Andreas Lubitz

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Commercial-plane cockpits always seem a fraternal if cramped space, co-pilots, we imagine, sharing tight quarters, amusing quips, secret handshakes and after-flight drinks. (You hope it’s after the flight.) But as Germanwings 9525 demonstrated, many of the aviators serving the world are veritable strangers. Would it have made a difference if his fellow fliers had some familiarity with Andreas Lubitz? From a Spiegel investigation into the unnecessary disaster:

As tempting as it may be, one shouldn’t imagine the people in the cockpit as teams or partners who know each other well and have done so for a long time. The opposite is actually true. At major airlines, pilots often aren’t very familiar with each other, if at all. The pilot and co-pilot are often teamed up for a flight by throw of dice. Afterwards, they have a few days off and then fly again with a different colleague. The lack of familiarity is deliberate because the airlines want to avoid situations where too much trust gets built up. Everyone is meant to work as dictated by the rules and not like some old couple who create their own. This lack of familiarity is considered to be beneficial to safety, but is it? Could problems with a man like Lubitz have been detected earlier if someone had been more closely associated with him?

In many ways, the fact that taking a closer look at the life of Andreas Lubitz may not get us closer to solving the mystery is even more disturbing than it would have been if a convincing motive could be found. A closer look at the life of a co-pilot who became a murderer shows a lot of signs of ordinariness, with nothing to indicate he might be close to the abyss. Throughout his life, Lubitz cracked ordinary jokes, he listened to ordinary music and he wrote ordinary things. By all appearances, he seemed to be just a normal guy.

It’s possible that his insanity was buried so deep in his head that even his girlfriend had no idea about it. It has been reported that the two lived in Düsseldorf and that they wanted to get married. She worked as a math teacher and was reportedly already on her way to the site of the crash in southern France when she learned that her boyfriend had not been a victim, but rather a likely perpetrator responsible for killing 149 people.•

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We don’t even fully know ourselves, let alone others, but it would be impossible to function without pretending we do. 

Perhaps there’s someone among us who understands what appears to be the monstrous end of Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of the Germanwings flight who seems to have purposely put the plane into the mountains. The case may have been all but solved for practical purposes, but in another sense it could always remain a mystery. Was it a willful act? A descent into madness? Sometimes there’s truly no one at the controls. From Tom Porter of International Business Times:

Details of Lubitz’s life are still emerging, with investigators confirming he did not have any known terrorist links. According to the website of the flight club where he was a member, the co-pilot was from Montabaur in Rhineland Palatinate.

Members of the Montbaur flying club where Lubitz renewed his glider license last month said he was pleased to have gained a job with Germanwings. 

“He was happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well,” longtime club member Peter Ruecker, told AP. “He was very happy. He gave off a good feeling.”

Ruecker said that Lubitz had a girlfriend. “I can’t remember anything where something wasn’t right,” he said.

Montabaur city mayor Gabriele Wieland, speaking to the DPA press agency, said Lubitz lived with his parents in Montabaur and also had a residence in Dusseldorf, where the Germanwings flight was heading before it crashed.

German media reports he had 630 flight hours and joined budget airline Germanwings straight out of Lufthansa Flight Training School in Bremen in September 2013. Authorities have not confirmed if he had any experience as a professional pilot prior to that.

At a press conference on 26 March, Lufthansa announced Lubitz interrupted his training for a number of weeks six years ago. They did not provide details on the reasons for this interruption, but said he had been subjected to health checks afterwards. 

They said he had passed all psychological and physical tests prior to starting work as a pilot.

“Andreas became a member of the club as a youth to fulfil his dream of flying,” the club said in a death notice on its website.

“He fulfilled his dream, the dream he now paid for so dearly with his life,” the club said, reports the Wall Street Journal.

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