Article: How German pilot deliberately crashed plane

Fyi.

Ignoring the captain's frantic pounding on the door, the co-pilot of the Germanwings jet barricaded himself inside the cockpit and deliberately rammed the plane full speed into the French Alps as passengers screamed in terror, a prosecutor said Thursday.

In a split second, all 150 people aboard were dead.

Andreas Lubitz's "intention (was) to destroy this plane," Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said, laying out the horrifying conclusions French investigators reached after listening to the final minutes of Tuesday's Flight 9525 from the plane's black box voice data recorder.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the conclusions brought the tragedy to a "new, simply incomprehensible dimension."

The prosecutor said there was no indication of terrorism, though he did not say why investigators do not suspect a political motive. The inquiry is instead focusing on the co-pilot's "personal, family and professional environment" to try to determine why he did it, Robin said.

The Airbus A320 was flying from Barcelona to Duesseldorf when it lost radio contact with air traffic controllers and began dropping from its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet. The prosecutor said Lubitz did not say a word as he manually set the plane on an eight-minute descent into the craggy French mountainside that pulverized the plane.

He said the German co-pilot's responses, initially courteous in the first part of the trip, became "curt" when the captain began the mid-flight briefing on the planned landing.

Robin said the pilot, who has not been identified, left the cockpit when the plane reached cruising altitude, presumably to go to the lavatory. Then the 28-year-old co-pilot took control of the jet as requested.

"When he was alone, the co-pilot manipulated the buttons of the flight monitoring system to initiate the aircraft's descent," Robin said.

The pilot knocked several times "without response," the prosecutor said, adding that the cockpit door can only be blocked manually from the inside.

The co-pilot said nothing from the moment the captain left, Robin said. "It was absolute silence in the cockpit."

The A320 is designed with safeguards to allow emergency entry into the cockpit if a pilot inside is unresponsive. But the override code known to the crew does not go into effect - and indeed goes into a lockdown - if the person inside the cockpit specifically denies entry.

During the flight's final minutes, pounding could be heard on the cockpit door as the plane's instrument alarms sounded. But the co-pilot's breathing was calm, Robin said.

"You don't get the impression that there was any particular panic, because the breathing is always the same. The breathing is not panting. It's a classic, human breathing," Robin said.

No distress call ever went out from the cockpit, and the control tower's pleas for a response went unanswered.

Air traffic control cleared the area to allow the plane to make an emergency landing if needed, and asked other planes to try to make contact. The French air force scrambled a fighter jet to try to head off the crash.

Just before the plane hit the mountain, passengers' cries of terror could be heard on the voice recorder.

"The victims realized just at the last moment," Robin said. "We can hear them screaming."

The victims' families "are having a hard time believing it," he added.

Many families visited an Alpine clearing Thursday where French authorities had set up a viewing tent for victims' relatives to look toward the site of the crash, so steep and treacherous that it can only be reached by a long journey on foot or rappelling from a helicopter.

Lubitz's family was in France but was being kept separate from the other families, Robin said.

Helicopters shuttled back and forth form the crash site Thursday, as investigators continued retrieving remains and pieces of the plane, shattered from the high-speed impact of the crash.

The prosecutor's account prompted calls for stricter cockpit rules. Airlines in Europe are not required to have two people in the cockpit at all times, unlike the standard U.S. operating procedure, which was changed after the 9/11 attacks to require a flight attendant to take the spot of a briefly departing pilot.

European budget airlines Norwegian Air Shuttle and EasyJet, as well as Air Canada, announced Thursday that they were adopting new rules requiring two crew members to always be present in the cockpit.

French prosecutors' assertion that this week's air crash was a deliberate act of the co-pilot, points to the possible need for a third pilot in airline cockpits, several aviation safety experts said.

"The flight deck is capable of accommodating three pilots and there shouldn't ever be a situation where there is only one person in the cockpit," said James Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, referring to the "jump seats" all airliners are equipped with.

Neither the prosecutor nor Lufthansa indicated there was anything the pilot could have done to avoid the crash.

Robin would not give details on the co-pilot's religion or his ethnic background. German authorities were taking charge of the investigation into him.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said that before Thursday's shocking revelations, the airline was already "appalled" by what had happened in its low-cost subsidiary.

"I could not have imagined that becoming even worse," he said in Cologne. "We choose our cockpit staff very, very carefully."

