but never made it as it crashed 62 miles North-west of Nice in the French Alps. This was the first crash in the 18 year history of Germanwings airline.

     The crash was deliberately caused by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, after he was instructed by his captain, Patrick Sondenheimer, to prepare for landing while he excused himself to use the bathroom. Unknown to the Captain, he was leaving the controls of the aircraft in the hands of a psychiatric patient diagnosed with depression. Captain Sondenheimer should have been more vigilant after he got a very cryptic and quite nervy response from his co-pilot. "Hopefully", he said. "we'll see". After the Captain left the cocpit, first officer Andreas Lubitz locked the door and disabled the access panel. Without responding the calls, shouts and banging on the door from his Captain, without responding to ATC calls, he set the autopilot to descend to 100 feet and accelerated the speed of the descending aircraft several times before it eventually crashed into the side of a mountain in the French Alps.

     The co-pilot's mental illness was documented and he shouldn't have been allowed to fly in his conditions. Also, he's shown a pattern of lying and deception which should have raised a red flag to his superiors including his curt response to the Captain which should have seriously bothered the Captain. Prior to the accident he had an episode that made him drop out of flight training which was treated and he was cleared for duty. He was also required to be examined by Lufthansa's Aeromedical center due to the SIC notation on his medical records.

     Based on the Pilot Fitness Aviation Rule-making Committee Report published on November 18, 2015 there are several recommendations for tackling Pilot mental illness and the FAA in conjunction with Aircarriers have been battling to raise awareness and implement these programs. I think from the perspective of the Airlines and the FAA taking serious measures like this will only further reduce the number of pilots we have and airlines will definitely loose money, which lets be honest is as important as safety when it comes to priority. I think the airlines will also be very reluctant to do anything because the number of mental illness related accidents are very low. In other words they probably wouldn't see the need to fix something that's not really that broken yet. I think it'll be a slow, long process to fully implement any measures to eradicate mental illness among pilots. 

REFERENCES

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/committees/documents/media/pilot%20fitness%20arc%20report.11302015.pdf

https://www.gq.com/story/germanwings-flight-9525-final-moments