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Germanwings crash: Pilot confidentiality 'should be relaxed' | Germanwings crash: Pilot confidentiality 'should be relaxed' |
(35 minutes later) | |
French investigators have called for medical confidentiality to be relaxed for pilots, in the wake of last year's Germanwings disaster. | French investigators have called for medical confidentiality to be relaxed for pilots, in the wake of last year's Germanwings disaster. |
Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz was urged by a doctor to attend psychiatric hospital weeks before he crashed the plane on 24 March 2015, but his employer was never alerted, their final report says. | Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz was urged by a doctor to attend psychiatric hospital weeks before he crashed the plane on 24 March 2015, but his employer was never alerted, their final report says. |
All 150 people on board died as Flight 9525 hit a mountain in the French Alps. | All 150 people on board died as Flight 9525 hit a mountain in the French Alps. |
Investigators believe Lubitz brought down the plane deliberately. | Investigators believe Lubitz brought down the plane deliberately. |
He had been suffering from severe depression, they said, but doctors had been unable to disclose this. | |
Who were the victims? | |
What drives people to murder-suicide? | |
Who was Andreas Lubitz? | |
The report, by the BEA investigation agency, said confidentiality had to be balanced with the risk an individual might pose to public safety and that "clearer rules" were needed. | |
It was also critical of pilots being able to make self-declarations about their health, which allowed them to hide any illnesses. | |
The head of the investigation, Arnaud Desjardin, said Lubitz had in December 2014 begun to show symptoms that "could be compatible with a psychotic episode" but this information was not passed on to Germanwings. | |
The report also calls for more stringent medical checks for pilots - it recommends regular analysis to check for "psychological or psychiatric problems". | |
But it has not suggested any change to cockpit rules. Lubitz was able to lock the pilot out of the cockpit while he crashed the plane, taking advantage of a system designed to prevent hijackings by attackers elsewhere on board. | |
"A lockage system cannot be created to prevent threats coming from both outside and inside the cockpit," Mr Desjardin said. | |
Many airlines now require at least two people to be in the cockpit at any given time. | |
Both Germanwings and its parent company Lufthansa have previously said that Lubitz, 27, had passed all tests of fitness to fly. | |
Lufthansa has also acknowledged that it knew the co-pilot had suffered from severe depression in 2009 while training for his pilot's licence. | |
The final 30 minutes |