A German co-pilot’s decision last Tuesday to deliberately crash an Airbus A320 into the French Alps has left everybody grappling for answers. Ariadne Massa traces the chilling details that have emerged since.

Being jilted by his girlfriend, a torn-up sick note and a past history of mental illness are all clues specialists hope will unlock the answers to the mindset of the Germanwings co-pilot when he deliberately flew a jet into the Alps.

New chilling details about Andreas Lubitz, 27, and the extent of his health problems, have been emerging every day since Tuesday’s horrifying crash that killed all 149 people on board.

The German newspaper Bild yesterday reported that an ex-girlfriend of Mr Lubitz said he told her last year: “One day I will do something that will change the whole system, and then everyone will know my name and remember it.”

German prosecutors also believe Mr Lubitz hid an illness from his airline and searches of his homes yielded “medical documents that suggest an existing illness and appropriate medical treatment”, including “torn-up and current sick leave notes, among them one covering the day of the crash”.

The sick note declared him unfit for work on the day before he boarded the Dusseldorf-bound Airbus A320 and crashed it into a rocky ravine in the Alps.

Social psychologist Mary Anne Lauri believes this kind of suicide crash could be an expression of revenge, maybe because he was jilted by his girlfriend or a grudge against his employer.

This was a wake-up call to better manage mental health in aviation

Prof. Lauri said in-depth interviews with friends and those close to him could help unlock the motivations behind Mr Lubitz’s actions.

“When a person is depressed the thought processes are not normal. Apart from this it is also relatively easy to hide the symptoms, making it harder for those around to detect the person’s state of mind.”

Writing in the Counselling Psychology Quarterly, clinical and specialist aviation psychologist Robert Bor says one reason a suicidal commercial pilot might choose to crash their plane is to destroy any evidence of suicide, to protect their family and their memory from the ‘shame’ of suicide.

But as airlines rush to reassure the public by introducing stricter regulations and checks on the mental health of pilots, it may actually be an emotive knee-jerk reaction that further exacerbates the problem.

A University of Malta study entitled ‘The psychological effects of constant evaluation on airline pilots: an exploratory study’, by Ina Lempereur and Prof. Lauri, concludes that constant evaluation in itself has psychological effects.

The study, published in the International Journal of Aviation Psychology, points out that airline pilots are the most frequently trained, evaluated, and monitored professionals in the world.

But many pilots greeted flight and medical checks with fear because they represented a threat to their flying licence. For most pilots, job security and the recurrent checks were stronger chronic stressors than potential personal injury or even death.

Active pilots, who knew the system well, may hide stress-related psychological problems during their medical evaluation not to jeopardise their flying licence.

The message that comes across in this study is that, although a harsh reality for many to accept, psychological distress among active airline pilots is a reality.

Pilots in this study wanted airlines to normalise this reality by making professional psychological help more available, and removing the stigma on those who may need such help by accepting that certain psychological problems, albeit temporary, may be inherent to this profession. This was a wake-up call to better manage mental health in the aviation industry, where failing a medical meant suddenly becoming employable.

One day I will do something that will change the whole system, and then everyone will know my name and remember it

Prof. Lauri, however, believes that a person diagnosed with chronic depression should not be allowed to fly, as the thought processes would be severely affected.

Psychiatrist Anton Grech says that somebody with suicidal tendencies should not be placed in a situation that put him and others at risk.

However, he is also quick to warn against the “shadow of the illness” where not everything the person did was a consequence of the condition.

Around 20 per cent of the population suffered from severe depression at some point in their life, he said, and it would be unfair to cut off them off from society.

“A person’s personality comes into play and you cannot pin everything on depression – it would be too simplistic a conclusion to do so,” Dr Grech said.

“My conclusion is that Andreas Lubitz was a disturbed individual and we are going to need more information to establish whether this was suicide or a murder-suicide.”

