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Airbus A320 crashed in Southern France

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Airbus A320 crashed in Southern France

Old 7th Apr 2015, 07:45
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I don't think it is mean to question the crew. I asked a Cabin Manager a couple of days ago what the purpose of being in the flight deck was. She thought it was to keep an eye on me, she wasn't sure what she was watching out for . The point is that the Cabin Crew have NOT received any guidance on what they are actually doing in the flight deck. I then went on to ask what she would do if I told her that I was going to lock the FO out as I wasn't happy with his behaviour, she said that she guessed that would be o.k., she changed her mind when I asked if she would then be happy if I started descending to divert the aircraft. It was a very valuable conversation because it has caused her to have a good think about the potential situations she could find herself and it showed me that the current policy is a total joke and there for public comfort only. At that time she is now authorised to be the most important person on the aircraft as the company expects that she should over rule the CAPTAIN and open the door if she thinks it is not right.
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Old 7th Apr 2015, 07:45
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Yet mental health experts who study mass murder-suicides said that depression and thoughts of suicide, which are commonplace, fall far short of explaining such drastic and statistically rare acts.


Timothy J. McVeigh was spurred by anger at the government to blow up a federal building in 1995.

“People want an easily graspable handle to help understand this, to blame something or scapegoat,” said Dr. James L. Knoll, the director of forensic psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University.

But to zero in on depression is “a low-yield dead end,” he said, adding, “There’s something fundamentally different here, aside and apart from the depression, and that’s where we need to look.”

Serious mental illness, studies of mass killers suggest, is a prime driver in a minority of cases — about 20 percent, according to estimates by several experts. Far more common are distortions of personality — excesses of rage, paranoia, grandiosity, thirst for vengeance or pathological narcissism and callousness.

“The typical personality attribute in mass murderers is one of paranoid traits plus massive disgruntlement,” said Dr. Michael Stone, a forensic psychiatrist in New York who recently completed a study of 228 mass killers, many of whom also killed themselves.
At last some sense and why knee jerk reactions and mass examination and intrusion into pilots personal lives is a waste of time AND AN INFRINGEMENT OF PILOTS HUMAN RIGHTS without identifying the particular personality trait that can murder and plan the murder of 150 people! Depressed people don't do that. As stated above serious mental illness only accounts for 20% of mass murderers indicating that 80% will have no sign of serious mental illness. So where do you go from there filtering out suspect pilots ?

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Old 7th Apr 2015, 07:59
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I am pretty certain that cabin Crew recurrent training from now on will include some form of training on this subject.

It will possibly form part of the CRM section that pilots and cabin crew attend together, at least in BA they do.
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Old 7th Apr 2015, 15:57
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Despite its extremely low probability the GermanWings crash was the instantiation of the greatest fear of many pax. Knowing that you are about to die for several minutes and not being able to do anything about it.

Out of the woodwork come the geeks and avionics manufacturers seeing a large market open up

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/sc...lots.html?_r=0

These ideas will be proceeded with if the industry does not have a defined and non-cosmetic response.
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Old 7th Apr 2015, 16:09
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Unhappy

Certainly advise that a long term career in aviation may not materialise if NY article comes to fruition
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Old 7th Apr 2015, 16:20
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There are plenty of 19 pax airliners operating with NO cockpit door, and NO Flight Attendant. What do you propose to do about that? Plus many biz-jet terminals have NO passenger screening, allowing all manner of psychopaths, socio-paths, and manic depressive types to fly all over the world. Personally, I don't think ANYTHING should been done about it, but I'm sure this will keep several (many) pundits awake at night worrying that the sky is about to fall.
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Old 7th Apr 2015, 17:44
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First post - and undoubtedly not as helpful as I imagine, but as a passenger this incident has not reduced my trust in the skills of professional pilots, and their ability to get me safely to my destination - this despite the certain knowledge that with the right circumstances, something similar will happen again.

Which in a way is the whole point, because with due respect to posters who have made a range of thought provoking contributions to the question of the second person on the flight deck, perhaps the pertinent issue here is that of circumstance.

There’s very little credible doubt that Lubitz deliberately crashed the aircraft, but despite lots of conjecture, no clear motive as to why. Without that motive, the root cause of his actions, it isn’t possible to target future preventative actions aimed at weeding out the potentially dangerous entrants to the profession, or in identifying them and mitigating the threat once they are already qualified and flying. What you can do however is change the circumstances in-flight which may contribute to not just a decision to deliberately crash a plane, but also help facilitate it happening.

