France plane crash: No survivors expected

rugcat

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Agreed. I'd love to hear Opty's take on this, but, alas.

I think it's pretty clear nonetheless.
Sometimes when a person is suffering from a deep depressive episode and decides to commit suicide, they become disassociative – are so disconnected from the outside world that standard matters such as motivation and intent really no longer apply.
 

Torill

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Several news agencies have reported that Lubitz' sick notes were not about depression - see for instance this summary from the BBC yesterday:
Duesseldorf's University Hospital issued a statement (in German) saying Mr Lubitz had attended the hospital on 10 March and last month. Adding that it had handed his medical records over to prosecutors, it said reports the co-pilot had been treated there for depression were incorrect.
Germany's Rheinischer Post newspaper, which spoke to the hospital, quoted its own unnamed sources as saying Mr Lubitz had been suffering from a physical, rather than a mental, illness.
The same article also quotes the German tabloid Bild, who allegedly has spoken to Lubiz' former girlfriend:
The Germanwings co-pilot thought to have deliberately crashed his Airbus in the French Alps, killing 150 people, predicted "one day everyone will know my name", his ex-girlfriend says.
In an interview with Germany's Bild newspaper, she recalled a comment Andreas Lubitz made last year.
"One day I'm going to do something that will change the whole system, and everyone will know my name and remember," he told her.
The woman, a 26-year-old flight attendant who flew with Mr Lubitz for five months last year, was "very shocked" when she heard the news, the papers says.
If Mr Lubitz deliberately brought down the plane, "it is because he understood that because of his health problems, his big dream of a job at Lufthansa, as captain and as a long-haul pilot was practically impossible," she told Bild.
So - physical health problems that might jeopardize his career as a pilot, which he had dreamt of since he was a little boy according to several sources, might be one contributing factor here. (Bild is perhaps not the most reliable of sources, but still...)

I don't think we will ever fully know or understand what possessed Lubitz to commit a murder-suicide on this scale. This kind of act is so extreme, committed by so few, that we simply don't have enough data to form any kind of valid psychological theory about motivation. The investigators may find evidence of mental health problems, life problems etc etc that literally millions of people suffer without ever contemplating anything like this.

One rule of thumb I learned in my own professional education in psychology: you should never use an ordinary, common phenomenon to explain an extraordinary, rare one. Even if common phenomena may be present, you will need something more to explain the extraordinary outcome. That 'x' factor is something we may never find or understand in a case like this. Hard as that may be to accept, especially for the victims' families... Throwing around 'depression' as a possible cause may increase the stigma already attached to mental health problems and do more harm than good.

Here's another article from the BBC that sums up this point of view very nicely imo.
I see a new rule that an airline pilot's doctor (psychologist/therapist/whatever) has to send the note (email), or indeed ANY concern, directly to the patient's supervisor or someone with the authority to take one off duty and put in another pilot.
This is actually the case in my country, Norway. Not only for pilots, but for anyone in a position where they might put others at risk. Pilot's organizations have no problems with this, and to my knowledge it doesn't cause anyone to hide or not seek treatment. To my understanding, the culture among pilots is very much about 'safety first', and the duty to report any health problems they may have and declare themselves unfit to fly whenever they have a problem is seen as a given.

A doctor serving the airlines told our national TV about the kinds of problems flight personnel might come to him and discuss. One example was a call from a pilot who were heartbroken because their cat just died and wanted to discuss whether this perhaps made them unfit to fly...
If you're pessimistic, it's because everyone is assuming that the pilot who did this is white, and we have a problem with calling white men terrorists.
Maybe. But in this case I think it's more because no links or evidence of any kind of terror connection has been found. Terrorists want the world to know the reason for their attacks, because otherwise the terror won't work. So even if they work alone, they will leave a manifesto or statement behind to make sure the world knows. Nothing of that kind has been found here.
 
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amergina

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I have been wondering if he'd been diagnosed with either something terminal or degenerative.

That doesn't excuse mass-murder.
 

Torill

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Me too, to be honest. And no, that doesn't really explain or excuse anything. Just wondering...
 

nighttimer

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I'll skip the amateur psychological evaluation part until there's more to substantiate it. :rolleyes:

Back to the still-developing horror story


In a last-ditch attempt to enter the cockpit, the pilot of doomed Germanwings Flight 9525 used an ax to try to break down the reinforced door moments before the plane slammed into the French Alps, reports said Friday.

The accounts added another dramatic and tragic image as Tuesday’s tragedy unfolded: passengers crying out in terror as they realized the plane was on a collision course with the peaks, and the pilot desperately trying to override the apparent lockout measures of co-pilot Andreas Lubitz and regain control of the Airbus A320.

French prosecutors said the cockpit flight recorder was peppered with the sounds of the increasingly frantic banging on the cockpit door. And – as a chilling counterpoint – there was only the subtle sounds of Lubitz breathing after apparently setting the plane on a gradual descent into the mountains of southern France with 150 people aboard.

“Andreas, open that door! Open that door!’” the pilot yelled before reaching for the ax, France’s private television channel Métropole 6 reported, citing French investigators.

