(Bloomberg) -- Andreas Lubitz, the 27-year-old pilot prosecutors allege deliberately crashed Germanwings Flight 9525, belonged to a young generation of airmen for whom the allure of life in the cockpit is overshadowed by the realities of a profession with no job guarantee or room for failing health.
Lubitz, who investigators say locked his captain out of the cockpit before directing the plane into a French mountain slope, killing himself and the other 149 people on board the Airbus A320, may have harbored a diagnosis that threatened to end his career. Prosecutors retrieved unfilled prescriptions for tranquilizers to fight depression, according to Bild Zeitung, which didn’t say how it obtained the information.
The revelations about his medical history may shed some light on Lubitz’s state of mind and whether he may have cracked under the realization that his failing health was jeopardizing his ambitions. Lubitz tore up doctors’ notes that declared him unfit to work, including on the day of the crash, suggesting he sought to hide his diagnosis from his employer and colleagues.
“He seemed completely normal,” Frank Woiton, a Germanwings captain who flew with Lubitz to Vienna in recent weeks, said in an interview with WDR television. Woiton said Lubitz told him he was happy to finally fly for the group, and that he wanted to pilot long-haul routes and become a captain on the Boeing Co. 747 or the Airbus A380, the two biggest commercial aircraft and both part of Lufthansa’s long-haul fleet.
No Illusions
The investigation of the worst disaster in German aviation history points to a potentially disturbed junior pilot whose dream of one day flying the most imposing planes may have been unraveling as he battled a mental condition. Lubitz also suffered from a detached retina, blurring his vision -- potentially a career-ending diagnosis for a pilot, Bild Zeitung said.
Police in the city of Dusseldorf, who searched Lubitz’s home, declined to comment on the investigations, while prosecutors couldn’t be reached for comment on the Bild report.
Deutsche Lufthansa AG, the parent of low-cost carrier Germanwings, puts aspiring pilots under no illusions about the demands of a career commandeering the skies.
Sick Notes
“The heartbeat, the passion and the enthusiasm for this exciting and diverse job will come by itself,” the company says on a website informing would-be pilots about prospects. “There is, however, another side for those choosing this profession. Flying can at times be a tough, rigorous job, demanding mental resilience and peak physical performance.”
The co-pilot, who lived in the same town as Woiton, was being treated by several neurologists and psychiatrists for an unspecified psychosomatic illness, according to a person close to the probe. The authorities haven’t yet recovered the data recorder that may conclusively depict Lubitz’s final actions before the fatal crash in the French Alps last Tuesday .
“Pilots are subject to constant stress levels; I think that changes personalities,” said Bryan Ware, chief technology officer at Haystax Technology Inc. in Los Angeles, which helps companies rank employees by the likelihood that they may pose a threat to the organization. “Someone who has significant financial, or family, or psychological issues will likely not be able to handle that kind of stress in the same way that someone who doesn’t.”
Stress Levels
Student pilots seeking employment at Lufthansa have to undergo rigorous assessment centers, with participants estimating that fewer than 10 percent pass muster. Lubitz qualified in 2008 after taking several months leave for reasons unknown to Lufthansa before completing his training.
For those who make it through, the job prospects have become gloomier as Lufthansa capped its fleet and laid out a strategy to create Europe’s third-largest low-cost carrier under the Eurowings brand, with working conditions less generous than at the more upmarket Lufthansa airline.
Until 2012, Lufthansa had started training classes for about 200 students a year, suspending the program at its flight school in Bremen in northern Germany in 2013 after capping its fleet at the main Lufthansa brand at about 400 planes. The cap meant it required about 1,000 fewer pilots.
Holding Pattern
While training classes were briefly re-introduced, the carrier has since again halted the program. Lufthansa has as many as 900 entry-level candidates at various stages of pilot training, according to Joerg Handwerg, a spokesman for the Vereinigung Cockpit pilots lobby group. All vacancies for classes in 2016 can be filled with candidates selected for postponed tuition, the carrier has said.
Some candidates have been waiting as long as three years to land a job, Handwerg said. With licenses tied to Lufthansa, they can’t work for other airlines in the meantime, he said.
Either way, prospects at competitors aren’t much better as the industry grapples with increasing competition from low-cost carriers. Air Berlin Plc, Germany’s second-largest airline, is in the process of trimming its fleet and cutting jobs, including some in the cockpit.
Training can set candidates back 70,000 euros ($76,000) in fees, an unusually costly education in a country where even university tuitions are low by international standards.
Some candidates work as flight attendants to bridge the gap, as Lubitz did for 11 months, or in other positions within Lufthansa. Others go to university to continue their education.
“The student pilots are completely dependent on Lufthansa,” said Handwerg. “Many go to university or educate themselves further, but that’s hard to do as they constantly have to be on standby. Under such circumstances there’s no way you can plan your future life. It’s an extremely unpleasant situation.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Weiss in Frankfurt at rweiss5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Angela Cullen at acullen8@bloomberg.net; Benedikt Kammel at bkammel@bloomberg.net Benedikt Kammel
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