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28.03.2015 Feature Article

What A Terrible Way To End Other People’s Lives

What A Terrible Way To End Other Peoples Lives
28.03.2015 LISTEN

You enter an aircraft with an anticipation of joy.
For you will soon be seeing people you love whom you have not seen for some time - maybe in years.

Or you may be going on holiday to see new places; or you may be pursuing your business interests.

When you clamber aboard an aircraft, the possibility of death is present in your mind, of course, but you brush it aside. For these days, air travel is pretty safe.

That's why it is so infuriating when an air accident investigation unearths information that shows that if a little more care had been taken by the airline whose aircraft has destroyed so many lives in a crash, those who had died on its plane would still be alive.

Lufthansa and its subsidiary, Germanwings, are in the firing line over safety, following the air crash on 25 March 2015 -   of Germanwings Flight   4U 9525 - in which no less than 150 people, including the aircraft's murderous co-pilot, lost their lives.

It has now been established that the 27-year-old co-pilot, Andreas Gunter Lubitz, had previously suffered from a serious mental illness that had interrupted his training in 2008.  The Lufthansa flight school in Phoenix, Arizona, had designated Lubitz, during his training, as 'not suitable for flying'. For he was diagnosed with a 'severe depressive episode' and spent a year-and-a-half receiving psychiatric treatment. Yet, he somehow managed to complete his training successfully.

Now, German institutions are famed the world over for their thoroughness and technical prowess. Yet an airline as reputable as Lufthansa (which is the parent company of Germanwings, and is therefore as responsible for the latter's mistakes, as if they had occurred on an aircraft bearing the Lufthansa badge) allowed him to fly.  True, he was given 'special regular medical examination' by a doctor, as well as having the coding 'SIC' on his pilot's licence. But they took a chance with him. And it ended in a massive tragedy. Why did they take such a chance?

Citing German police sources, the newspaper Bild said the crash investigation is examining whether Lubitz had been suffering from a recent 'personal life crisis'. (He is said to have had a relationship crisis with his girlfriend with whom he'd been together for seven years; they were living in a flat in Düsseldorf.)

The grim details of how the crash occurred were revealed by French prosecutor Brice Robin, who had listened to the evidence retrieved from one of the aircraft's 'Black Boxes'. The crash site is near a mountain village in the French Alps called Seyne-les-Alpes, so it was the responsibility of the French aviation authorities to investigate it.

'For the first 20 minutes of the flight, the two pilots spoke in a normal way - like any other two ordinary pilots during a flight. There was nothing abnormal…. Then we heard the commander ask the co-pilot to take the controls.' It was assumed that Captain Sonderheimer needed to go out to use the toilet.  It was while the co-pilot was alone in command of the Airbus A320, that he co-pilot manipulated a button to activate the descent of the plane. 'This activating of the altitude selector could only have been done voluntarily. I repeat … this could only have been done voluntarily,' the prosecutor emphasised.

He went on 'We heard several calls from the flight commander demanding access to the cockpit. This was done via the cabin call, an inter-phone with a camera, so he showed himself and identified himself. But there was no response from the co-pilot. He then tapped on the door, demanding that it be opened. But again, there was no response from the co-pilot. But…. we heard the sound of human breathing in the cabin and we heard this until the final impact, which suggests that the co-pilot was alive.'

The prosecutor continued, 'The control tower at Marseilles [in France], receiving no response from the aircraft, asked for a distress code, and the activation of the transponder for an emergency landing. There was no response. Air traffic control asked other aircraft in the area for a radio relay to try to contact the Airbus. But no response came. Alarms then went off, signalling the aircraft's proximity to the ground, and we heard the sound of violent blows as if someone was trying to force the door open. Then, we heard the sound of an impact on the escarpment. No distress signal, 'Mayday!… Mayday! … Mayday!' was received by air traffic control.'

The plane was travelling at 435mph (700kmh) when it smashed into the mountain. The force of the impact was such that it left only small pieces of debris and bodies scattered over two hectares of ground.

The question is: why was such a big aircraft as an Airbus is allowed to be flown by only two people. One of them, it should be obvious, might want to leave the cockpit to attend to nature's call. Formerly - before computers took over, much of flying the flying crew consisted of four people - a pilot, co-pilot, a flight engineer and a navigator. If navigators had been made redundant by computers, must that necessarily apply to flight engineers too? This terrible air crash demonstrates that leaving an aircraft in the charge of only two people - done purposely to cut costs -  is extremely dangerous.

The legitimate motive of cutting costs to make profits has gone too far. Lives must be put first. Lufthansa will soon find out, through hefty lawsuits blaming it for negligence - that in the end, 'penny wise, pound foolish' is as true as it ever was.

How absolutely sick the co-pilot's action was!
My heart goes out to the victims and their families.

*A Germanwings plane carrying 150 passengers crashed near a mountain village in the French Alps called Seyne-les-Alpes

* Rescue workers continue to search the site of the Germanwings plane crash on Thursday, March 26

By CAMERON DUODU

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