March 24, 2015: What if Your Pilot Hijacks Your Airliner?

A Brief History

On March 24, 2015, we more or less found out the answer to the question, “What if your pilot (or co-pilot) hijacks your airliner?” In this case, he dies, along with all 150 people on board the airliner! In this terrifying scenario come to life, co-pilot Andreas Lubitz flew Germanwings Flight 9525 into the French Alps, the first fatal plane crash in the airline’s 18 year history to that point.

Digging Deeper

The Airbus 320-211 had taken off from Barcelona, Spain, headed for Dusseldorf, Germany, an economical air trip on an airline owned by Lufthansa as a low-cost alternative carrier. Lubitz was a troubled soul and had confided to a therapist that he was suicidal, who prudently deemed him unfit for duty as an airline pilot. Unfortunately, this diagnosis was not forwarded to the airlines or the transportation authorities and Lubitz did not reveal his problems to his employer.

Only 27 years old at the time of the crash, Lubitz had been admitted as an in-patient at a psychiatric ward for severe depression while in pilot training at the Lufthansa air school in Goodyear, Arizona in 2008. Lubitz worked as a flight attendant until getting his pilot’s license in 2014.

On the fateful flight, Lubitz seemed fine until well into the flight when he became somewhat curt with the pilot. When pilot Patrick Sondenheimer was out of the cockpit, presumably for a bathroom break, Lubitz locked the cockpit door and would not allow anyone entry into the cockpit while he dived the big jet into the mountains, killing all aboard. Among the passengers and crew were citizens of 16 different countries, 16 of which were German school kids and 2 of their teachers, returning from an exchange student program in Spain.

Investigation failed to reveal a suicide note or any particular reason for the deadly act by Lubitz, although investigators did find the doctor’s note finding Lubitz as unfit for duty in a trash receptacle in Lubitz’ apartment. Also found were prescription psychiatric drugs and his computer indicated Lubitz had researched methods of committing suicide and the security of cockpit doors on airliners. Lubitz had suffered from insomnia and an irrational belief that he was going blind.

Transportation authorities in Germany and several other countries implemented a new rule that 2 qualified people had to be in the cockpit of airliners at all times, although the US and some other countries already had that stipulation in their rules. Calls to require psychiatric testing and random testing of aircrew members wallowed in national legislatures, with little results. Airline officials and some European politicians called for the easing of doctor-patient confidentiality laws so as to prevent such occurrences as the crash of Flight 9525, but again, with not so much success.

Passengers that died were paid €75,000 each (to their estates) plus another €10,000 to each close surviving relative of those killed. As German law precludes punitive damages in lawsuits, about 80 of the families of deceased passengers joined in a lawsuit in the US in 2016 against Lufthansa’s American training center. The US suit was dismissed in 2017, the American judge deciding that Germany was the proper venue for such a lawsuit.

In spite of spectacular incidents involving fatal airline crashes, flying by commercial airliner remains one of the safest modes of transportation. Analysis of transportation danger of fatalities is difficult, as researchers can use different criteria, but according to passenger miles traveled, commercial air is by far the safest mode of travel if you want to arrive alive. (Motorcycling is the most dangerous by many times over!).

Question for students (and subscribers): Do you have an opinion about doctor-patient confidentiality if the patient is an airline pilot flying your plane? Please give us your opinion of such laws and whether or not those laws should change. How about psychological testing of pilots with updates required periodically, the results given to their employer airlines? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.

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