Community Support

"For us, it makes it particularly difficult that the only victim from Montabaur is suspected to have caused this tragedy, this crash -- although this has not been finally confirmed, but a lot is indicating that -- and we have to face this."
"The co-pilot, the family belong to our community, and we stand by this, and we embrace them and will not hide this, and want to support the family in particular."
Pastor Michael Dietrich, Lutheran Church, Montabaur

A police car waits in front of the house of the family of Andreas Lubitz in Montabaur, Germany, Friday, March 27, 2015. Lubitz was the co-pilot on the Germanwings plane that crashed with 150 people on board on Tuesday in the French Alps. (AP Photo Frank Augstein)

Radar tapes indicate that Flight 9525 climbed normally after departure from Barcelona-El Prat Airport to the cruising altitude assigned it at 38,000 feet, a routine flight and a routine elevation that it maintained for a few minutes before a slight course correction. And then, suddenly, a steep but controlled descent took place of just over eight minutes duration. And then, that controlled descent resulted in the plane disintegrating with all aboard flying into biologically minute bits on impact with a mountain in the French Alps.

That precipitous, unauthorized descent was initiated, under the co-pilot's control after he had been given the temporary control of the flight cabin as the pilot stepped outside for a moment to relieve himself in the lavatory. Presumably, he had completed his mission before he fully realized that his co-pilot had plans other than the planned landing he had briefed him with before leaving the cockpit momentarily.

So when he returned and inputted the code to open the cockpit door, he understood it had been deliberately bolted from within. And then began his frantic pleading for entry. Obviously, the conversation picked up by the flight recorder of the verbal exchange between the two men at the landing briefing when Andreas Lubitz responded to Captain Sonderheimer on the Dusseldorf landing with "Hopefully" and "We'll see", wasn't taken seriously by the captain.

Perhaps an off-day for his co-pilot? Well, he was right. It was an off-day, and Andreas Lubitz presumably had plenty of those off-days. Enough so that various medical professionals examining his state of mind gave him a number of notes to be handed to his employers excusing him from work duty on a number of occasions. Including that fateful off-day. When he chose to aim the Airbus 320 into a mountain last Tuesday, taking 150 unwilling people to an early death.

A view of the crash site near Seyne-les-Alpes, France, Monday, March 30, 2015. European investigators are focusing on the psychological state of a 27-year-old German co-pilot who prosecutors say deliberately flew a Germanwings plane carrying 150 people into a mountain, a French police official said Monday. (AP Photo/Claude Paris, Pool)

According to the German newspaper Bild Am Sonntag, details from the recording transcript demonstrate that Mr. Lubitz had a predetermined plan; that his off-day hadn't been the result of a spontaneous decision, but one that had been hatched much earlier in time. The hour and a half recording has Mr. Lubitz suggesting that Captain Sonderheimer absent himself from the cockpit to relieve himself, and he would take over controls.

And he did just that. Mr. Lubitz said "You can go now", and Mr. Sonderheimer responded "You can take over". And this is precisely what Mr. Lubitz did. He took over, and it was final. That simple transaction sealed the fate of 150 people and one plane. No reentry for the pilot, no intervention possible to rescue 150 people from death. A mountain is an immovable object.

A plane's aluminum skin is relatively fragile, and certainly human beings are even more fragile, given to falling apart when high speed slams them against an immovable object.

Rescue workers work at the crash site near Seyne-les-Alpes, France, Monday, March 30, 2015. European investigators are focusing on the psychological state of a 27-year-old German co-pilot who prosecutors say deliberately flew a Germanwings plane carrying 150 people into a mountain, a French police official said Monday. (AP Photo/Claude Paris, Pool)

Death, at least, was instant. No one suffered more than a few minutes of blazing apprehension and deadly fear. Days later, investigators gathered evidence in the co-pilot's Dusseldorf rented flat validating that he suffered from serious mental health problems. Psychiatric medication and additional evidence he was suffering "severe burn-out syndrome", was taken away from the flat.

That, on the psychological side; on the physical side serious problems with his eyesight leading to a 30% loss of vision. A makeshift road is being built through impassable mountain terrain so four-wheel-drive vehicles can be enabled to reach the crash site; far more efficient than the current access only by helicopter where DNA samples have been collected from almost half of the victims.

Gendarme Bruno Hermignies stands by a bulldozer clearing a path to the crash site near Seyne-les-Alpes, France, Monday, March 30, 2015. European investigators are focusing on the psychological state of a 27-year-old German co-pilot who prosecutors say deliberately flew a Germanwings plane carrying 150 people into a mountain, a French police official said Monday. (AP Photo/Claude Paris, Pool)

Well, of course human rights laws in Germany take the protective preservation of private information very seriously. Which, Lufthansa hints, made it difficult for them to obtain the information that might be required to understand that one of their young new pilots might be problematical from the standpoint of reliability and passenger safety. Nonsense, of course.

Amazing; the country that once distinguished itself as a genocidal war monger embroiling much of the world in a cataclysmic conflict and destroying half of the globe's Jews, has become a human-rights defender of outstanding principle; defending the mentally disadvantage at the expense of the greater public; how much more noble in atonement can they become?