Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz informed flight school in 2009 of a ‘severe episode of depression’
Deutsche Lufthansa AG turned over documents showing that Germanwings Flight 9525 co-pilot Andreas Lubitz informed the company’s own flight-training school that he had an “episode of severe depression,” the airline said Tuesday, raising questions about how effectively airlines vet the mental stability of their pilots.
Even before that disclosure, France’s air-accident investigator, the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses, said it is expanding its probe of the flight and the potential industrywide ramifications.
French prosecutors have said Mr. Lubitz deliberately locked his captain out of the cockpit and flew the jet into a mountain at 400 miles an hour, killing himself and 149 others on board. The crash is leading to a re-examination of how privacy considerations about airline crews’ health are balanced against the possibility of an unstable pilot posing a danger.
According to a person familiar with the investigation, Mr. Lubitz’s personnel file at Lufthansa’s flight school included a 2009 email explaining that he was taking a break from its campus in Bremen because of depression. At that time, Mr. Lubitz was an apprentice; only after completing the 22-month program and getting their flying licenses do pilots go into a pool of potential Lufthansa hires.
When Mr. Lubitz sought to return to the flight school, the person said, he was sent for a medical test, which he passed.
“The flight school relied on doctors,” said the person. “The doctors cleared him.” Lufthansa later hired him, considering his prior problem resolved but in need of monitoring.
According to this person, Mr. Lubitz’s personnel file included a note that any examining physician should consult the physician holding his medical files for special information. That physician would have been obliged to tell the examining doctor that Mr. Lubitz had a history of depression or psychological issues. The examining doctor would then check to see if such problems persisted.
If the examining doctor found a problem, he or she would fail Mr. Lubitz in the annual examinations that German pilots have to undergo. But if the doctor saw no problem, Mr. Lubitz would pass the exam and Lufthansa would know nothing about the problem.
Mr. Lubitz’s examining doctors passed him in health exams, so Lufthansa wasn't informed of any ongoing medical concerns. The earlier email, from his time at flight school, wouldn’t have an impact on his staffing several years later given his more recent clean bills of health from doctors, this person said.
In the U.S., the psychological vetting of pilots depends on physicians, too. But American licensing procedures and medical exams are primarily designed to alert regulators—rather than airlines—about incipient or serious mental-health disorders.
The U.S. system relies largely on self-disclosure, but a pilot can face substantial fines of up to $250,000 for failing to truthfully fill out medical forms. And the Federal Aviation Administration asks detailed questions about what drugs or treatment has been received; the names of doctors and why they were visited; and “mental disorders of any sort” including depression, anxiety or suicide attempts.
Flight-training schools and aviation colleges and universities in the U.S. similarly depend on student pilots to inform them about psychological or other medical conditions, including their use of prescription drugs. Once mental health problems are identified, schools typically ask students to sign waivers to allow physicians to share medical records; without such a waiver, federal privacy laws preclude doctors from passing on those records.
Many student pilots, however, end up seeking Class 1 medical certificates, the same type airline pilots need, forcing them to answer the FAA’s catalog of questions and face fines for dissembling.
Once pilots are hired, medical examiners have a legal responsibility to warn the FAA—but typically not to alert airlines directly—about serious mental health problems or major medical concerns that could pose risks to passengers, according to Dr. Philip Scarpa, president of the Aerospace Medical Association, an international group that has developed tools to help physicians diagnose psychiatric disorders.
U.S. airlines have their own internal systems to counsel and track problematic pilots, including those previously identified as suffering from depression or personal problems such as divorce or financial pressures.
Bill Yantiss, former safety and security chief at United Airlines, said much of that effort was carried out by pilot union officials, usually with the acquiescence and support of airline management. He said that “95% of the efforts was focused on 5% of the pilots.”
In an interview earlier this week, Mr. Yantiss said aviators in that category “were watched very carefully, but there may or may not have been records” documenting the special screening.
In a statement, Lufthansa said it had given the Düsseldorf Public Prosecutor, “training and medical documents” in which Mr. Lubitz spoke of his past depression.
Last week, Lufthansa Chief Executive Carsten Spohr said he was confident about the airline’s hiring practices. “Those who observe and know us in the branch know we choose our cockpit personnel very, very carefully,” he said at a news conference. “Especially in the selection process we leave a lot of room [to assess] the psychological suitability of the candidate.”
Mr. Spohr said Mr. Lubitz passed all medical and flight tests and checks. “He was 100% airworthy without any restrictions, without any conditions,” he said.
The BEA said its broadened probe into Flight 9525’s crash in the French Alps would examine “the cockpit door locking system logic and cockpit access and exit procedures, as well as the criteria and procedures applied to detect specific psychological profiles.”
Airliner accidents, particularly high-profile crashes that expose fundamental safety gaps, have often been a catalyst for regulators and airlines to take far reaching steps to reshape how the industry functions in the hopes of preventing a repeat. In the past, the type of public anger and demands for action sparked by the Germanwings tragedy have altered the way airlines operate, pilots are trained and planes are equipped.
Those efforts have driven airline accident rates to historic lows. The International Air Transport Association said the global jetliner crash rate last year was the lowest ever, with 0.23 aircraft planes destroyed per million flights. The five-year average was more than twice as high.
The BEA is one of the world’s most influential investigators of plane crashes, and its findings are likely to be closely watched by aviation regulators in Europe and the U.S. The investigation will examine “the systemic weaknesses [that] might possibly have led to this aviation disaster or other similar events,” the authority said.
“The current probe is likely to prompt changes world-wide” in pilot medical evaluations, according to Bill Waldock, a professor and director of the aviation crash lab at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. The most likely changes, he said, probably will mirror procedures under which U.S. military pilots undergo full-fledged psychiatric evaluations along with their regular physicals.