The Depressive Pilot Who Killed Everyone on Board

Germanwings Flight 9525 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Barcelona–El Prat Airport in Spain to Düsseldorf Airport in Germany.

On 24 March 2015, the aircraft, an Airbus A320-211, crashed 100 km north-west of Nice in the French Alps. All 144 passengers and all six crew members were killed.

The crash was deliberately caused by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, who had previously been treated for suicidal tendencies and declared "unfit to work" by his doctor.

Lubitz kept this information from his employer and instead reported for duty. Shortly after reaching cruise altitude and while the captain was out of the cockpit, he locked the cockpit door and initiated a controlled descent that continued until the aircraft hit a mountainside.

In March 2017, the Lubitz family held a news conference where Lubitz's father stated that they did not agree with the conclusion of the official investigation that his son intentionally caused the disaster.

As of February 2017, Lufthansa had paid €75,000 to the family of every victim, as well as €10,000 in pain and suffering compensation to every close relative of a victim.

Early Life OF Andreas Lubitz

He first took to the skies as a member of a gliding club in his hometown of Montabaur in west Germany before fulfilling his ambition of becoming a professional pilot.

He was characterized by neighbors and acquaintances as a "quiet" but "fun" person who took pride in his work.

In 2007, he graduated from high school and was accepted as a Lufthansa trainee the following year, enrolling at the company's training school in Bremen. He suffered severe depression few weeks after he started his training program. He was hospitalized for several months before being declared fit to train.

He needed a special, repeated medical examination, and his medical certificates were only valid for one year at a time, according to a doctor's recommendation. A relevant note was added to his aviation authority file as well as to his pilot's licence.

In 2013 he joined Lufthansa's low budget airline, Germanwings. He initially worked as a flight attendant before starting his role as co-pilot.

Life Before The Crash

He had battled with vision problems and insomnia for several months, it said, caused by a psychiatric disorder rather than anything physical.

The diary of Andreas Lubitz details the pilot's depressive episodes several years before the 2015 crash. "Committing myself to psychiatric treatment, severe depression, dream of becoming a pilot as good as finished," he wrote at the time.

Another entry in Lubitz's diary mentions the feeling of "sadness, I see how the world passes me by" and his belief that "jumping off a cliff is the only way out."

He was taking medication for both psychiatric issues and insomnia, and had been given doctor's notes excusing him from work. But he never showed the medical reports to the airline.

"On the day of the accident, the pilot was still suffering from a psychiatric disorder, which was possibly a psychotic depressive episode and was taking psychotropic medication," the report found.

"This made him unfit to fly."

However, the research reveals that he had concealed the evidence, making it impossible for the airline or his coworkers to be aware of his situation.

People who knew Lubitz characterized him as a friendly young man who gave no signs of harboring any negative intentions.

The criminal probe into the tragedy came to the conclusion that Lubitz was solely to blame for the plane's crash.

Aviation authorities swiftly implemented new recommendations from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency that required two authorised personnel in the cockpit at all times, but by 2017, Germanwings and other German airlines had dropped the rule.