While some news stories go straight over my head, others have me surfing channels for days after as I become more and more philosophically aware of my own insignificance and vulnerability.

The latest plane crash to make aviation history has shaken me much as 9/11 did. In many ways, this disaster, though smaller in scale, has been more sinister still, because while that disaster failed to keep the ‘bad-guy’ out, this one failed to let the ‘good-guy’ in.

It’s one thing for an ‘outsider’ to hijack an aircraft, but quite another for an insider, let alone the co-pilot, to do the same.

And of course, today, we find ourselves wondering whether the aviation industry’s most significant reaction to 9/11 – equipping aircraft with impregnable cockpit doors – was, in some way, an overreaction which contributed to this tragedy.

My initial reaction to the crash was that the pilot must have suffered a heart attack or aneurism and lost control, but I dismissed the thought almost at once, so certain was I that the ‘rule of two’ applied on all aircraft. I was wrong.

We’re in the habit of giving copies of keys to friends and neighbours for fear of being locked out of our homes; and we do this when our front doors are hardly impenetrable and no-one’s life is ever at risk. It seems inconceivable, to say nothing of irresponsible, to leave one man to his own devices inside a cockpit.

I’m not even thinking of criminal activity or insanity. People have been known to drop dead. When that person is piloting a plane, the idea of being solo seems outrageous and absurd.

We’ve been told that an override device to facilitate cockpit entry in an emergency would ordinarily have been possible, but I’m equally sure that no airline would exclude the possibility of that overrider actually failing.

Anyway, that’s by the by. As of last week, most airlines, including our national airline, have adopted the ‘two-policy rule’ previously mandatory on most US airlines, making it compulsory for the cockpit to be manned by two crew members at all times. This will invariably give rise to adverse side-effects, as most knee-jerk reactions do. The moral, perhaps, is that you can never really have a foolproof system or completely compass the perversity of someone who wants to sabotage the system.

This has suddenly made the airline industry extremely vulnerable, leaving us all wondering whether pilots are properly evaluated psychologically and physically. Anyone who has ever completed a questionnaire knows how easy bare-faced lying can be. Who can ever take issue with the fact that you drink one unit of alcohol a week and never take drugs – until it’s too late? Equally true is that we have all had to deal with a psychological issue, even if no more than a mild or transient depression, at some stage in our lives.

The latest plane crash to make aviation history has shaken me much as 9/11 did

What struck me as odd about all the media reports was the way depression, sick notes, a medical history and troubled past were all put forward in an attempt to explain or in some way rationalise what happened. Apart from the fact that I simply don’t buy into the neat idea that Andreas Lubitz did this ‘because he was depressed,’ I don’t ever recall the media and Western world offering terrorists the same benefit of the doubt.

An ‘Islamic’ terrorist is regarded simply as a medieval fanatic; an equally sinister, dark German is examined microscopically, even sympathetically, while the media piece the puzzle together.

And while there is no doubt in my mind that Lubitz was anxious, depressed, repressed and psychotic, I’m equally sure that all terrorists suffer some form of psychosis and have their own uncontrollable demons.

With the difference that people then are never really interested in a reason. In that case, we blame religion, never the mental or psychological state.

Lubitz clearly had identity, self-worth and deeply rooted psychological issues that drive otherwise ‘apparently’ normal people to do very bad things. The fact that he was pleasant in his social dealings seems to have raised doubts as to whether he could pull off something this gruesome. Does it follow that a person with ‘plausible’ manners can do no evil or that a terrorist can do nothing good?

It is my view that depression on its own ‘does not a terrorist make’. And yes, this was an act of terror, a violent act for an overriding ‘reason’ which seems to make perfect sense to a certain someone at a certain time.

There’s a blurred line between religious fanaticism and mental illness. You don’t have to be brainwashed, convert to Islam or kill in the name of God or Allah to be a ‘terrorist’.

Killing in the name of Lubitz, to teach the aviation industry a lesson, for self-aggrandisement, to be remembered in the annals of history, or simply to check out, is equally warped and heinous.

People who are depressed are unlikely to want to fly a kite. This was something else – a high dose of egocentricity and narcissism combined with a psychological disorder and, of course, the ultimate power trip. Being able to fly a plane and defy gravity is hypnotic and intoxicating – the closest thing to Superman. In the wrong hands, this invincibility can be lethal.

The realisation that his flying days were numbered was the impetus Lubitz needed; and it was a plan that created its own psychological satisfaction. Talk about getting high and crashing out...

This was flying at its most bizarre and tragic, and it’s how Lubitz wanted to be remembered. So, when it comes to those creatures that truly belong to the air – birds – I really don’t want life wasted either.

A bird is not a human being, but death in the name of sport is still terribly sad and futile. I hope the spring hunting referendum spares the birds. Vote ‘No’ on April 11. Let Malta be remembered for that.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com