Probe seeks clearer rules on pilots’ mental health

PARIS: French investigators probing the Ger manwings plane crash called on Sunday for clearer rules on the lifting of medical confidentiality if pilots show signs of pyschological problems.

The plane was deliberately flown into a French mountainside by its co- pilot Andreas Lubitz in March last year in a tragedy that cost 150 lives and raised unprecedented aviation safety questions.

In their final conclusions on the disaster, BEA civil aviation experts also recommended more stringent medical checks for pilots.

Lubitz, 27, who was suffering from depression, was allowed to continue flying despite having been seen by doctors dozens of times in the years preceding the crash. “Clearer rules are needed to establish when it is necessary to lift medical confidentiality,” investigator Arnaud Desjardins said at the launch of the BEA report. “Several doctors in private practice had the information (that Lubitz) was ill,” he said.

“This information was not passed on to aeronautical authorities or to his employer Germanwings.” The report also recommended regular analysis of pilots to check for “psychological or psychiatric problems”.

In the fateful flight on March 24, 2015, Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit of the Airbus 320 operated by Germanwings, the budget airline subsidiary of Lufthansa. Ten minutes later, the jet ploughed into an Alpine mountain, killing all 144 passengers and six crew.

Despite being seen so many times by doctors, under German law none was able to alert his employers to his state of mind and he was allowed to continue flying. The European Aviation Safety Agency ( EASA) has already recommended stepping up medical testing for pilots, including more psychological tests. BEA chief Remi Jouty said the French investigation had sought to identify the “systematic failures which led to this accident”. The investigators had also looked at the “balance between medical secrecy and flight security”.