Let me ask this question. If someone belives that people should have a clean psychological medical record in order to own firearms should they also have a clean psychological medical record if they want to have a career as airline pilot?

No in either case. (Well I happen to be against most firearms but that's PWEC). Mental health should be much more open. When someone gets cancer they really are just pathetic and weak and should carry the stigma of such a physical failing.


That came off as a little weird right? Mental health should be no different than a broken leg. Report, treat, recover.

Is there any evidence of people "recovering" from homicidal psychosis???

Being "ok" while medicated is NOT a recovery IMO, especially as I have personally seen what happens to otherwise "normal" people when they miss a med or it wears off. In my limited experience the underlying psychosis comes back in spades after being medicated and stopping.

This whackos "right to privacy" extinguished 149 other lives and people are defending that???

one has nothing to do with the other obviously so i can't provide a suitable answer to such a question

If rights to medical privacy allow doctors and patients to not have to disclose their ill state of mind when they are employed in transportation fields involving large numbers of people - then there is something seriously wrong with that and needs to be changed. Doctors treating such patients should be required by law to disclose that information to the patients employer if their patient is employed in public mass transit or private paid transportation systems. In addition, transportation employers should have the right to investigate at least the past 5 years of any employees medical history.

I don't think anyone is defending it. Rather, IMO, they are pointing out a potentially slippery slope. At least that's my interpretation of what has been written.

Lufthansa has set aside $300 million in currency as they expect to have to use it with regard to this case

Then again, any pilot who fails his periodical flight physicals will be grounded. I don't see a reason why such physicals should not include a psychological exam. Or, if it already does, a more thorough one.

I'm still working on it.

I'm not saying the solution involves aliens, but...it involves aliens.



The Jedi Master

I saw on the news that a recovered cell phone video from the crash site shows the people inside the plane in the monents before impact. Basically tells the same story as the voice recorder.

I'm amazed a cell phone or memory chip of a cellphone survived the impact

http://q13fox.com/2015/03/31/cell-phone-...manwings-crash/

Alternative theories about what can have exactly happened in the cockpit and why are likely to be 'out' because of the initiated AUTOMATED flight descent by co-pilot Lubitz.
The question remains if such a descent was performed because of some valid reasons (the absence of conversation in this regard is not a fool-proved fact to exclude this.)

It's very difficult in this case not to counfound the own sentiments with analytic facts, but I still have the conviction that without the very important FLIGHT RECORDER, most of the facts explained up to now are just interpretations of sounds and nothing more, even if carried out by all sorts of experts.

By analysing past airplane crashes, it turns out that most of them are a concatenation of very unlikey events, that when all put together finally have led to the crashing. This again makes sound-only analisis a very tricky business which can not be complete at all.

XenonS

You knew what he meant.

Who really knows what he meant?



The shadow knows.....

Patrick Sondheimer
http://www.mamamia.com.au/lifestyle/patrick-sondheimer/

Today I was in (undisclosed Florida city). The Jet bridge was filled with old people slowly shuffling onboard. FAs told me that the bins were full and asked it I could call ops to start tagging bags. It was easier just to tell the agent directly so I played salmon against the flow on the jetway walked my way to the counter. About halfway there an old woman stopped me with a look of genuine concern to ask about my state of mind. I assured her that I was happy and she couldn't be in safer hands. She wanted to keep talking but I had marching orders and said a few more words of comfort as I continued toward the agent. As I turned away an old man's voice yelled for all to hear, "don't commit suicide!" I turned and two guys in their eighties looked at me nodding and grinning like the three of us were sharing some hilarious inside joke.

Germanwings Flight 9525 co-pilot Andreas Lubitz told his Lufthansa flight training school in 2009 that he had a �previous episode of severe depression.�

let the lawsuits begin

There's a lesson there.

Well if there is I missed it.

Yep.

Always change into your Stewardess outfit before leaving the cockpit??

Its certainly an interesting topic and as a commercial pilot, I am somewhat adverse to throwing in my thoughts.

Aside from the fact (that I am not aware of) that the CVR has not been released. Do we know for sure what happened up front with the First officer?

But to help open up more to this conversation, I think we should think in broader terms.

Depression, certainly its a factor, but generated by what? People certainly seem to have different breaking points. We have broken relationships, marriages, deaths in the family, financial hardships, fatigue, and a host of other external influences that can affect us.

Some may see maybe one of these in their lives, but the majority of us will experience quite a few of these. The unlucky of us may see a few of these items at the same time.

How do we fight against this. The yearly medical may not pick it up (I know for a fact that fatigue and depression can cause physical anomalies but these anomalies normally arise after an extended period of these pressures).

People also have varying levels to which they can withstand the problems listed above.

So how do we ascertain the safe threshold of an individual, and how do we asses a stress level that a particular individual is receiving against his/her perceived allowable threshold?

Now the finger of blame can lie in many places and from my experiences, todays commercial flight industry is very cut throat and that has its own problems.

But can we quantify this threat? We surely need to understand it before we can engage a fix for it.

As it stands, every flight I do (and have done) is a constant assessment of the capabilities and behaviour of the person sitting next to me as well as the cabin crew as well as the passengers + despatcher + groundstaff + etc.

But I am no psychologist and I am certainly not a mind reader.....