But cockpit doors around the world have been made to near combat-grade strength since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The doors now have complex locking systems and reinforced materials that can include Kevlar, a fiber-weave built to resist gunfire.
Based on what is already known, I have no problem considering Andreas Lubitz a murderous piece of shit. Nor am I worrying about "stigmatizing" depression. I've been depressed and I didn't fly an airplane full of terrified, screaming innocents into a fucking mountain.

So let's not worry about giving Mr. Lubitz a bad rep, okay? He did enough on his own to seal the deal.
 
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Chrissy

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I'm pretty much stuck in the horror loop on this.
 

backslashbaby

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Yeah, if he were severely depressed and suicidal, it still doesn't explain all those scores of people behind him being killed. It's not like suicidal ideology includes taking down others. That would be something else in addition to severe depression.
 

Torill

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Not at all worrying about giving Lubitz a bad rep by throwing unsubstantiated psychiatric diagnoses around. Is anyone actually saying that? To quote from the article I linked to upthread:
Mental health charities (---) have been queuing up to plead for more understanding about depression, and less sensationalist language.
They say the vast majority of people with depression do not hurt anyone, and research shows that their risk is primarily to themselves.


(---)Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of mental health charity Sane, says: "There are thousands of people with a diagnosis of depression, including pilots, who work, hold positions of high responsibility and who present no danger whatsoever.
(---)


Charities said there was a danger that mental health problems could be stigmatised by coverage of the crash, making people more afraid to talk about their experiences.
So no, my worry is not Lubitz, but those of us who suffer from various mental health problems. We don't need the idea that we are unstable and therefore potentially dangerous or violent spread around any more than it is already.


I've been depressed and I didn't fly an airplane full of terrified, screaming innocents into a fucking mountain.
Exactly.

My personal horror loop is about that captain - those eight minutes he had to live through trying to get back into the cockpit and regain control over the plane he was responsible for - with the full realisation of what was about to happen... Thankfully, the passengers probably didn't understand until the very last few seconds before the plane hit - that's when the screams were heard on the sound recorder.
 
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Flicka

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My personal horror loop is about that captain - those eight minutes he had to live through trying to get back into the cockpit and regain control over the plane he was responsible for - with the full realisation of what was about to happen...

Mine too. And all the while "why did I step out? If only I hadn't..."
 
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cmhbob

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One thing that still stuns me is the complete spontaneity of the event. Would those people still be alive if the captain hadn't needed to pee? Because there's no way either Lubitz could have known that Captain Sonderheimer was going to step out when he did. What would Lubitz have done then?
 

Parametric

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One thing that still stuns me is the complete spontaneity of the event. Would those people still be alive if the captain hadn't needed to pee? Because there's no way either Lubitz could have known that Captain Sonderheimer was going to step out when he did. What would Lubitz have done then?

Perhaps he was just waiting for an opportunity - the first time he found himself alone in the cockpit, he would have crashed the plane. He could have been waiting weeks for all we know. No surprise that the opportunity arose eventually.
 

blacbird

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One thing that still stuns me is the complete spontaneity of the event. Would those people still be alive if the captain hadn't needed to pee? Because there's no way either Lubitz could have known that Captain Sonderheimer was going to step out when he did. What would Lubitz have done then?

This was by no means "spontaneous". Lubitz had flown many times, and could be confident that the normal behavior of the pilot would be, at some point, to leave the cockpit for a potty break. That isn't unusual behavior by any means. I've flown commercially many many times, and pilots/copilots commonly can be seen leaving the cockpit for this, or other normal reasons. Lubitz could be assured that the pilot would probably leave the cockpit at some point, and whenever that happened, he was prepared in advance to take the actions he did. Nothing mysterious or spontaneous about it.

caw
 

benbradley

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atombaby

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nighttimer

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My personal horror loop is about that captain - those eight minutes he had to live through trying to get back into the cockpit and regain control over the plane he was responsible for - with the full realisation of what was about to happen... Thankfully, the passengers probably didn't understand until the very last few seconds before the plane hit - that's when the screams were heard on the sound recorder.

What is there to be "thankful" about?

I keep hearing experts on CNN and television talking this crap about "they died instantly" and "they didn't suffer" and "they didn't have enough time to know what was happening."

What does any of that even mean? How the hell does anyone who hasn't been trapped on a plane about to crash into a mountain know what it is like?

Of all the ways to die, going down in a plane is one of the absolute worst. You can't run, you can't hide, you can't fight back and you can't go to your "happy place" in your head to deny the reality of your situation.

All you may have time to do is send up a prayer to God or curse his name. Maybe you have enough time to hold your spouse's hand or kiss your child and tell them you love them and goodbye.

Then you're dead.

I fully understand why the 24-hour news cycle demands the sage wisdom of so-called "experts" to present themselves as wise and full of sage advice, but in a situation like this where they cannot possibly know what it is like, they really need to shut the fuck up.

We are NOT children and we don't need these feel-good-fairytales of how these poor souls never felt a thing and it was all over quickly. BULLSHIT. Attempting to finesse the truth with sugarcoated crap is deceptive, dishonest and it's bad for you.