It is not true that all acts of extreme behavior are conducted in private, but it is true that most perpetrators of such acts have waited for the right circumstances to fit their needs and intents. In this instance, nothing could have served Lubitz’s needs and intents better than an empty flight deck, and his actions as we know them appear to demonstrate that he needed or wanted to be isolated and alone to do what he did.

Would he have seen a member of the cabin crew present as a deterrent? We can’t know for sure, but we can know that it would not have allowed him to act in isolation, nor with certainty that he was going to succeed, when that crew member could have opened the door at any time for the aircraft commander to re-enter the flight deck. A crew member on the flight deck with him would have changed the circumstance, and thus dynamic of the situation, to something certain to be less constructive to his intent, and that may have been enough to save 149 innocent lives on this occasion, either by deterring Lubitz from his planned (or unplanned) actions or by letting the commander back on the flight deck in time.

What seems certain is that if another Lubitz in the same frame of mind were to be left alone on the flight deck again, the result would be more loss of life. If another crew member present were to save even only one in ten of those flights, it would be hard to argue against the policy.

Of course, that raises the question of how competent cabin crew members may be to identify and resolve such difficult circumstances, and I can only speak as a passenger with far more experience of cabin crew than of pilots, but I find them remarkably capable of handling problematic and stressful situations and difficult people with speed and efficiency. For sure they wouldn’t know how to operate controls on the flight deck, and it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect that capability, but from having to deal with the traveling public in such numbers and confined spaces, they seem very capable of sizing up people when they need to. I would trust (most, at least) to grasp what is happening on the flight deck in the kind of situation we have seen happen here.
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Old 7th Apr 2015, 18:00
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Speaking as a passenger, I'm more reassured by the two-person cockpit idea than the professionals on here seem to be.

I think most situations where a single individual is given private, unmonitored power over the lives of other humans is inherently dangerous. There will always be a small proportion of people for whom the temptation to abuse that power may become irresistible at certain times - look at doctors, nurses, and the police. Almost all of the biggest scandals happened because the person concerned was handed a high degree of trust on account of their profession, and could operate in privacy.

Another human being in the cockpit does not guarantee that a rogue pilot won't smilingly put the plane into a calculated descent. However, it reduces the opportunity. The rogue pilot is likely to have to make conversation with the crew member - thus reducing the time to do something naughty - or will have some concern that the CC has flying skills and can see the naughtiness being done, or will find it necessary to maintain the mask that covers the psychosis.

Of course, the presence of CC does not guarantee that the rogue pilot won't smash his colleague's head with an iPad and do bad things. But it certainly doesn't increase the chances, and that's the best that can be hoped for.

Edited to add: I see I'm in agreement with fellow passenger ZA9RA22.
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Old 7th Apr 2015, 18:21
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separating the suicidal from the mass murderer

As a non-pilot I would be interested to know from those at the front end how isolated from the pax you feel? There you are, stuck right at the front, in a very confined space, your office - right on the top floor. You have no rear-view mirror, just windows looking forward (OK some side windows too). Do you sometimes forget about the pax - particularly on long-haul - fast asleep in the back?

I ask this as I wonder whether Lubitz was aware of anyone else but himself (and the pilot)? Do you think he might have just sat there thinking: 'this is it'. He was all alone, in his own little world. Then he locked the door, shut out the rest of the world, set the controls and maybe took something to relax or render himself unconscious?

I'm trying here to separate the suicidal from the mass murderer.

But then, if he did feel like that, he could simply have taken his glider up for one last time....
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Old 7th Apr 2015, 18:24
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ian

I always find it amazing that you guys will turn up for a flight with a complete stranger climbing in with you!

It is so far removed from my world.

Yet I understand you are all trained to one standard making such a situation possible.

that is not the way it used to be with crews flying together for years. It had its advantages but also disadvantages.

I just wonder whether the Captain and Lubitz had spent nights out and days together as well as flying together many times whether he would have become very suspicious that something was seriously not right with the guy? and taken his concerns higher or at least to have not trusted him alone?

i am not suggesting putting solid crews together but at least rostering crews so the FO and Captain at least know each other from previous trips and can quickly sum up the character of the guy they are flying with his weaknesses strengths and life events going on? Intuition is a very strong friend

I ask this as I wonder whether Lubitz was aware of anyone else but himself (and the pilot)? Do you think he might have just sat there thinking: 'this is it'. He was all alone, in his own little world. Then he locked the door, shut out the rest of the world, set the controls and maybe took something to relax or render himself unconscious?
Absolutely not!! The Police found that Lubitz has been researching the door locking mechanism on his computer days earlier so had plenty of time to consider what he was about to do to the 150 people on that aircraft! his Girlfriend had reported that he told her he was going to change the face of aviation!!

