
Germanwings Tragedy: How to protect against mentally ill pilots? - ivank
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2015/03/28/germanwings-tragedy-how-to-protect-against-mentally-ill-pilots/
======
ptaipale
I like that comment about crash axe vs. two quarters and a dime and a set of
car keys.

However, this one I disagree slightly: "Could this crash have been prevented
if a flight attendant had been in the cockpit? “No,” is the short answer. "

The presence of a flight attendant does not make it _impossible_ for a
determined suicidal co-pilot to crash the plane. Heck, even the presence of
captain doesn't. But while you can physically destroy the plane even if
someone is right there, in the case of a mental disorder it is more difficult
to do it. The presence of another human has an impact on you.

~~~
ghshephard
Agreed - In california, a lot (most?) of the gun ranges will not let you go by
yourself, you need to have a buddy. Now, obviously there is _zero_ ability for
a bystander to prevent you from doing something harmful with a firearm, should
you chose to do so, but the mere _presence_ of someone else, radically reduces
the chance that you will do so.

~~~
fnazeeri
Source?

~~~
corin_
I only have an anecdote, but I had a day to kill in LA a few years back, and
really fancied going to a pistol range (never tried - only used a shotgun here
in the UK) - Googling and phoning all the ranges I could find within the LA
area I couldn't find any that would let me go without somebody else with me (I
was out there alone for work).

------
glomph
I think this statement from Mind is pretty relevant:

"The terrible loss of life in the Germanwings plane crash is tragic, and we
send our deepest sympathies to the families. Whilst the full facts are still
emerging, there has been widespread media reporting speculating about the link
with the pilot’s history of depression, which has been overly simplistic.

Clearly assessment of all pilots’ physical and mental health is entirely
appropriate - but assumptions about risk shouldn't be made across the board
for people with depression, or any other illness. There will be pilots with
experience of depression who have flown safely for decades, and assessments
should be made on a case by case basis.

Today’s headlines risk adding to the stigma surrounding mental health
problems, which millions of people experience each year, and we would
encourage the media to report this issue responsibly."

Sue Baker, Director, Time to Change Paul Farmer, Chief Executive, Mind Mark
Winstanley, Chief Executive, Rethink Mental Illness"

~~~
tim333
Yeah, Lubitz seems to have been quite an extreme case and not typical of the
depressed. From the Daily Mail quoting his ex:

>"He never talked much about his illness, only that he was in psychiatric
treatment," she told the paper, adding they finally broke up because she was
afraid of him.

>"He would suddenly freak out in conversations and yell at me," she recalled.
"At night he would wake up screaming 'we are crashing' because he had
nightmares. He could be good at hiding what was really going on inside him."

>German authorities said on Friday they had found torn-up sick notes showing
that the co-pilot was suffering from an illness that should have grounded him
on the day of the tragedy.

I guess in the future they may check up better on the torn-up sick note stuff.

------
littletimmy
> _Thus he has a child support and /or alimony order in place based on his
> $150,000/year pilot salary. If he can’t earn close to $150,000/year he won’t
> be able to pay this order, in which case he will join the roughly 1 in 7
> child support payors who are imprisoned at some point for nonpayment (for
> not paying the court-ordered amount, Massachusetts offers the pilot a felony
> conviction, which means he won’t have an ATP certificate anymore and
> therefore won’t be able to work again, plus up to 10 years in prison)._

This is sickening and horrifying. Why aren't more people speaking up against
this sort of nonsense? How on earth is putting a man in prison going to help
him pay child support payments?

~~~
mg1982
Wow - so close. How about: 'How on Earth is putting a man in prison remotely
just or proportional'?

------
corin_
63 comments and nobody else is shocked yet at "Airlines should be able to
automatically fire divorce, custody, or child support lawsuit defendants"?
(edit: sorry, one other person did mention it already)

Setting aside how shit a situation that would put every pilot in, how about
when considering problems try targeting the cause not the sympton: if you
think divorce/etc. is bad enough to make a pilot a suicidal murderer, argue to
fix the divorce system, not stop him being a pilot.

Not that the author cited even a single example of divorce/children/etc. being
the cause for an air crash...

