The Death Wish of a Germanwings Co-Pilot - Der Spiegel

The flight was routine, but it ended in disaster. On Tuesday, a Germanwings co-pilot apparently intentionally flew Flight 4U9525 into the ground, killing 149 people and himself. It is unlikely we will even know why he did. By SPIEGEL Staff

The French prosecutor in charge of the investigation was the first to provide certainty. It was, he said in a Marseille press conference, not an accident. It was a crime. The head of Lufthansa concurred as did, soon after, the German government.

Why would someone suddenly decide to kill himself and take the lives of 149 others along with him? Why was someone carrying the seeds of such lunacy able to become a pilot? Why did Andreas Lubitz -- the 27-year-old from Montabaur who had only been working for the airline for a year and a half -- become one of the most cold-blooded killers the world has seen in recent years?

It might sound cynical to say that, had a technical glitch been responsible for the crash, the tragedy would be easier to digest in the long term. But it's true. The search for concrete causes such as material defects and hairline fractures; the careful analysis of wreckage; the detailed review of maintenance schedules; the legal and journalistic hunt for those ultimately responsible: All of that would at least have provided a rational anchor to the deep mourning. Such an investigation would have provided a framework for the family members of those who lost their lives, and for a grieving society at large, to slowly move beyond the catastrophe. But this?  

Lubitz used the same weapon as the Sept. 11, 2001 attackers, but in contrast to them, there was apparently no larger message. He seems more similar to the Norwegian nutcase Anders Breivik, but in contrast to him, Lubitz didn't leave behind a muddled treatise. Perhaps he killed only because -- in the position he found himself shortly after 10:30 a.m. last Tuesday, in the air above France -- he could. Perhaps he was merely a megalomaniacal narcissist and nihilist. 

Lubitz, of course, was the co-pilot of the Airbus A320, with the tail number D-AIPX, flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf. In the cockpit with Lubitz was Captain Patrick Sondenheimer, 34, and the plane was carrying 144 passengers and four crew members. Shortly after takeoff, the plane turned to the northwest according to its registered flight plan and headed out over the Mediterranean as it climbed to its cruising altitude of 11,500 meters (38,000 feet).

It was the kind of routine flight that Lufthansa, which owns Germanwings, makes 2,000 times a day -- and the German flag carrier hadn't had an accident in 22 years. But at exactly 10:31, the plane began losing altitude at a steady rate of 1,000 meters per minute as though it were preparing for a normal landing. But below the jet, there was no runway. Just the mountains of the Alps.  Read More at SPIEGEL 
Descent to Oblivion: The Death Wish of a Germanwings Co-Pilot

• Tragic End to Spain Trip: School Group Perishes in Germanwings Crash (03/24/2015)
• Photo Gallery: One Pilot, 149 Victims
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Lufthansa to adopt two-person cockpit rule - The Hill