Fricking crashing airplanes

[El Barto]

It is never black and white, of course. But I can mount zero sympathy for a person who just as easily could have offed himself with a few pills in the hotel room the night before, Instead, he takes down 170 people with him. That's just plain murder (and a convenient one at that, since you don't have to stand trial for it).

Look, this is going to come off more argumentative than it really is, but stop looking at this through your own lenses.   I'm not defending this guy, or saying what he did was acceptable or right.  Conceptually, I am with you; suicide is a personal act. This isn't "suicide", this is mass murder, and oh, by the way, the perpetrator went too, and you'll notice that no one is defending Adam Lanza as a "suicide". 

But the point I'm trying to make is that if someone has lost the "regard" for their own life, and knowing that all the data shows that despite suicides being incredibly painful and traumatic for the survivors, suicides themselves believe they are making the lives of those around them better, how can you expect them to keep the sanctity of some life in the back end of the plane that they have never even seen let alone experienced?    In other words, to respect other lives, you have to respect your own first, and that is the one thing that successful suicides are lacking as compared to those that don't.

Your comparison to Balock is an excellent point. However, I do see some difference. I tend to look at the motivation for these like this and we honestly have no idea what it was. In this case, was his goal to kill a whole bunch of PAX for some reason, or to kill himself spectacularly? That's really where I'd draw the distinction. Balock set out to kill a bunch of kids and only offed himself when he was done. We just don't know what this guy's story was. I've been calling it a murder suicide up to this point, simply because that's the closest approximation. In the end you'll probably be right, he wanted to go out spectacularly, but I'm not going to slap the mass murderer label on him just yet since I think that would be simplistic at this point.

And As I pointed out with Charles Whitman, his mental state is a huge consideration in how I view the guy.

[rumborak]

Yesterday I learned about the difference between "extended suicide" (when you take out your while family, because you genuinely believe that it is the best option for everyone) versus "homicide-suicide", where you just take out other people for no " rational " reason.

Listen. I'm not calloused towards depressed people and their plight. However, this guy actually had a doctor's note in his apartment that he could have called in sick with. He tore it apart, went on the flight instead and killed 170 people. Argue as you will, I feel no moral obligation to feel sympathy for this guy.

[El Barto]

I'm not sympathetic to him either, at this point. The likely scenario is that he's just a dick, which I've said repeatedly. I'm just also no ready to assume as much. We don't know what his motivations were and we don't know what his mental state is. Also, at this point the doctor's note doesn't mean much to me. I don't know what it said and I don't know the politics of Lufthansa. That note might well have been a career-ender at many airlines making him naturally reticent to play the card.

Also, it seems that he might have gone through and ugly break up. If that's a real factor then I am far more inclined to get on Calvin's loser train. Again, I just don't know much at this point.

[rumborak]

Also, at this point the doctor's note doesn't mean much to me. I don't know what it said and I don't know the politics of Lufthansa. That note might well have been a career-ender at many airlines making him naturally reticent to play the card.

Which, actually, might have added to his quandary. They were saying he was being treated currently, and he had interrupted his training too at some point. Maybe he felt he wouldn't be able to do his job anymore soon. Loss of future perspectives is a major driver in suicides.

Interesting wrinkle in all this: Because of doctor confidentiality, nobody really knows what he was being treated for.

[El Barto]

Actually, I saw somewhere that when he interrupted his training he spent nearly a year in a loony bin.

But yeah, your point is sound. If he felt that he wasn't going to be able to do the one thing he wanted and trained to do, it might well lead to both Suicidal Tendencies and a great deal of anger at people associated with the industry.

[kirksnosehair]

Actually, I saw somewhere that when he interrupted his training he spent nearly a year in a loony bin.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?


How does a person like this get to sit at the controls in a damned airliner?   

[El Barto]

Actually, I saw somewhere that when he interrupted his training he spent nearly a year in a loony bin.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?


How does a person like this get to sit at the controls in a damned airliner?   