~~~
glogla
Yes, it's kind of funny (and more than one kinds of sad) how the reaction to
"sick person does something terrible because his life is miserable," is "hey
let's make more people miserable".

------
beggi
You can be depressive or mentally ill without wanting to harm yourself or
anyone else. Let's not blame the murder of 149 people on depression. The
question really is, how to protect against malicious pilots?

~~~
acqq
As I was younger, it was normal to see the pilots in the cockpit from your
seat while flying, if the cockpit door existed it wasn't even closed. Why are
people so scared today from everything? My question is, do we even need to
"protect" from everything? Accidents happen sometimes, flying in big planes is
still safer than driving.

Improving the conditions for the pilots and crew is a good goal though.

Somebody has to be responsible. If the pilots shouldn't be trusted, why should
those that would override them be?

~~~
icebraining
_Somebody has to be responsible._

Nope. You don't have to have any single person trusted - that's the whole
point of having two pilots. This is just extending that basic systems
architecture notion (having no SPOF) where it's lacking.

~~~
dingaling
And until the early 1980s we had the Flight Engineer to keep an eye on the two
pilots. They drove, he managed the aircraft and made sure they didn't bend it.

It was not unusual for the Flight Engineer to be senior to the drivers.

But the airline accountants highlighted the personnel cost of Flight Engineers
and eliminated them, without ever considering the operational cost savings
they provided. Even in mundane matters like resolving departure issues without
having to wait for the on-call engineer.

"How long to fix it, eng?" became "What's wrong with it now? Back to the
gate."

~~~
shiggerino
The same thing happened in shipping, getting rid of the radio officers, which
unlike aviation is also compounded by very lax regulation.

Modern ships are filled with fancy electronics, and it's usually poorly
designed with broken software, that few know fully how to operate and nobody
knows how to fix. This problem is only going to increase as they rely more and
more on automation, and it's not going to stop until there is an accident
severe enough to prompt aviation-style regulation and safety methodology.

------
moe
This is blown way out of proportion. Planes sometimes crash, such is life.

Pilot already is a dying profession. In a few decades there will be nobody in
the cockpit to "protect against" anymore.

Until then we will see a few more of these incidents, just as we will see a
few more planes used in terror attacks. It doesn't matter what feel-good
measures we take. Humans are infinitely creative at circumventing[1] them.

[1] cf. the TSA security theatre vs journalists regularly smuggling all kinds
of weaponry onto planes just to show they can

------
ck2
Aren't 150 innocent civilians dying everyday in Syria from a mentally ill
dictator? That's a 9/11 every month.

Where are the hours of news coverage for that every day?

Also 30,000 people have died in Iraq since the "war" supposedly ended in 2011
and the US "left". That is a few 9/11's every year for them.

By the way, every single middle-eastern country, every one of them, is
currently at war, either civil-war or externally against another country or
against groups like ISIS. Shouldn't thousands of hours of news time be devoted
to that, like every opening paragraph on TV and in print should be - "the
ENTIRE middle-east is currently at war". It is kind of important.

~~~
pimentel
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism)

By that criterion, we shouldn't talk about a murder in our neighborhood, about
our children failing at maths, about unemployment... War is worse than all
these.

Also, it's not news when every headline every day is "more 150 people dead in
war". You think people would keep watching the news, let alone caring about
some war far, far away?

~~~
ck2
BBC seems to be able to cover it almost daily. American "news" virtually never
unless there is a talking point some politician is pushing.

American "news" seems to find a reason to talk every hour about the plane
mass-murder, many times just saying "we have nothing new to tell you" even the
reporters they turn to simply repeat in different words what the anchor JUST
SAID.

So why not cover all the countries currently at war in the middle east every
hour. They most definitely have news every hour on that one because more
people have died. No more people are going to die in that single plane crash
despite hundreds of hours of coverage.

~~~
mkr-hn
The American news I follow covers these things. Maybe you need better sources
of news.

------
jacquesm
Shall we fire all the bus-drivers and train operators too that have families
and that may be headed for divorce?

If anything this will lead to planes being flown by remote control or using
autonomous computers. Pilot is one of those jobs that carries some degree of
respect from non-pilots because we trust our lives to them and expect them to
infallibly do what's right. When an idiot decides to murder close to 150
innocents that were entrusted to his responsibility that will harm the whole
institution of flight and all his colleague pilots as well.

But let's not go overboard and fire all the pilots that could be at risk of
divorce, most people are perfectly normal, madmen are the exception.

