NEW YORK TIMES: When Andreas Lubitz sent an email in 2009 seeking reinstatement to Lufthansa’s flight-training program after a months long absence, he appended what in retrospect was a clear warning signal about his fitness to fly passenger jetliners: an acknowledgment that he had suffered from severe depression.
Lufthansa put the young German back through its standard applicant-screening process and medical tests. But it did not, from everything known about the case so far, pursue any plan to assure that he was getting appropriate treatment. Nor did it impose special monitoring of his condition beyond that required for any pilot who had a flagged health issue.
Instead, Mr. Lubitz haltingly made his way through the training program and ultimately was entrusted as an Airbus A320 co-pilot for Lufthansa’s low-cost subsidiary, Germanwings. Lufthansa was so unaware of the extent of Mr. Lubitz’s psychological troubles that the company and its medical staff had no idea of the tortured drama playing out in his mind, peaking in the two or three months leading up to his final flight. Investigators told The New York Times that he visited a dozen or more doctors as he frantically sought treatment for real or imagined ailments… (more)