He gets cured. Admittedly the system seems to have failed here, but is the alternative of banning everybody with any psychological issues from flying for life reasonable? Should any pilot taking an SSRI be prohibited from flying? Ambien? As I pointed out in another forum, that might be the best solution, but there needs to be a lot more discussion about mental health than who should be banned from what. There's also Rumborak's quite sensible observation that washing out anybody for anybody mental issues would lead to fewer pilots seeking treatment for any issues at all.

And at the end of the day, this still remains a freak occurrence. There are lessons to be learned, obviously. Closing up the gap that seems to be a factor here is certainly the starting point. That doesn't mean that you need to start creating more and more safeguards. A little sensibility goes a long way, yet it's a difficult thing to muster sometimes after an event like this.

[rumborak]

Just FYI, I had not heard of any time spent in a mental institute by the guy. As I said, Germans are rather strict about their doctor confidentiality, so this would unlikely public information.

[kirksnosehair]

It is a slippery slope, but there's not a lot of room for error here.  I don't think I'd have any problem with banning people who have been treated mental illness from obtaining a commercial pilot's license.


I mean, that just sounds like common sense to me.

[Calvin6s]

It is a slippery slope, but there's not a lot of room for error here.  I don't think I'd have any problem with banning people who have been treated mental illness from obtaining a commercial pilot's license.


I mean, that just sounds like common sense to me.

Me too.  Of course, they'd have to spell out *which* mental illnesses qualify as ban worthy.

I'd imagine most people have known somebody within their life's somewhat close path that was suicidal and/or a danger to others.  Taking the somewhat common "manic depressive", my experience in watching people succumb to their illness is that their personality before it became *bad* determines quite a bit of how that mental illness will affect them.  People that were just genuinely nice people more or less stayed nice, just more withdrawn and *silly* for lack of a better/not as harsh term.  And people that were kind of dicks became full throttle dicks as the mental illness took over.  The former was more likely to end in suicide, and the latter was more likely to end in rampage.

I've known a former (nice type) that was way gone that I felt totally safe around despite the fact that they were getting transmissions through the microwave.

I've known latter (jerk type) that was significantly more functional than the former, but I'd always watch with one eye open.

But that's a chemical thing, not a cancer growth type of situation.

As far as this douchebag pilot, he obviously knew he had something that was a danger to those around him, got the help, ignored it, then let his *destiny* play out.  Loser.  Douche.  Jerk.

[rumborak]

I was just looking on German news sites, and could not find anything regarding a previous mental issue. All that is knows is that he interrupted his training for a medical issue, which was then deemed resolved, and that he was now visiting the Düsseldorf university clinic.
BTW, this can be something as "benign" as diabetes. A friend of mine is a pilot and had to quit because of that.

[Calvin6s]

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/28/world/europe/germanwings-crash-andreas-lubitz.html?_r=0

[rumborak]

Yeah, never mind. Now the news site I frequent in German says he was mentally ill.

[El Barto]

It is a slippery slope, but there's not a lot of room for error here.  I don't think I'd have any problem with banning people who have been treated mental illness from obtaining a commercial pilot's license.


I mean, that just sounds like common sense to me.

The statistics would suggest that there's a large margin for error. It's just that the results of failure are rather high. We're up to 100,000 flights a day, yet this is a freak enough occurrence that it's a huge world event. Reasonable and sane precautions are always in order, as they were 2 weeks ago, long before this happened. I'm just not of the opinion (yet) that it's time to "ban anybody who's been treated for a mental illness from obtaining an ATP ticket." There are a lot more details to sort out first, and jumping to the strictest measure first doesn't sit well with me.

And as for Rumbo's diabetic friend, if he were to become non-insulin dependent he would likely be able to regain his ticket.

The obstacle here is being able to pass a class 1 medical. If you do then you can fly. This includes a psych evaluation, just a very half-assed one at the moment. Seems to me the sane, sensible approach is better psychiatric diagnostics that would prevent one from passing that medical exam. That's a system already in place that seems to work very well, by and large. Improve that. It would make the crack even harder to slip through and wouldn't mean washing out people who already have their jobs but are perfectly fine to operate. 