Lubitz joined Germanwings in September 2013, directly out of flight school, and had flown 630 hours. Spohr said the airline had no indication why he would have crashed the plane.

Lubitz underwent a regular security check on Jan. 27 and it found nothing untoward, and previous security checks in 2008 and 2010 also showed no issues, the local government in Duesseldorf said.

Lufthansa's chief said Lubitz started training in 2008 and there was a "several-month" gap in his training six years ago. Spohr said he couldn't say what the reason was, but after the break "he not only passed all medical tests but also his flight training, all flying tests and checks."

Robin avoided describing the crash as a suicide.

"Usually, when someone commits suicide, he is alone," he said. "When you are responsible for 150 people at the back, I don't necessarily call that a suicide."

In the German town of Montabaur, acquaintances told The Associated Press that Lubitz appeared normal and happy when they saw him last fall as he renewed his glider pilot's license.

"He was happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well," said a member of the glider club, Peter Ruecker, who watched Lubitz learn to fly. "He gave off a good feeling."

Lubitz had obtained his glider pilot's license as a teenager, and was accepted as a Lufthansa pilot trainee after finishing a tough German college preparatory school, Ruecker said. He described Lubitz as "rather quiet" but friendly.

Lubitz's Facebook page, deleted sometime in the past two days, showed a smiling man in a dark brown jacket posing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The Facebook page was restored after the French prosecutor's news conference.
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I like how German Officials are calling this mass-murder and not suicide.
 
The A320 is designed with safeguards to allow emergency entry into the cockpit if a pilot inside is unresponsive. But the override code known to the crew does not go into effect - and indeed goes into a lockdown - if the person inside the cockpit specifically denies entry.
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What if the co-pilot was passed out and the pilot/staff could not remember the entry code?
 
Park@82 said:
What if the co-pilot was passed out and the pilot/staff could not remember the entry code?
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I believe there is a key also that is hidden in the cabin somewhere. I am guessing this is for if the code is indeed forgotten like you mentioned or if the keypad for whatever reason stops working.
 
Ockie said:
I believe there is a key also that is hidden in the cabin somewhere. I am guessing this is for if the code is indeed forgotten like you mentioned or if the keypad for whatever reason stops working.
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I love how a certain dumb**** that shall not be named, calls everyone "conspiracy theorists" for thinking a crazy person crashed the plane, but then think it's totally rational and normal that every single safety system fails at the same time, the plane reprogrammed itself like HAL 9000, locked its own door, locked out its own override code, and everyone at the aircraft maker is trying to hide some terrible flaw in their design, going so far as to edit the CVR recordings.
 
TJ99 said:
I love how a certain dumb**** that shall not be named, calls everyone "conspiracy theorists" for thinking a crazy person crashed the plane, but then think it's totally rational and normal that every single safety system fails at the same time, the plane reprogrammed itself like HAL 9000, locked its own door, locked out its own override code, and everyone at the aircraft maker is trying to hide some terrible flaw in their design, going so far as to edit the CVR recordings.
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Ja. I am struggling with his reasoning. :(
 
Ockie said:
Ja. I am struggling with his reasoning. :(
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It's the typical conspiracy nut "reasoning". Some people like convincing themselves they are super smart, and see through the BS that experts with decades of experience somehow miss. Like the 9/11 Truthers or the chemtrails lot.
 
TJ99 said:
I love how a certain dumb**** that shall not be named, calls everyone "conspiracy theorists" for thinking a crazy person crashed the plane, but then think it's totally rational and normal that every single safety system fails at the same time, the plane reprogrammed itself like HAL 9000, locked its own door, locked out its own override code, and everyone at the aircraft maker is trying to hide some terrible flaw in their design, going so far as to edit the CVR recordings.
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Yup, that chain of event stretches credulity to the breaking point.
 
TJ99 said:
It's the typical conspiracy nut "reasoning". Some people like convincing themselves they are super smart, and see through the BS that experts with decades of experience somehow miss. Like the 9/11 Truthers or the chemtrails lot.
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Patches does exactly this, you would think he had doctorates in Biology, Cosmology, History and Geology they way he discounts accepted theories in those fields.
 
Cray said:
Patches does exactly this, you would think he had doctorates in Biology, Cosmology, History and Geology they way he discounts accepted theories in those fields.
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Don't forget Physics, he doesn't believe in gravity either.

And he's an explosives expert, he thinks the Boston Marathon bombing was a hoax, staged with amputees and fake blood.
 