Around 40 gendarmes and other alpine searchers were yesterday still combing the roughly two-hectare site where the jet crashed and the second black box, the flight data recorder has still not been found.

A religious service was held at Digne-les-Bains in the French Alps near the site of the crash, and the German government announced that a national memorial service for all victims of the flight will be held on April 17.

Ten minutes of madness

10.01am. The Airbus takes off from Barcelona, Spain, and is expected to land in Dusseldorf, Germany, 90 minutes later. It is carrying 150 people – 144 passengers and six crew.

10.15am. Andreas Lubitz and his captain, Patrick Sondenheimer, can be heard on the cockpit voice recorder talking “courteously... like two normal pilots”.

10.30am. The captain is heard asking the co-pilot to take over the controls. A chair is heard moving and a door is heard closing.

10.31am. Lubitz presses the button which sets the autopilot on a descent from 38,000ft to 100ft, the lowest possible. The button can only be pressed voluntarily. The captain knocks on the cockpit door but there is no reply. His attempts to unlock the door are seemingly blocked.

10.35am. Air traffic controllers try to contact the pilots, but receive no response.

10.32-10.40am. The captain shouts, uses the intercom and tries to break down the door, even reportedly using an axe. Mr Lubitz is silent throughout but is heard breathing.

10.35am. French air traffic controllers issue a distress signal after seeing the dramatic drop in altitude and failing to get a response from Mr Lubitz. The plane is treated as a priority for a forced landing.

10.39am. Passengers can be heard screaming “at the last moment” as proximity alarms sound inside the plane and they realise what is happening.

10.41am. The plane hits the mountain at 430mph and smashes into pieces, killing everybody on board.

It’s not the first time

Last Tuesday’s incident is not the first time a pilot has deliberately crashed a plane, and the crash of Mozambique Airways Flight LAM 470 on November 29, 2103, seems to bear chilling similarities.

Investigators believe the jet was flown into the ground by the captain after his co-pilot went to the toilet, killing everyone. The captain was said to have had serious personal problems at the time of his death.

However, this incident barely made the headlines and it was only after Lufthansa’s low-cost airline was deliberately crashed into the Alps that European airlines rushed to change their security procedures to have two crew members in the cockpit – which has been mandatory in the US since the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York in 2001.

But will this resolve anything or is it simply a reaction of governing bodies wanting to appear to be doing something to allay fears?

Captain Joe Farrugia, a former Air Malta chief pilot for Airbus aircraft, believes if this practice was adopted earlier it could have prevented the Germanwings incident.

However, he acknowledged it would obviously not resolve everything.

Captain Laurence Gatt, former Air Malta chief officer flight operations, said that, although it affords an extra layer of safety there would always be someone to beat the system.

In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Airbus A320 was fitted with a locking mechanism to prevent unauthorised access by potential hijackers to the flight deck while the aircraft was in flight. The door was also specially strengthened, to prevent someone from being able to barge their way through.

Capt. Gatt, who spent 37 years flying with Air Malta, explained that pilots could restrict access to the flight deck, although cabin crew could gain entry in an emergency.

However, this emergency access can be overridden – by the co-pilot in the Germanwings case – for between five and 20 minutes.

Having heard the leaked 60-second voice recording of the pilot banging on the door, Capt. Gatt is baffled how at no point in time was the pilot heard trying to use the code to get in – the sound would be distinctive – and was instead only heard banging.

He added that planes were equipped with technology – an enhanced ground proximity warning system – that if one was going to smash into a mountain, it would instantly alert the pilot by saying “Whoop, whoop, pull up.”

Eventually, he said, technology would enable the plane to pull up on its own to avoid collision if the pilot failed to take appropriate action.

Another proposal being discussed was having the information from the flight data recorder – the black box – transmitted in real time to a databank on the ground.

“I believe there is so much more investigators know and we’re not being told. There are still so many questions that remain unanswered.”

Times Talk will discuss the Germanwings disaster on Tuesday at 6.45pm on TVM.