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Flying in a plane is like being in a prison, with the additional risk that you could crash to your death.
Think about how stressful ordinary people find flying, particularly when the flight takes more than an hour or two.
Do you look forward to long flights? I certainly do not.
Pilots routinely endure very long flights, locked up in small cockpits – not an easy life. Not easy at all.
In terms of psychological characteristics, who should be allowed to serve as a pilot? Of course, pilots go through a lot of psychological and physical screening and they are trained to cope with co-pilots who might show up to work drunk or in some other way incapacitated. However, there are ambiguities in the case of pilots having a history of mental health problems. These ambiguities can result in disaster.
Take the case of Andreas Lubitz, a 27-year-old German national who served as co-pilot on Germanwings Flight 9525. When the pilot stepped out of the cockpit to go to the washroom, Andreas Lubitz took charge and crashed the plane killing everyone on board. Andreas Lubitz had a history of serious depression.
As psychologists we know that many depressed individuals can be helped to live normal lives. Through verbal and drug therapy their mood and behavior can be changed to become adaptive. But we also know that in some cases the deeper roots of psychological problems persist and behavioral abnormalities resurface. This raises the question: Should pilots with a history of depression be entrusted with the lives of passengers on a plane? My answer is: no. In this case, one strike and the pilot should be ‘out’.
What would have happened if Andreas Lubitz had told his supervisors about how terrible he was feeling the day he served as co-pilot and crashed Germanwings Flight 9525 in the Alps? Would he have been fired? Was there a system in place to arrange for him – and others like him – to work for the airline in safer roles, rather than be fired and become unemployed?
All 150 people on board were killed when the plane crashed. We need better systems in place to allow pilots who have serious psychological problems to work in alternative positions. These pilots should feel they have the option of continuing to do meaningful work as part of the airline industry. The alternative is too risky.
