Pilot suicides a deeper delve….

 

Pilot suicides a deeper delve….

In my previous article I had talked about the Mystery of the MH370 flight.  In this case one can always argue how do you know it is a pilot suicide…?? Can’t there be any other reason. Of course there can be other reasons but my speculation rests on expert opinions. After carefully considering and setting aside all other scenarios we arrived at the scenario where only pilot suicide could not be ruled out.  Okay we will set aside the speculations about MH370 and step into the world of confirmed pilot suicides.

It has happened in 4 different airliners in 4 different nations.

1.       China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 (speculated, investigation still underway)

2.       Egyptian Airliner EgyptAir Flight 990

3.       African Airliner LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470

4.       German wings flight 9525

Of these the second and third although there is clear evidence, but the conspiracy theory shenanigans have turned it out into speculation matches and mired it in so much muck that the facts and evidences are lost in the conspiracy theory angles.

Let us consider the German wings pilot. It is a confirmed case of pilot suicide. The pilot (Andreas Günter Lubitz) who did this act (in this case ramming an airline against the French Alps, himself dying and taking the lives of more than 100 people with him) was a young pilot who had everything to look forward to in life. He had a girlfriend, a good paying job, job respect (more importantly) and more…..so why did he commit this act..?? For this we have to delve deeper into his mind.

When people are severely depressed only one thought goes through their mind. How to commit suicide….? While outwardly they look normal, inside a raging battle takes place in their head. They just want to die. And what easier way to take it out than to crash the airliner with them.  These instances (pilot suicides) although rare still exist and we have to take some safeguards against them. We should do more psychological testing on pilots to find any underlying cause(s).

In case of the Germanwings flight, although the captain of the airliner knew what was about to happen he couldn’t prevent it due to 9/11 procedures. The cockpit door was so reinforced that you just couldn’t breakdown and enter it. Germanwings is the low cost carrier of Lufthansa. Again corporate apathy also played a significant part here. Instead of knee jerk reactions corporate(s) should reverse their policy to prevent such accidents from happening again.  In this case Lufthansa did not take any responsibility for the crash and only paid the victims minimum compensation. They shifted the blame to the testing authorities, in this case the doctors for not finding it (by ‘it’ I mean the pilot’s mental state).

My suggestions regarding this. The pilot had been taking medications for severe depression for the past few years. He should have been more thoroughly vetted by the organization before letting him fly. Whenever people are flying (they say it is the safest form of travel) we are putting our lives in the hands of pilots. They should show some moral responsibility. If you wanna die why don’t you die alone. It is one of the biggest conundrums………..