It has been a week since the Germanwings Flight 9525's crashed into the Alps on its journey from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. It was a tragedy which was beyond words.
One co-pilot — 27 years-old German national Andreas Lubitz of Dusseldorf — has made a mockery of all that the airlines across the world have done in the recent past — at the behest mostly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) — to secure flights on the ground and in air.
According to one report, the transponder data of the plane showed that the autopilot was reprogrammed from inside the cockpit in order to diabolically lower the flight altitude from 38,000 to an absurd 110 feet. Inquiries have indicated that Lubitz suffered from bouts of depression, and possibly, he committed the diabolical crime when he was going through one such mood swings. There are several other speculations about Lubitz, including that he was laid off once for mental treatment, and a search of his house yielded anti-depressants as well as a sick-report note for the day of crash.
The impression that one gains is he was successful in hiding his illness from the airlines. More shocking was the airlines' own lack of procedure to investigate the medical condition, once there was even a whiff of a rumour about a pilot's general state of health or his mental stability. This was poor intelligence that was culpable.
Airlines in India will have to wake up to this hard reality of the need to be 100 per cent sure of the fitness of the cockpit staff before they get in. This involves a huge protocol and more investment, at a time costs are mounting and many airlines are bleeding.
Post 9/11, the cockpit of every aircraft had been made into a near fortress, and any congregation of passengers near the area was totally prohibited. This was under the unexceptionable assumption that danger to the aircraft arose mainly from a rogue passengers' forcible entry into the cockpit. There was never a thought that risk could arise from a source internal to the cockpit, such as the co-pilot in this case. In retrospect, this was an unforgivable slip-up that has now cost passengers and their families loss beyond endurance.
31/03/15 RK Raghavan/First Post
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One co-pilot — 27 years-old German national Andreas Lubitz of Dusseldorf — has made a mockery of all that the airlines across the world have done in the recent past — at the behest mostly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) — to secure flights on the ground and in air.
According to one report, the transponder data of the plane showed that the autopilot was reprogrammed from inside the cockpit in order to diabolically lower the flight altitude from 38,000 to an absurd 110 feet. Inquiries have indicated that Lubitz suffered from bouts of depression, and possibly, he committed the diabolical crime when he was going through one such mood swings. There are several other speculations about Lubitz, including that he was laid off once for mental treatment, and a search of his house yielded anti-depressants as well as a sick-report note for the day of crash.
The impression that one gains is he was successful in hiding his illness from the airlines. More shocking was the airlines' own lack of procedure to investigate the medical condition, once there was even a whiff of a rumour about a pilot's general state of health or his mental stability. This was poor intelligence that was culpable.
Airlines in India will have to wake up to this hard reality of the need to be 100 per cent sure of the fitness of the cockpit staff before they get in. This involves a huge protocol and more investment, at a time costs are mounting and many airlines are bleeding.
Post 9/11, the cockpit of every aircraft had been made into a near fortress, and any congregation of passengers near the area was totally prohibited. This was under the unexceptionable assumption that danger to the aircraft arose mainly from a rogue passengers' forcible entry into the cockpit. There was never a thought that risk could arise from a source internal to the cockpit, such as the co-pilot in this case. In retrospect, this was an unforgivable slip-up that has now cost passengers and their families loss beyond endurance.
31/03/15 RK Raghavan/First Post