~~~
quesera
Philip writes for his regular readers, and that was almost certainly
intentionally absurd.

He's an "if-this-then-that" sort of rhetoricist. _If this absurd thing is
considered socially acceptable, then obviously this even more absurd thing
which logically follows should be acceptable too._

He's working on a book about the travails of family law. He quotes from the
book and the research extensively. He's deeply opposed to the calamities that
are legally imposed on non-custodial parents. This would be one more thing on
that list.

------
vermooten
I couldn't possibly let my employers knows I suffer from the black dog, even
though the very worst that could possibly happen is that some software would
get delivered late.

It would be seen as weakness by colleagues, upper management etc - if anything
goes wrong then it would be 'Oh well he's depressed, better not give him any
important work to do in case he flips out.'

------
dmritard96
Will this change peoples attitudes towards fly by wire/remote pilots/drones?
In theory, there should be a flight plan thats relatively straight forward and
immediately upon unusual divergence from the plan you would think a remote
pilot could peer in on what is going on and even override the controls...
Obviously security concerns are important here.

~~~
acqq
The remote pilots fly the unmanned drones which aren't a big loss when
something goes wrong. And something always goes wrong there too, just it's not
a big loss and nobody reports that. "One drone crashed instead of flying
around, so what? That's why they are unmanned and cheap, that's why we use
them actually."

------
thret
I found all of the divorce stuff terrifying. If a pilot is away 10-22 days a
month for their full time job, then even if their spouse has an affair and
wants a divorce they still lose everything because they are not home enough?
How is that right?

~~~
joosters
Look at it from the perspective of the children. How can a single parent who
is away for 10-22 days a month look after a child?

~~~
thret
Better to be raised by a liar and a cheat who is comfortable turning around
and making unreasonable demands on their hard-working ex? And putting them in
jail if they can't pay? NO.

~~~
joosters
Was there some specific case you're referring to, or are you making broad
sweeping generalisations?

~~~
thret
Just referring to the case(s) mentioned in the article.

------
andmarios
The question should be how to protect mentally ill people. One does not have
to be a pilot to harm himself and/or many others.

------
bayesianhorse
The only good thing that may come out of this tragedy is that suicide
prevention gets taken more seriously.

Unfortunately, the opposite may also happen, with disastrous consequences for
anyone who people suspect of having a depression.

------
amix
I think this could be prevented by removing humans from the cockpit and let
computers take over. Computers are already controlling most of the things
inside an airplane. If this isn't possible, then the flight software should at
least have protection against malicious pilots (this would protect against the
mentally ill and also against terrorism (e.g. 9/11)). Basically, the planes
could have failsafes to prevent malicious pilots from crashing them down or
crashing them into things.

~~~
ghshephard
Unfortunately we're about 40-50 years out before an automated flight control
system can reproduce the critical activities of a well-trained human team of
pilots.

But yes, we'll reach a point where the liability of having human beings fly
planes vs the sophistication/reliability of an automated system will reach the
point where the answer is a foregone conclusion. It's just a half-century
away.

~~~
moe
_we 're about 40-50 years out_

More like 10-15 years.

Airliners already spend most of their life on autopilot today. Many (including
the Airbus that crashed here) have auto-landing systems[1], too.

Fully autonomous passenger aircraft are being tested[2] in shared airspace
since 2012.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland)

[2] [http://www.baesystems.com/magazine/BAES_051920/look-no-
hands](http://www.baesystems.com/magazine/BAES_051920/look-no-hands)

~~~
will_asouka
The utility of autopilot to a pilot is comparable to that of cruise control to
a driver, it takes away some of the drudgery. It is not robust enough to be
unmonitored by a human. It can not make the many decisions that arise every
day in aviation, such as if and how to avoid a thunderstorm.

