There is an interesting question being put forth. Would the FAA physical, as invasive and intrusive as it is, have prevented the German Wings debacle.
According to news sources the French Investigation suggested that the medical authorities should have told the FAA equivalent of the European authority of the medical psychiatric problems the copilot was having. Right now it is not required to report this potentially dangerous medical condition under European Medical Flight requirements.
Whats your opinion?
A German pilot tells me this is a totally strict German privacy law. So a repeat is possible and nothing can be done about it… short of the airline booting out pilots reported by colleagues as not social etc…
In the UK you sign a form at every medical authorising the caa to get your medical record.
Of course many airline pilots see doctors abroad and always have done.
However I don’t know about any country whose AMEs always obtain the record. I think thr UK CAA does it on an initial Class 1.
Peter wrote:
So a repeat is possible and nothing can be done about it…
That was now one occurrence in 110+ years of aviation in Germany. Would it have been prevented by less strict privacy laws? I doubt it. That pilot was a highly intelligent person and would certainly have found a way to hide his condition from his AME and the aviation authority, e.g. by seeing doctors abroad as you write. So the general opinion in Germany is that we rather accept a one-in-100-year risk rather than allowing our privacy laws to be weakened.
Unfortunately it was not the only pilot suicide in recent years. There was the Egyptian flight out of NY and the Malaysian (?) airline flight to I think China where the captain had gambling debts.
Then there is the more recent Malaysian mystery.
C210_Flyer wrote:
Malaysian (?) airline flight to I think China where the captain had gambling debts.
It was Silkair (Singaporean) from Jakarta to Singapore…
I was not sure thats why I put the ? in the sentence. Thanks for the correction.
C210_Flyer wrote:
Unfortunately it was not the only pilot suicide in recent years.
That’s true. But it was the only suicide caused by a known medical condition. The others were, as you write, caused by gamling debts and similar personal problems which would never have found their way to the AME or aviation authority, no matter which state or law.
Here is a pilot on another site who had this to say:
Just like in Mexico. Yesterday I renewed my medical. A soundproof camera was used for a detailed audiometry and the psychological tests took one hour. I mentioned to the examiner that all this is overkilling for a private pilot and he gave me a lecture about how light and irresponsible the FAA medicals are. He added that he just returned from an Aerospace Medical Seminar where the FAA medical test was blamed for not stopping the suicide copilot of Germanwings. I was tempted to say the equivalent Spanish word for bull..it, but I needed his signature.
Not sure how our FAA medicals would have affected a Lufthansa pilot with an EASA license and medical.
IMHO MH370 is another. Skilfully ditched after locking out the copilot and depressurising for half an hour or so.
In the March issue of the magazine “Pilot und Flugzeug”, there was an article analyzing the propositions by the German transport ministry’s working group about the Germanwings accident. The resume was that none of the measures proposed by this working group (good or bad as they may be) would have changed the outcome of this accident. For example, taking measures against pilots doing their medicals in another EASA country – only that the Germanwings pilot had always done his medicals in Germany, in one of the most reputable medical centers. Or mandatory psychological screening for all new pilots – yes, this pilot has passed the DLR and Lufthansa selections and was probably one of the best psychologically assessed pilots in the world. Could that stop this from happening? No? Let’s have more of it then!
The same goes for the arguments in this thread. There is the proposition that it was a problem caused by German privacy laws. Then the argument that this was one accident in 110 years is countered by “yes, but it happened in other countries too” (which have less strict privacy laws!). So because the less strict privacy laws couldn’t prevent suicidal pilots, Germany has to change its privacy laws? Where is the logic?
