German pilot purposefully crashes plane and kills 150

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/26/us-france-crash-idUSKBN0MK2U020150326 (not the most known/reliable website but the only one I found with a quick search that was both in English and without shocking images/videos. I'm at work so didn't have much time but wanted to post this)

Apparently the pilot left the cockpit to go to the toilet, upon returning got his door unlock code blocked by the co-pilot who set the plane for quick descent until it crashed on the Alps. From what could be gathered from the black box the co-pilot was breathing normally throughout the whole thing which seems to indicate that he decided to commit suicide (if you can call suicide to killing 150 people). You can also hear the pilot trying to break down the door and calling for the co-pilot and getting no answer. The co-pilot didn't say a word throughout the whole thing.

Depending on the sources he was being treated for depression, was being treated for other mental issues, was in the middle of a nervous breakdown and/or had just broken up with his girlfriend but beyond a torn-up permission paper to take sick days found at his house it's all unproven. The point they all seem to agree is that the airline knew nothing about any of this.

This is quite shocking for me, not only because my wife is going to spend the next 2 months flying back and forth and a group of people I know were going to take that same destination flight later this week but mostly because I can't believe someone would kill 150 people just to commit suicide...

Surprised it took this long for someone to finally post this. Couldn't believe it after the announcement. Description of the co-pilots demeanor before the crash - silent and normal breathing - makes my skin crawl.

My thoughts as well.

One can only wonder what was going through that man's head. Was his intention to commit suicide with a blast, making a (horrible) difference in the world? There's still much to look into regarding his motives and actions.

Reports coming in say he had an undisclosed illness. Possibly depression which led to suicide - or maybe a terminal illness. Still a lot yet unknown.

My heavens....I can slightly understand why people would want to take their own lives...I don't agree with it, but there are usually mitigating factors; I can never fathom however the selfishness of wanting to include innocents in such a horrible act. Human beings....we have such an overwhelming darkness inside :(

That's a hundred kinds of fucked up. Never did understand people who feel the need to take others with them.

It still doesn't expain why he decided to take all those people down with him. I can only guess that severe depression(or the impending death of a terminal disease) had maddened him in such a way that he decided to commit homicide on top of suicide.

Yeah, read about it in morning newspaper. Tragic :(

Most people who commit suicide due to an illness have little awareness of their actions - or a level of apathy that makes them not care. If it was suicide, odds are he felt he was in a position to do it and his calmness make one think he was focused only of his own death.

Jesus...

@johnd13: @SaintLeonidas: I normally don't create threads since I'm fairly bad at it, but since nobody else created one, I felt like I should.

@Motokid6: Apparently the screams only started in the final seconds so thankfully it seems people didn't realise what was about to happen until the very end.

I really can't imagine what was in his mind...reminds me of a guy I knew who would go ballistic every time he got dumped...would start saying he was going to kill himself if she didn't take him back. If he had a plane on his hands I don't doubt he'd think "you don't care if I die, let's see how you'll feel when all these people's deaths are on you". With people saying this guy got dumped by his girlfriend I can't help but think this might be a possibility.

Scary stuff :(

@indzman: Very much so.

If you're dead, I guess it doesn't make a difference to you.

But when it involves the lives of so many people, it doesn't really sound like suicide anymore but something else entirely. Usually people who kill themselves don't aim to take out as many people with them as possible - unless he was incredibly misanthropic. I always figured someone misanthropic would just prefer to kill people without killing themselves.

@KHAndAnime: A lot of people I know who have had suicide thoughts say they never did it because they were not certain they would succeed. This one seems to be a fairly certain way to die and if you're in such a state of apathy that you couldn't care less about anybody else...

Waiting for the audio to come out. It will be devastating.

I bet someone is looking to buy the movie rights already.

Sounds like these individuals with suicidal thoughts didn't think about it hard enough. There are things you can eat or drink that will guarantee death. There are buildings (or some cliffs) I can point out that if you were to access the roof, you wouldn't survive the fall under any circumstances. The dude's a pilot - he could have rented a personal aircraft for $100/hr and then crashed that plane instead.

Why is the co-pilot allowed to block the pilots door code?