Autoland needs ground equipment that is expensive to install and has stringent
requirements on the surrounding topography that means many airports can not
install it. It also takes 2 people's full attention to make the autoland
happen in a consistently safe manner, it's not a case of pressing the LAND
button and sitting back sipping tea. This video shows a bit of that
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMydKAcqKCg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMydKAcqKCg)

~~~
moe
_It is not robust enough to be unmonitored by a human._

I'm no aviation expert, but isn't that only because the systems in civilian
aircraft are decades old?

The state of the art in military drones seems to be autonomous landings on
aircraft carriers[1]. The safety requirements for an Airliner are of course
much higher than for an UAV, but the underlying technologies seem to be rather
mature already.

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/10/4511476/autonomous-
drone-f...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/10/4511476/autonomous-drone-first-
landing-on-navy-aircraft-carrier)

------
downandout
Firing pilots because they are going through a divorce, as suggested by the
author, seems a little extreme. CFIT (controlled flight into terrain) crashes
such as this - whether accidental or intentional - can be eliminated by
technology and hopefully will be soon. Airlines can complain about the cost
all they want - the direct loss projection from this single incident is $350
million [1]. The cost of doing nothing is demonstrably greater than the cost
of developing and deploying a CFIT prevention system.

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-27/co-
pilot-s...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-27/co-pilot-
suicide-leaves-lufthansa-facing-unlimited-liability)

~~~
sokoloff
I agree that we can make great strides against _unintentional_ CFIT accidents,
but don't think we can rely on tech to eliminate intentional CFITs.

Cut the fuel supply to both engines; what's the computer going to do?

Now, if you protect against _that_ , what's to prevent that system from
stopping a pilot from extinguishing an in-flight fire in a situation where
cutting fuel to one engine (or perhaps two/all) is the right response?

~~~
downandout
But you're implying that we can't make the aircraft smart enough to know that
there is a fire and that cutting fuel is the right thing to do. I believe we
can.

~~~
sokoloff
How can you ensure that the fire detection circuitry isn't ever mis-wired in
the field (such that when engine 1 catches fire that the computer knows that
it's engine 1 and not engine 2)? If that happens (and it's certainly the case
that engine indicators have been crossed before in the field), the pilot now
couldn't shut down the engine with the fire (theorizing that the computer
wouldn't allow the discharge of fire bottles and cutoff of fuel to the only
engine NOT displaying a fire alarm).

Or an engine that's streaming fuel (but not burning). Mid-ocean, you might
want to cut the fuel to ensure you make landfall.

Substitute other failure scenarios as you need, realizing that any system has
cases where the pax die when an alternate system would have saved them, but
also vice versa.

It's not that we can't get systems that are right way more often than they're
wrong, but that's still a long way to go from there to taking control from the
pilot(s), IMO.

A determined suicidal pilot can find a way. If they can't, then they don't
even need to be on the airplane right?

Disclaimer: I'm a [small airplane] pilot and well aware that I'm more likely
to cause a crash from my own doing than from poor maintenance, but I
definitely subscribe to the Boeing philosophy more than the Airbus...

~~~
12thr0wit
Pilots really push back against this kind of safety feature. They want 100%
control of their vehicles, including the ability to lift the landing gear
while on the ground, because the risk of equipment failure that cannot be
manually overridden is high.

~~~
sokoloff
Agreed. It's a very common feeling that "I am better than the automation."
Even as an engineer and a fan of statistics, I share that visceral and
inherent bias in my ego-laden monkey brain.

On your specific example, there's little life-safety risk in inadvertent
retraction of the gear. Sure, you're going to make expensive sparks, but it is
extremely unlikely that anyone will die or even suffer life-changing injuries.
The only likely injuries are from the slides and evacuation process.

In contrast, being unable to raise the gear can be a life-safety emergency.
Take a piston twin such as the one I fly. An engine failure with the airplane
heavy and the gear down is a bona fide emergency.

Suppose I take a bird or deer strike just after liftoff that damages the
propeller and the "squat switch" (the weight-on-wheels sensor that prevents
the gear being raised electrically). The prop damage may force me to shut down
that engine at the same time that I can't raise the gear electrically (because
the squat switch says we're still on the ground). I may not be able to climb
the airplane with the available power on the left side engine while manually
cranking up the gear, and I'm heavy, low, and slow.