[Stadler]

Actually, I saw somewhere that when he interrupted his training he spent nearly a year in a loony bin.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?


How does a person like this get to sit at the controls in a damned airliner?   

He gets cured. Admittedly the system seems to have failed here, but is the alternative of banning everybody with any psychological issues from flying for life reasonable? Should any pilot taking an SSRI be prohibited from flying? Ambien? As I pointed out in another forum, that might be the best solution, but there needs to be a lot more discussion about mental health than who should be banned from what. There's also Rumborak's quite sensible observation that washing out anybody for anybody mental issues would lead to fewer pilots seeking treatment for any issues at all.

And at the end of the day, this still remains a freak occurrence. There are lessons to be learned, obviously. Closing up the gap that seems to be a factor here is certainly the starting point. That doesn't mean that you need to start creating more and more safeguards. A little sensibility goes a long way, yet it's a difficult thing to muster sometimes after an event like this.

It's changing now for what I feel are positive reasons (i.e. not knee-jerk "we're just avoiding a lawsuit" nonsense, but rather better education and better understanding) but when I was going through law school and contemplating the bar, a fellow student with me had some personal issues she thought a therapist could help her with, but opted NOT to get treatment on the grounds that it would hurt and possibly preclude her chances of being admitted to the bar.  So the precedent is there for some consideration as to mental state.  We already (at least here in the states) have age and eyesight requirements for pilots.  I don't see any philosophical barriers to using these types of issues as a screen, assuming they are well-contemplated and evenly administered.

[Cable]

^

This is what is unfortunate about the MH field. There is a still a stigma, and a lot of that is in this situation. I am not justifying what the pilot did; it was mass murder-suicide, or vise versa if that matters. But clearly as what has been said, people do not report because it can impact many jobs, getting one or keeping one. And I get that many disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar I, dissociative identity disorder etc) often disable people depending on where it is on a continuum. I would not want specific disorders doing certain jobs. But then where is the line drawn? Someone with well managed ADHD who takes low dosages of Intuitiv, and copes with it well but is then excluded from being a surgeon? A lawyer?

The other issue is the inherent self reporting of mental health. While certainly we can see differences in brains via MRIs and what not, it's not black and white that can be with other non MH conditions. It's not oh, this guy has Intermittent Explosive Disorder, this gal Major Depressive Disorder, that guy Bi-polar 2 disorder and etc. It is limited to stuff like Spectrum disorder and AOD use frequently from what I know.

So when I diagnosis someone, I go off what they say. A psychologist uses measures, and psychiatrists also use primarily what someone says. But if they under report, or over-report symptoms, the diagnosis will fit that. To me, it's not hard to gather questions are going. I'm guessing someone without my training would also be able to figure out where some questions are going, and such fake answers if they wanted.

Sure, always ways to improve measures. But with self reporting still a part of the process, and no way to black and white see conditions, mis diagnosing on the account of false reporting is inherent in the field.

Thinking of "curing" a MH disorder is not fully accurate. Especially from using medication, it's just the managements of triggers and symptoms. Certainly temporary things like grief related depression, adjustment disorders, and depression via a break up often resolve themselves. But schizophrenia, bipolar 1 & 2, Borderline, Anti-social personality, ADHD and so on have no true cures. People manage them with varying degrees of success.

[Calvin6s]

And just like you can't cure some mental illness (great or small), there is no way to escape the stigma.  Because the stigma is actually based off something real.   In your social world, you might get along with a kleptomaniac, but you wouldn't leave anything of value alone near them.  You wouldn't let somebody with anger issues watch your kids.  In the business world, you are essentially responsible for your employee's actions.  So moving on to the next candidate w/o the stated problems is just playing it safe because lawsuits are real.  And let's not even talk about money or legal obligations.  You don't want to see other employees/customers/vendors possibly hurt (or maybe just swindled).