I don't care how depressed or suicidal he was, he's a rotten to the core, scum bag terrorist for choosing to take 150 people to their deaths along with him. There is no pity for this man. All will remember him as a terrorist. We can only hope that there is a place called hell for people like this.

"Terrorist"...I don't think you know what that word - or terrorism - means.

Terrorism

1.systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal

2.the act of terrorizing

3.the state of being terrorized

Fits the bill perfectly if you ask me.

Because a terrorist might gain access to the cockpit.

If he were a terrorist he would have crashed the plane in a crowded city centre to maximize casualties.

Maybe he just took the best chance he saw. Didn't care about the others.

Not exactly sure how the lone act of an mentally ill individual fits the bill of a terrorist act. He did not appear to be doing this for any philosophical or political agenda. There is no evidence of the deliberate intent to strike fear in the lives of others. Also, his actions don't leave any reason for people going forward to fear another attack. By your definition - a guy simply committing a homicide would also be a terrorist.

That's what my wife said as well. That's also one of the reasons it made me think of the girlfriend theory...

Ironically enough, safety measures...

(The image was originally against a white background so dark theme users might have a bit of trouble reading it; sorry)

@SaintLeonidas:

Okay, so let me get this straight. A highly trained co-pilot that is considered to be a perfectly normal, sane and friendly by those around him one day decides that his life isn't worth a damn, so let's end it! Now, he had many options available to him to end his miserable sorry existence. Let us try to comprehend the option he took.

This guy went to work, boarded a plane with 150 passengers, and waited for the opportune moment for his captain to leave the cockpit. Immediately, he decided to flick the switch to put the security door on complete lock-down mode, then proceeded to put the plane in full descent, all the while his captain is trying to bash the door down. 8 minutes later, everyone on board is obliterated. With all that said, am I supposed to believe that this guy had no idea what he was doing? Had no idea of consequences of his actions? Was not trying to instill fear into the world by killing all of those people? This guy was clearly aware of what he was doing. There is no doubt about that. Sure, he may have had mental issues but it could easily be argued that Mr jihadist suicide bomber also has mental issues.

This is a freak accident. Flying is still, by far, the safest way to travel. I think it's statistically more likely that you'll get struck by lighting while getting eaten by a shark than die in a plane crash.

As for the man responsible, this is why depression and mental illness needs to stop being a taboo subject. What really struck me about the report when I first heard about it, was that people who knew him were saying things like "He didn't seem like he was depressed". Well, no shit, depression is largely invisible, since depressed people are amazing at hiding their feelings. Trust me, I went through a spell of it.

If there wasn't such a stigma around depression and mental illness, he might have sought some help before deciding to take 150 people's lives with him.

The pilot probably used an easy-to-guess password, allowing the copilot to impersonate him and change the code.

@Stesilaus: Nah, you can block access from within the cabin by flipping a switch, that way even if someone guesses the code from outside the crew is still safe in the cockpit.

There is no code on the inside, it's just a simple flick of a switch which overrides the code pad on the outside. Seems like a flawed system if you ask me.

Which is why the Canadian government is already on the case and is working on making it mandatory that no less than two people can be in the cockpit at one time.

Occam's razor would suggest a temporary episode of psychosis brought on by his depression. Of course, this would require him to have severe depression which is more than what people have said he had, but it's a far more simple conclusion than calling it an act of terrorism.

Exactly. The assumption that people suffering from depression, who get so bad as to kill themselves, are aware of what they are doing - or able to stop themselves from doing it - shows how much ignorance still surrounds the illness. Many people who kill themselves are at total peace at the moment. Given the description of the co-pilot's illness - and the way in which he was totally silent and breathing normally when he took over the plane - supports this.

Agreed in full.

But man, this is some very, very fucked up shit. If there's a hell, I really hope that asshole is burning. I know he was mentally ill, but there's just no excuse for mass murdering 149 people, especially through such a selfish act. I used to get angry when people called suicidal people selfish, but I understand why some people think that. If you kill yourself in a manner that ends up killing others (like this) or force someone to kill you against their will (like running in front of a fast moving vehicle), that's definitely selfish, no question about that.

