Lufthansa Germanwings flight No 9525
The
startling revelation on Tuesday 24th March 2015, that the crashed Germanwings
airplane No 9525 flying from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, was the result of a
deliberate act carried out by the co-pilot Andreas Lubitz a 28 year-old German,
has struck a ghastly ominous note in the investigation.
On first hearing this explanation one’s
initial response is to reject it. How
can a man trained as a pilot in control of a plane deliberately choose to crash
it? Having accepted the responsibility to pilot a plane what could possibly
prompt him to take such desperate action? What thoughts would have gone through his mind?
If done deliberately, how desperate had he to be to kill almost 300 people none
of whom he knew.
If
he felt his life made no sense, why choose the moment when he was in charge of
a plane carrying hundreds of people to kill himself?
Could the desire to commit suicide come on
quickly and irrationally? Is if possible
that in his deranged mind, he forgot about the passengers?
Suppose he had a row with the chief pilot
over a girl or because he was caught smuggling drugs and was about to be
exposed. Will anyone be able to understand what went through his mind?
Could the two pilots have had a row? Was there
something between him and the captain a personal grudge? Is it possible that he
was only trying to frighten the captain and intended to take back control of
the plane before it had accelerated too fast? Did he lose control of the plane
having started the descent? Did he panic and was unable to activate the lever?
Was he struggling to bring the plane out of the dive but too late?
Why
did he not open the door to let the captain back into the cockpit? Would a
responsible pilot choose that moment to live out his anger?
And
what of the relatives? To hear that the loss of their loved ones was a
deliberate act makes it almost too much to bear. Because of the speed of impact
on the ground, the authorities believe death to be instantaneous, but there was
about 8 minutes of terrifying descent, each watching the earth looming up
towards them. How would they deal with that? What massive terror would they have
felt, so many young lives lost?
Can
the relatives ever overcome the shock and distress so as to be able to return
to some semblance of normality? How will they collect the broken bodies now in
parts dispersed over a wide area?
Could the families accept a common grave in
the mountains at the site of the crash with a monument to mark the spot?
In
a modern society we give individuals more and more responsibility and depend on
them to perform their functions safely. Train and bus drivers, doctors, and
pilots all have the lives of many people in their hands. There are innumerable
examples where these individuals have failed and lives have been lost. Inevitably
there is a call for more regular psychological testing but that science is
still particularly imprecise more an art than a science.
The three major TV News channels are having
a heyday almost a feeding frenzy as they dissect and repeat time and again the
same details, each announcer speaking as if what he or she is saying is
breaking news seemingly unaware that they are restating almost word by word
what has been said many times before.
They
appear to have become immune to what they are saying reporting numbers of
deaths as if football scores. Does the fact that X number of people was killed
make the tragedy worse? Surely one unnecessary death is one too many?