Human beings comfort ourselves with the illusion we are in control. Tragedies like this remind us how much we are not.

The hospital he was going to denies that Lubitz was seeking depression treatment; however, now it appears that physical conditions, specifically vision impairments, were looming over his career.

Sounds like the hospital is engaging in one of the oldest reactions human beings have to a tragedy like this: trying to cover their ass.
 
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Chrissy

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Personally, in the event of my imminent, senseless death, I would prefer a few seconds of sheer terror over 8 minutes of sheer terror.
 
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Monkey

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This article talks about vision problems, and also says that anti-depressants were found in his apartment: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/w...e-germanwings-crash-authorities-say.html?_r=0

But I don't know that fully understanding this guy's motives is really going to help us much in dealing with other cases. I don't think we should be giving his name the airtime he purportedly hoped for. Screw him.

Here is a list of some of the people who died on that plane; innocent lives lost at the hands of a selfish, suicidal asshole: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/25/world/europe/germanwings-victims.html

They are the ones who should be thought of and remembered.
 

Torill

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'Ass-covering' implies the hospital has anything to cover up, or is to blame for some reason. But they haven't and they aren't, which I'm sure they know. Even if they had treated Lubitz for depression, they wouldn't have been to blame in any way for what happened. You don't lock depressive people up and throw away the key to prevent them from committing massmurder - which there is no reason to believe they will do, of course. And patient/doctor confidentiality as practised in Germany didn't allow the hospital to notify the airline about his diagnosis or sick note anyway, no matter what it was about. There's nothing the hospital could have done to prevent this tragedy.

Nothing anyone could have done, it seems. There is no system in the world that can be made 100 % safe, no matter what. It is human to want someone to blame, because that means it could be prevented. But here, it seems there's no one to blame but that co-pilot, and he's dead already.

As for using the word 'thankfully' - that was purely about me. I would never in a million years present that as some sort of demand on the grieving relatives and friends of the victims - 'you should be thankful they didn't suffer much at least' or something. Brrr - that would be horrible and insensitive in the extreme. But if they found consolation in this themselves, I would support them, and elaborate on that. Definitely. How could that be bad for them? Or bad for anyone?

It's very common for those who have lost someone in horrible accidents or violent attacks like this to ask: Was it quick? Did they suffer? And no, this is not some sort of detrimental security blanket grown ups should get rid of - I'm sorry, but I don't understand that idea. It's a coping strategy. It's not about an illusion of control, either, it's about amount of suffering.
Personally, in the event of my imminent, senseless death, I would prefer a few seconds of sheer terror over 8 minutes of sheer terror.
Yes, me too.

It's hard for me not to identify with the relatives of the victims here, (or the victims themselves). We lost a close friend of the family to the horror of Utøya in 2011, where that ass-hole of a terrorist, who shall not be named by me, chased down and shot terrified teenagers fleeing for their lives before him. It is hard to know that they suffered this absolute horror before they died - some of them for as long as 45 minutes. That is worse than the instant death of the victims of the government quarter bombing. Which is in no way claiming that those deaths were not also horrible, or that those relatives and survivors have any less reason to grieve.

Yes, it may sometimes be grating to watch the constant grinding on very little fact in some of the media - milking the tragedy for what it's worth as it were. Personally, I picked up that small consolation thing from watching the press conference with the Marseille chief persecutor, where he described what can be heard on the last eight minutes of the sound recorder: the captain trying to break in, Lubitz' silent, calm breathing, and screams from the passengers only in the very last few seconds.

No, this is not absolute proof that they didn't understand what happened until they started screaming. But it is an indication, at least. For which I, personally, am thankful. As far as 'thankful' is possible with a tragedy of this scale, that is.
 
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Monkey

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I agree. If one must choose between massive suffering and death or minimal suffering and death, I want minimal, all the time, for everyone, and I do find some small consolation in the idea that someone did not suffer greatly before they died. This is a direct result of my life experiences. I've seen it both ways. One does hurt more than the other, both for the one dying and for those who love them.
 

benbradley

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Pilots are pretty heavily exploited in terms of pay and conditions because their drive to fly and to advance their career means they will not just walk away from crappy deals.

Which is no way excuses mass murder.
 

Albedo

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Things I don't ever need to see (that will be on LiveLeak at the end of the week), #5,457.

I'm was kinda incredulous US pilots weren't able to fly on antidepressants, so I looked it up. Seems that's not true. Pilots on stable SSRI regimens can get clearance to fly under FAA rules.
 

LittlePinto

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Well, it's looking more and more like the crash was intentional and premeditated.

From Reuters:

"A first reading shows that the pilot in the cockpit used the automatic pilot to put the airplane on a descent toward an altitude of 100 feet," the BEA investigation office said in a statement.

"Then several times the pilot modified the automatic pilot settings to increase the speed of the airplane as it descended," it added.

Also:

German prosecutors said on Thursday that Lubitz had made Internet searches on ways to commit suicide in the days ahead of the crash as well as searches about cockpit doors and safety precautions.

The only thing I want to say right now is completely inappropriate for polite company.