Suicide is selfish. Plain and simple. There is no consideration for others when the act is considered/taken, especially loved ones.

There are so many resources for people thinking about suicide these days, that there should be so few of them left... and yet, it's still incredibly prevalent, especially in the information age, with kids getting trolled on Facebook and then crying about their low self-esteem and suffocating themselves or whatever dumb shit.

Now, I'm obviously sounding like a complete asshole right now, but I value my life so highly, and the lives of others (especially those I love) so highly, that I cannot stand people who would waste such an amazing thing such as life. No matter what they might believe about what may or may not happen after they die (in fact, my mother-(almost)-in-law is pretty much giving up on life because of her problems with chronic pain, and has this unshakeable belief that there's a Heaven and she'd rather be there with her dead mother than continue living this life and see her grandchildren... it's one of the most ridiculously selfish things I've encountered in my life).

http://www.smh.com.au/world/germanwings-flight-4u9525-crash-andreas-lubitz-planned-gesture-to-make-everyone-remember-him-20150328-1m9uzb.html

Looks like his ex-girlfriend has explained how a few days before the crash, the co-pilot talked to her about how he would do something that would ''make everyone remember him''.

Am I the only one feeling a bit sick in my stomach right now? How do you even...

@genius2365: I don't even know what to say to that...

Yeah, it really is sad that so many people commit suicide in this day and age. Life is not nearly as shitty as it used to be. Maybe that's my first world privilege speaking there, but generally life is a lot better now than at any other point in human history. About 800,000 people commit suicide worldwide each year. In the US, suicides outnumber homicides. And when it comes to gun deaths, all we hear about are gun homicides, yet gun suicides consistently outnumber gun homicides. If mental illness weren't still a fucking taboo, more lives could be saved each year. Even in our technologically advanced era, social stigma is still really powerful. We need to stop pretending like mental illness is not a severe problem. It's the 21st century. Time to join it.

More suicide facts here if you're interested: www.save.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewPage&page_id=705D5DF4-055B-F1EC-3F66462866FCB4E6

(GameSpot's new link system sucks monkey balls)

If those reports are true, than this is a very different situation all together.

This story ...

Sad that he took so many lives with him.

If you're going to end your life, just do it in the comfort of your own home and don't subject anyone to your misery.

Guy is a piece of shit and there is a special place in hell for him.

Sorry, but mental illness doesn't excuse this shit.

@SaintLeonidas: Indeed. The part that bugs me the most about this is the fact that it's happened before. Off hand, I can remember it happening it once on a FedEx cargo plane, and an Egypt air passenger flight, I was really into aviation as a kid, watched all the TV shows about plane crashes. The one type of potential crash that bugged me the most was this kind: one pilot locking the other out.

Since then, I always had a nagging feeling that something like this could happen again. This is not something that is easy to prevent, and that's why it's so deadly. It's a problem that affects individuals and societies around the world. I mean, at a certain point, there's only so much that you can do within reason. I mean, the airline had protocols in place to detect this sort of behavior, but there's only so much an external source can do, like a doctor or psychologist. The main way to tackle this issue would be educate everyone about mental illness, but because it's still so taboo and difficult to pick up one, this is a very difficult problem to solve.

Sure, you could have a two people in the cockpit at all times, but what's to keep the co-pilot from taking the captain by surprise, knocking him out in about a minute, locking the door and proceeding as planned?

What if you give each pilot a special access code to override the cockpit door in the event of an emergency? What's to say he doesn't get this code stolen before the flight? What if the pilot decides to remember the code for that particular plane and sells the info to the highest bidder, terrorist or otherwise?

My point is, the main issue is not the airline and aircraft safety procedures. Air travel remains among the safest modes of transportation out there. The fact that this happened shows that aviation, in this case, was but a symptom and result of the true problem. Mental illness is something that will be tough to weed out. In our advanced and competitive world, the social and economic pressures might just be too much for some to bear. But that's ok. It happens. The point is, when you have a broken leg, you go see a doctor. When you have a mental issue, you should go see a psychologist. Making that connection is one society is still trying to come to grips with, and I for one feel it cannot come soon enough, not just for those affected, but for every innocent live taken in this crash, and beyond.

x2