A very sad event all around - some interesting knee jerk responses from likes of EasyJet as an example, For once the US had a good idea on this kind of thing with the two in cockpit rule and one wonders why EASA didn’t pick it up-there is after all hardly any cost in having an appropriate CC member park a cart across the aisle in front of the door to add another barrier as they enter the flight deck for maybe 5 minutes two or three times per trip. As someone said earlier they only need to be able to open the door not fly the plane.
Suicide and depression are awful, I had a close friend when in my 20s who had a complete mental collapse and it took him a year to recover- and although sympathetically treated by the company (and indeed especially by our rather tough and seemingly heartless head of department) his career never fully did although he still did Ok he was never seen as management material just a respected expert and of course he wasn't in a position to kill anyone. He did however spontaneous go from normality to doing something very very odd in seconds with no warning at all and that is the problem – did the captain, an older man with a lot more experience have any inkling one wonders and even if he did is there a process in place for him to seek timely advice about such a concern.
. In fact about that time-mid 70s there was another horrific accident at Moorgate on the London underground where a driver didn't stop and the station is a deep level terminus with a concrete wall 50 feet into the tunnel. Lots of discussion about the drivers mental state at the time-never happened again thank god but given what’s known about mental illness today there must be one or two tube drivers minimum who have the potential to ‘lose it’.
Finally, I like PPrune and try and respect the ethos that professional pilots mostly know best and indeed there are always some daft comments on here in these circumstances-the nadir being the escaping tigers in the MH mystery of course. However most of us with an interests in the airline world do know quite a bit about our own world and sometimes those worlds overlap and I cannot see the harm in comments from aviation engineers, scientists, doctors etc. commenting on and aspect of their world that has impacted on aviation. If someone says I am doctor and think Airbus FMCs should be designed to prevent this then by all means be disdainful but If someone says I am a meteorologist for example, and in incident x this was a very unusual weather pattern etc. etc. perhaps others should listen and perhaps learn something which could be very relevant to their job.