This really isn't that different than
[Y] Have you had a felony conviction?
on the basic employee application.

[El Barto]

Posted elsewhere, but still applicable here:

The picture is starting to develop pretty clearly now. He had long suffered from depressive episodes. He got dumped by his fiance of 6 years shortly before they were to be married. Then the day before the crash he was diagnosed with retinal issues that could very likely have ended the career he'd spent his life trying to attain. Since I'm not well versed on depression I'm not really qualified to examine how much his mental health controlled his actions, but without that knowledge I'm pretty much ready to call the guy a real asshole. I still maintain that people are oversimplifying the mental health aspect in their zeal to poke and prod with their pitchforks, but in the end I'm more and more inclined to agree with the general opinion of this guy.

[rumborak]

There's also really no scenario that I could imagine that could even attempt to lessen the impact of taking 170 people down with you. This wasn't some heat-of-the-moment decision; he had planned this in advance (how long, who knows, but he has said to his gf once that he was going to do something that would "change the system and make people remember his name"). Either way, he was clearly capable of rational thought (being able to steer am airplane), and thus the 170 dead people were callously planned in, maybe in his desire to increase the grandeur of his deed.
The amount of sympathy for such a person is zero, no matter the depression or detached retinas he had.

[cramx3]

Yea, agreed.  Those issues are worthy of depression and sympathy alone, but don't make me sympathize when you murder at mass. 

[Calvin6s]

(how long, who knows, but he has said to his gf once that he was going to do something that would "change the system and make people remember his name"). Either way, he was clearly capable of rational thought (being able to steer am airplane),

Well he was right on that.  Right now we are debating what to call him.  Dick, Ahole, Jerk, Douche, Mass Murderer

[Stadler]

But it's a point worth making:   I have said elsewhere, and will continue to say, that it is merely days after this catastrophic event, and we have only the information that is deemed "headline worthy" by various news desks reporting on this.   It is foolhardy and irresponsible to be making any kind of meaningful psychological diagnoses on this guy based on that.   THAT IS NOT SYMPATHY FOR THE MASS MURDERER.   He is ultimately culpable, regardless, and I think the idea that he had to endure several minutes of the pilot banging on the door, and by many accounts the screaming of the passengers, tells me this is something that was planned and was not an ill-fated moment of weakness. 

The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. 

Why I harp on this is because it is why we have the knee-jerk reactions by governments and interested parties following these catastrophic events and yet these catastrophic events KEEP HAPPENING.    I guarantee you that we will have calls for more strict measures involving people diagnosed with "depression" within days, weeks at the outside, and likely by people who have no idea about the real condition that is "depression". 

[Sycsa]

Apparently an internet subculture called "involuntary celibates - incels" has the motives of the pilot all figured out: https://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/03/27/internet-incels-celebrate-andreas-lubitz-the-alleged-killer-co-pilot-of-germanwings-flight-9525-as-a-legitimate-slayer-and-an-incel-hero/

Checked out their forum, it's the most disturbingly fucked up thing I stumbled upon on the internet since that Armin Meiwes voluntary cannibalism story.

[rumborak]

Now *there's* a forum you want to post in in you want to find yourself being surveiled.

[Chino]

I can't wait to click that link once I get off work.

[El Barto]

But it's a point worth making:   I have said elsewhere, and will continue to say, that it is merely days after this catastrophic event, and we have only the information that is deemed "headline worthy" by various news desks reporting on this.   It is foolhardy and irresponsible to be making any kind of meaningful psychological diagnoses on this guy based on that.   THAT IS NOT SYMPATHY FOR THE MASS MURDERER.   He is ultimately culpable, regardless, and I think the idea that he had to endure several minutes of the pilot banging on the door, and by many accounts the screaming of the passengers, tells me this is something that was planned and was not an ill-fated moment of weakness. 

The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. 