What first seems like a "duh, pilots would have to be idiots for arguing they
should be able to raise the gear with weight on the wheels" is actually a
tradeoff between a high likelihood of inadvertent switch mis-use with only
financial consequences versus a very low likelihood of losing the aircraft an
all on board.

Of course, people are both bad at math, bad at understanding low
probability/high impact events, and very uncomfortable with "costing" human
lives such that a tradeoff can be made across financial losses and human lives
lost.

------
FranOntanaya
Perhaps any crew member should be able to switch on the autopilot from any
part of the plane, then ground control or a timer would restore it.

It couldn't be that hard either to track the position of the crew in the plane
and change the security thresholds depending on it.

~~~
rwmj
Autopilot was switched on in this case. The problem was the pilot had adjusted
the target height to be inside a mountain. (He'd specifically set it to 30
ft). Technically speaking the autopilot crashed the plane, albeit on the
pilot's instruction.

~~~
rwmj
I'm embarrassed to say that I confused feet and meters. The autopilot was set
to 100 ft, which is approximately 30 m. Source:
[http://uk.businessinsider.com/aviation-tracking-service-
germ...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/aviation-tracking-service-germanwings-
pilot-ordered-jet-down-to-100-feet-2015-3)

------
ghostberry
Looking at the numbers, the mentally well have crashed many more aircraft on
purpose than the mentally ill.

So, how to protect against mentally well pilots?

~~~
mg1982
Forgive me, but crashing an aircraft on purpose excludes you from the sane
club. The number is of mentally well people to do so is - and always will be -
zero.

~~~
ghostberry
"Mentally ill" is not an insult you throw at people you don't like. It's a
medical term.

------
hitchhiker999
Didn't the almost exact same thing happen 2 weeks ago? A plane did a nose dive
(but that time recovered) - or ?

------
cozzyd
Yes, I'm sure the pilots will have better working conditions if they get rid
of their unions...

------
amelius
Why not just allow ground control to open the cockpit door remotely?

~~~
icebraining
How can ground control know if the pilot locked out isn't being forced by
someone to ask for it? If you're going to rely on his/her word, might as well
give him/her direct access.

------
macco
Arghh. I can't even escape that tragedy on HN.

------
shiggerino
>If he can’t earn close to $150,000/year he won’t be able to pay this order,
in which case he will join the roughly 1 in 7 child support payors who are
imprisoned at some point for nonpayment (for not paying the court-ordered
amount, Massachusetts offers the pilot a felony conviction, which means he
won’t have an ATP certificate anymore and therefore won’t be able to work
again, plus up to 10 years in prison).

It doesn't help that the United States still has such medieval instruments as
debtor's jail.

While more civilized countries have programs in place to help debtor's with
counselling, restructuring and suicide prevention, the United States debtor's
jail system makes sure you'll never get out of debt, and that you'll die in
debt. Never mind that the creditor won't get what they are owed under this
system. Never mind whether the creditor even exists:
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/02/15/woman-
jailed-l...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/02/15/woman-jailed-late-
video-return/5512821/)

~~~
SeanDav
I have no idea if the USA has a debtors jail or not, but I don't think this is
about going to jail for being in debt, it is about going to jail for breaking
a court imposed order.

The court order could have been about a restraining order, in which case you
go to jail for breaking a restraining order. This does not mean that the USA
has a jail specifically for any possible violation of a court imposed order.

~~~
mg1982
It's a distinction without a difference if the court is ordering you to pay
money that don't have and can't get.

------
happyscrappy
Europe will now use the same procedure as the the US never leaving less than
two in the cockpit. Too late for the Germanwing passengers but at least they
are implementing it after the fact.

~~~
frik
Europe no, some European airlines yes.

ex: Air Berlin and Niki yes, Lufthansa its sub-companies Germanwings,
Austrian, etc. no. (source: exclusive CNN interview with Lufthansa boss)

~~~
johansch
[https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/reversal-crash-hit-
lufthan...](https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/reversal-crash-hit-lufthansa-
agrees-181347949.html)

"* Lufthansa to require two people in cockpit at all times

* Reversal of earlier comments by CEO

* EU agency issues recommendation for European airlines"

~~~
frik
Thanks, the Lufthansa CEO has changed his opinion fast. Good.