This was totally a premeditated and planned murder and destruction of himself

Last edited by Pace; 7th Apr 2015 at 20:07.
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Old 7th Apr 2015, 18:34
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Ian W

Constituted crews have significant advantages as well as the potential for developing their own 'standard practices'. Perhaps a way out would be a system where a small group was constituted so crews were always drawn from the same subset.
As I remember it that sort of worked on the military with smallish crew numbers and a small number of crews. But TBH I'm really not sure how you'd begin to administer that in a large airline with, say, a company total of 4000 pilots and 10,000+ cabin crew, and with typically 400-500 pilots or more on each individual type the company operates. Each one of which will have their own requirements for days off/leave depending on their domestic situation.

There's much more isolation in the job these days than there was 20 years ago and there are fewer options for gelling socially as a team... Given the workload nobody is going to hang around at "base" for a get together on a Friday PM , and short haul night stops ( if your company does them) are often minimum rest. Many Long haul "slips" aren't much better. Chuck in a system of management being physically remote from the "Flight Line" and communicating by e-mail rather than personal contact and it's easy to see how someone with personal problems can hide things away and escape notice for a long time. Ratchet the work up even more and it's going to be even more difficult ... thanks EASA.

BTW the idea of airline crews developing their own "standard practices" is something management are very keen on avoiding...

Last edited by wiggy; 7th Apr 2015 at 19:09.
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Old 7th Apr 2015, 23:16
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Certainly advise that a long term career in aviation may not materialise if NY article comes to fruition
There's nothing new in that article that hasn't been said before by the pilotless airliner crowd. Plus it quotes Missy Cummings, a known publicity seeker who comes out of the woodwork every time an aircraft crashes to attract attention for her cause.
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Old 8th Apr 2015, 02:21
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za9ra22

Thoughtful post. Just one comment I'd like to make:

that raises the question of how competent cabin crew members may be to identify and resolve such difficult circumstances... I find them remarkably capable of handling problematic and stressful situations and difficult people with speed and efficiency.
That's because they have designated authority over pax. Their primary function, in theory at least, is to ensure safety. The captain has overall command of the aircraft and all aspects of its flight. In the command hierarchy, cabin crew are far less likely to question a pilot's actions than those of an errant passenger.


Pace

I just wonder whether the Captain and Lubitz had spent nights out and days together as well as flying together many times
Unlikely, perhaps, given that Lubitz only had 600 total flying hours?
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Old 8th Apr 2015, 08:46
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Edited to Add: I'm sure somebody asked..

Maybe the pilot did crash the plane intentionally, maybe he didn't. I don't know. I just get the feeling that there was too much of a rush to pin blame somewhere and now that the snowball has started rolling nobody is trying very hard to slow it down or stop it completely.
My thoughts on this (and they're not original):

The first raw "hearing" of the CVR, plus the info from ATC, may well have been extremely damning and I suspect no matter how often you listened to it, analysed it, the conclusion was always going to be the same- in most accidents there will be "grey areas" or unknowns that need investigating before any conclusion could be drawn, but not here. Nevertheless I suspect in time honoured fashion the authorities may well have wanted to sit on the initial conclusions for a while, awaiting further analysis/data (e.g. the FDR) but somebody very rapidly leaked what was heard on the CVR, at least in part, to the media (and hands up, yes, I was very sceptical of the NY Times but it seems they were right, at least in part). At that point the authorities realised the game was up and that releasing a standard statement along the lines of "no comment, we are months off reaching an absolutely definite conclusion, our report will be published next year" wasn't going to cut it.

It's kind of difficult to see how the authorities could have handled this particular accident any differently, but it doesn't bode well (IMHO) for people's expectations in the wake of any future accidents.

Last edited by wiggy; 8th Apr 2015 at 10:12.
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Old 8th Apr 2015, 10:27
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The other thing to consider is two forces arriving at that conclusion. normally the AAIB (Air Accident) not air murder handle aircraft accidents usually pilot error or system malfunction incorrectly handled causing pilot error. Rarely is an accident due to an aircraft becoming unflyable.

In this case many of us refused to acknowledge the unthinkable that another pilot in our profession would purposely commit mass murder on people in his care and i still find it hard to take that fact in. He must have had a very very warped and sick mind which the vast majority of mentally ill people would never contemplate.

So there were enough arrows pointing to a suspected mass murder and the criminal authorities became involved.