Why I harp on this is because it is why we have the knee-jerk reactions by governments and interested parties following these catastrophic events and yet these catastrophic events KEEP HAPPENING.    I guarantee you that we will have calls for more strict measures involving people diagnosed with "depression" within days, weeks at the outside, and likely by people who have no idea about the real condition that is "depression".

You and I are definitely on the same page here, but I'm not sure why people keep saying that he had to plan this. What he did could have easily been a spur of the moment deal. It had to be deliberate, there's not doubt about that, but he might have decided to do it in the 180 seconds during which the captain was TCB. Those doors are designed to be able to lockdown tight with the turn of a knob (and I still recon there's a sliding bolt, as well) and whilst the Airbus FD would make it a little harder to crash the plane, you or I could still pull it off pretty easily. You couldn't lawn dart the thing but hitting a mountain would be a cakewalk.

[Stadler]

But it's a point worth making:   I have said elsewhere, and will continue to say, that it is merely days after this catastrophic event, and we have only the information that is deemed "headline worthy" by various news desks reporting on this.   It is foolhardy and irresponsible to be making any kind of meaningful psychological diagnoses on this guy based on that.   THAT IS NOT SYMPATHY FOR THE MASS MURDERER.   He is ultimately culpable, regardless, and I think the idea that he had to endure several minutes of the pilot banging on the door, and by many accounts the screaming of the passengers, tells me this is something that was planned and was not an ill-fated moment of weakness. 

The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. 

Why I harp on this is because it is why we have the knee-jerk reactions by governments and interested parties following these catastrophic events and yet these catastrophic events KEEP HAPPENING.    I guarantee you that we will have calls for more strict measures involving people diagnosed with "depression" within days, weeks at the outside, and likely by people who have no idea about the real condition that is "depression".

You and I are definitely on the same page here, but I'm not sure why people keep saying that he had to plan this. What he did could have easily been a spur of the moment deal. It had to be deliberate, there's not doubt about that, but he might have decided to do it in the 180 seconds during which the captain was TCB. Those doors are designed to be able to lockdown tight with the turn of a knob (and I still recon there's a sliding bolt, as well) and whilst the Airbus FD would make it a little harder to crash the plane, you or I could still pull it off pretty easily. You couldn't lawn dart the thing but hitting a mountain would be a cakewalk.

Nah, I think we're still on the same page.  I mean "deliberate", and you're right, that doesn't mean it has been in the planning stages for any significant amount of time.   

[Calvin6s]

but he might have decided to do it in the 180 seconds during which the captain was TCB.

There is audio where he kept telling the captain to take a restroom break.  He was pushing it.

[jammindude]

Apparently an internet subculture called "involuntary celibates - incels" has the motives of the pilot all figured out: https://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/03/27/internet-incels-celebrate-andreas-lubitz-the-alleged-killer-co-pilot-of-germanwings-flight-9525-as-a-legitimate-slayer-and-an-incel-hero/#more-15809

Checked out their forum, it's the most disturbingly fucked up thing I stumbled upon the internet since that Armin Meiwes voluntary cannibalism story.

This is deeply...deeply disturbing.   

[rumborak]

Wow, CNN just came in its pants 5 times in a row. They found some debris that looks like it could come from MH370.

[El Barto]

Wow, CNN just came in its pants 5 times in a row. They found some debris that looks like it could come from MH370.

I certainly hope it's the plane. They could probably track down the bulk of the wreckage if they know where a piece washed ashore.

[jasc15]

Shouldn't the source of this debris be relatively easy to determine?  I hope this doesn't become a total media circle jerk .  Just figure out where the damn thing came from.

[rumborak]

Yeah, I wonder how much you could backtrack it given the ocean currents.

[jasc15]

A point I just read that makes sense is that if the part is from a 777, it is almost certainly from MH370, since all other 777 crashes have occurred over land.

[Chino]

We should be able to get a pretty good idea of where the plane went down if this turn out to be from MH370. We track ocean currents on so many levels.