the France jet pilot was locked out of cockpit

[meridannight]

The A320 is also the type I fly the most often so it's a small comfort that there isn't some lurking potential problem with all of them.

there isn't. and flying is one of the safest ways to travel on the planet (safer than driving a car). it's just, when you happen to be on that plane that will go wrong....there's little chance of surviving it. unlike in a car crash, where it's more random and a person could survive even seemingly the harshest crashes.

[ShiftyNJ]

there isn't. and flying is one of the safest ways to travel on the planet (safer than driving a car). it's just, when you happen to be on that plane that will go wrong....there's little chance of surviving it. unlike in a car crash, where it's more random and a person could survive even seemingly the harshest crashes.

Understood and agreed. This particular plane was 24 years old. My fear (I pay a lot of attention to stuff related to civil aviation as it is an interest of mine) was around the ageing/fatigue of composite parts, which are relatively new to commercial jets. Metal fatigue was an issue with early pressurized jets that didn't become known until they were approaching the same vintage. So I am glad that is not the case here.

[matty7]

might be controversial but if he was suicidal while not just go do it alone without knowingly killing children on board let alone the rest of the passengers - very selfish if that is the case...we may never know why though

[meridannight]

might be controversial but if he was suicidal while not just go do it alone without knowingly killing children on board let alone the rest of the passengers - very selfish if that is the case...we may never know why though

it's just a speculation as to what might have been behind his motivation. they're just trying to put it together so that it would make sense.

i don't buy it either. suicidal people do not try to kill other people along with themselves. the latter behavior usually falls somewhere along the psychological/mental disorder spectrum, of which suicidal behavior is one of the manifestations. you take 150 people with you on your suicide, you are not just suicidal, you are mentally ill.

i think the most likely case was a temporary or intermittent insanity/psych. probably passed screening, because most of the time he was indeed OK. or he showed some ambiguous signs that could have been interpreted either way and in his case he slipped through. (remember, this was in fact a very young pilot, with minimal experience, and thus also minimal chances of catching his psych problems, if he had them). something could have triggered him on the plane, during the flight, it didn't even have to be pre-planned in advance.

[ShiftyNJ]

I was somewhat relieved to learn that on US carriers with only two flight crew members, one of the cabin crew goes into the cockpit if one of the pilots is out of there, and (assuming he is only going to the lav) another cabin crew member positions a service cart across the aisle to deter anyone else from approaching. I am going to pay attention to this next time.

[meridannight]

by the way, i was thinking, why not expand the cockpit area to include private lavatory for the pilots? design the whole thing as a 100% self-contained area (i.e. with toilet, food, water, etc) so that the pilots do not have to leave the cockpit at any point during the flight, unless it is absolutely required for safety.

though i do not think it is possible to make flights 100% safe. that's just not gonna happen. and scenarios like this are impossible to prepare for anyway.

[Hardheaded1]

We want to make every heinous act a mental illness. Normal schoolchildren commit heinous acts every day, merciless, and selfish.

Is it really so hard to accept that a man who is despairing, maybe experienced a lost love, maybe received a cancer diagnosis, maybe killed someone in Barcelona in a hit-and-run accident, could perform a suicidal act and not care what harm to the world it caused? Despair is despair.

People jump from buildings, drive into opposing traffic, jump from overpasses, and do all sorts of things in their suicide attempts, with no regard for any innocent bystanders.

[meridannight]

Is it really so hard to accept that a man who is despairing, maybe experienced a lost love, maybe received a cancer diagnosis, maybe killed someone in Barcelona in a hit-and-run accident, could perform a suicidal act and not care what harm to the world it caused?

yes. because i've felt despair (not talking about some lightweight matter here), and it has never made me want to kill anybody else, much less 150 anybody else.

i stand by my opinion. anybody who feels desperate/depressed/suicidal, and decides to make it into a mass casualty incident is mentally ill. there is no justifying it away with oh-i-just-felt-really-bad-there.

[Hardheaded1]

It is not a matter of justification. It's a matter of philosophy and attitude. If we begin with assumptions that define normal behavior, and exclude monstrous or evil intent as only possible by "sick" minds, we will only see the possibilities that fall within our parameters of expectation. Einstein talked about discovery being limited by theory and concept -- we don't see what we think is impossible.

To relegate a monstrous act to the zone of "mental illness" sets up all sorts of false dichotomies and expectations of normality, virtue, vice, etc. A man tortures another, and he is a madman. A man tortures another because he believes the other is a terrorist and must divulge a plot, the torturer becomes not mad, but ruthless. The torturer may or may not be a soldier.

Politicians, rulers, statesmen, doctors and others make monstrous decisions every day that directly and knowingly take the lives of many people. Yet, we do not deem them madmen, even when there is "nefarious" intent. We have a psychological double standard. Only certain people can be "crazy" and only certain people can do bloody things without it being abnormal.

A pilot decides to end his life, likely out of depression and/or anger and/or philosophy/ideology. Of course depression is a mental illness, but that doesn't necessarily throw it into some sort of outlier category. Depression is as common as physical illnesses. That doesn't make it some sort of superbug that is in a whole other category of human norms. He chooses to end his life and punish the world as he goes. I know more than a few people who don't care about the society around them and are capable of such indifference. Thankfully, few are motivated to take out 150 people.

As for personal experience with despair, the range of human ability for rationalization and anger leaves me not believing any one individual's perspective or experience is a valid ruler for what five billion others may do.

[Hardheaded1]

And, I could simply have to eat my words: http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/20...ve-updates



Of course, completely aside form the fact that this is a news account from The Guardian, not from any authoritative source, it is indeed very preliminary. That said, judging from the accounts of the man's interrupted training, it sounds very plausible.

All in all, a great tragedy.