Their findings lead to their own conclusion that the extreme likelihood was that Lubitz crashed the aircraft in a pre meditated and planned fashion with total disregard for the people in his care.

the AAIB research was jointly with the criminal investigators reinforcing what they had discovered.

This is the last thing that any professional pilot would want as we already have to jump through too many hoops especially with EASA and really don't need more hoops. Ok there are lessons to be learnt and certain practical changes which can be made to minimise a repeat happening again

it is an extremely rare occurrence so over reaction would also be a mistake but that is what we fear regulations with no practical sense for public consumption only and authorities and airlines wanting to be seen to be doing something to placate the minds of an unknowing public at our cost/ I hope that helps explain ?

Last edited by Pace; 8th Apr 2015 at 11:29.
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Old 8th Apr 2015, 12:02
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Die Welt on non-LH-group airlines in Germany

I don't think this article has been posted before at pprune, at least according to a Google search:
Germanwings-Absturz: Piloten stehen unter großem Stress - DIE WELT

The gist:
- interviewed an anonymous CPT with a German charter airline
- selection standards at his airline not nearly as strict as within LH group
- has had to talk down many a FO, even in good weather
- some of them make so little money they have to live in out in the sticks and report to work dead tired from commuting
- some of them were P2F, having paid 60 k€ to an agency for the opportunity to build time
- one of these recently told him in the cockpit that he was clearly the customer
- captain frankly said that FOs within his airline are accident waiting to happen but nobody wants to talk about it

- interviewed an FO on long haul with LH
- complained about issues with long trips, body clock, only 24 h layover, but acknowledged that life was still good compared to other airlines
- real stress being generated by recurring sim checks and medicals
- knew of colleagues who preferred to go to external doctors rather than LH's medical service
- failing sim check twice usually means end of carreer with LH

- interviewed freelance airline pilot (didn't know those existed), instructor and checker
- pilot marked essentially dead in Europe, positions only in Gulf area or Asia but T&C not attractive
- more stress being put on pilots by airlines
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Old 8th Apr 2015, 13:57
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Quote:
that raises the question of how competent cabin crew members may be to identify and resolve such difficult circumstances... I find them remarkably capable of handling problematic and stressful situations and difficult people with speed and efficiency.
That's because they have designated authority over pax. Their primary function, in theory at least, is to ensure safety. The captain has overall command of the aircraft and all aspects of its flight. In the command hierarchy, cabin crew are far less likely to question a pilot's actions than those of an errant passenger.
Fair point - there clearly is a hierarchy which would have some impact on how cabin crew are likely to respond, and I'll accept that as a valid issue.

However, in this instance, given a first officer on the flight deck and a captain banging on the door for re-admission, wouldn't that very hierarchy be more likely than not to have resulted in the captain being let back in? In this instance at least, would it not increase the probability of 150 lives being saved?

There are too many variables in both circumstance and individuals/personalities to predict outcomes with any certainty, but introducing a cabin crew member to the flight deck where one or other of the pilots is elsewhere would certainly disrupt destructive intent in some scenarios.
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Old 8th Apr 2015, 14:12
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However, in this instance, given a first officer on the flight deck and a captain banging on the door for re-admission, wouldn't that very hierarchy be more likely than not to have resulted in the captain being let back in? In this instance at least, would it not increase the probability of 150 lives being saved?
We don't know, it is as simple as that. If you think back to the JetBlue case it probably was a good decision not to let the captain back into the flight deck. In the Germanwings case it probably would have been a good decision to let him back in.

Die Welt on non-LH-group airlines in Germany
That article is kinda difficult for me. Some stuff is correct, some is quite wrong and some is distorted a lot. It starts with the oversimplification that every airline outside the Lufthansa group is pretty much the same as the one with the green logo in which the interviewed captain apparently works. There is a pretty wide variety of working conditions between very close to lufthansa to extremely bad.
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Old 9th Apr 2015, 07:51
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This is an excellent discussion and one which I hadn't considered. In the case of jetBlue, if you put a new FA on the flight deck with with the sane FO then you would increase the odds substantially that she would have let the Captain back in if he was frantically banging on the door. Another aspect of unintended consequences in all this.
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Old 9th Apr 2015, 09:04
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Originally Posted by 737er
This is an excellent discussion and one which I hadn't considered. In the case of jetBlue, if you put a new FA on the flight deck with with the sane FO then you would increase the odds substantially that she would have let the Captain back in if he was frantically banging on the door. Another aspect of unintended consequences in all this.
I thought it happened in the US, and the US has a 2 on the FD rule? From what I have read about it, the FO would have had no doubt that locking him out was the right thing to do if he had been able to hear what was happening in the cabin. Can he?
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