The below article is an opinion piece.


Germanwings jetliner catastrophe: The first antidepressant drug-induced mass murder of the skies?

Thursday, March 26, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

Andreas-Lubitz-Germanwings-Pilot.jpg

(NaturalNews) The Germanwings air catastrophe is now being widely reported as a murder-suicide, based on audio evidence that paints the picture of a co-pilot locking everyone else out of the flight deck while he calmly flew the plane onto a collision course with a mountain.

Our hearts and prayers go out to all those lost in this horrible tragedy, yet we must also ask: Could this have been prevented? Was it caused by mind-altering prescription medications?

The Mirror (UK) is now reporting that "Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz 'suffered burnout or depression' a few years ago, a former classmate has claimed."

The reported behavior of Andrea Lubitz is eerily similar to SSRI-drug-induced school shooters who carried out mass murders in the United States (see detailed list below). In case after case, school shooters have been found to either be on prescription antidepressant drugs or recently taken off them, causing withdrawal side effects.

What U.S. school shootings and the Germanwings mass murder have in common is a dissociation from reality where individuals often think they are "playing a video game" and don't realize their actions are literally harming other people in the real world.

As the Mirror reports:

The mother of an ex-classmate of Lubitz told how the co-pilot - who deliberately flew the passenger jet into the Alps killing 150 people - had confided in her daughter a few years ago.

She said: "He apparently was suffering from burnout or depression."

These days, almost everyone who is described as suffering from "depression" is on mind-altering prescription medications which are marketed in a deceptive way that glosses over the murder-suicide risks associated with such drugs. Antidepressants literally alter brain chemistry and cause people to think and act in ways they would not normally exhibit.

It's not unusual for pilots to fly planes into terrain in flight simulators
Here's something else most non-pilots don't realize. Although it's not a condoned practice, all of us who are trained to operate aircraft have trained at one time or another in flight simulators. And all of us -- including myself -- have done things in those flight simulators that we would never do in real life. I've performed loops and barrel rolls with a Cessna, for example, even though I would never be crazy enough to try such a thing in a real airplane.

Attempting these maneuvers in a simulator has legitimate training value that saves lives in the real world, because these "games" help pilots learn the limits of aircraft power, stability and maneuverability. To know the limits of an aircraft, it's useful to exceed those limits in the safety of a simulator where you DON'T die...

At the same time, I've also seen other pilots in simulators intentionally fly aircraft into mountains as a way to end the current scenario with a surge of excitement. Again, this is undoubtedly frowned upon in the commercial aviation industry, but I've seen it happen with my own eyes. I've never done this myself, it turns out, but plenty of other pilots have.

In a simulator, of course, it's perfectly safe to fly your airplane into a mountain. What if Lubitz thought he was in a flight simulator? Could antidepressant drugs have caused him to confuse reality vs. simulation? It's speculation, of course, but it's consistent with other SSRI-related mass murders we've seen over the years.

FAA bans pilots from flying while on antidepressant drugs
Antidepressant drugs are so dangerous that the FAA bans U.S. pilots from taking them. They are considered a danger to the pilot and passengers. I'm not certain whether antidepressants are illegal for pilots to consume in various European countries, but it wouldn't be difficult for someone to be acquiring them and taking them covertly, even if it were illegal.

Here's a list of other mass murderers who were taking antidepressant drugs:

Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold's medical records have never been made available to the public.

• Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather's girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.

• Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.

• Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.

• Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.

• Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.

• Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.

• Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.

• A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school.

• Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded..

• A young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.

• Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.

• TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.

• Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.

• James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers.

• Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania

• Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California

• Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times.

• Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman.

• Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic's file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister.

• Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.

• Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.

• Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself shortly after his Lexapro prescription had been doubled.

• Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.

• Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family's Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.

• Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara's parents said ".... the damn doctor wouldn't take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil...")
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Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/049137_Germanwings_depression_antidepressant_drugs.html
 
perhaps this man believed that there will be 21 virgins waiting for him on the other side...
 
I would easily believe the theory of SSRI's being the cause. Responses vary drastically and a strong responder can unexpectedly enter a state where they feel pretty much nothing. On the other side the drugs can stop working very suddenly sometimes after years making a person go from fine to suicidally depressed very quickly.

The story lists many cases where murder is involved but leaves out the much more common scenario where a person walks over a busy road or fails to stop their car at a traffic light due to their normal self-preservation instinct that draws their attention to the danger being essentially missing.
 
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