Airlines, govts rush to change cockpit rules

Airlines and policymakers rushed to mandate that two crew members be in the cockpit at all times following revelations that the co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings flight deliberately crashed the plane when left alone at the controls.

British low-cost carrier EasyJet was the largest company to announce a change in policy on Thursday after French prosecutors said co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked out the pilot before slamming the Airbus A320 into a mountain on Tuesday.

Similar announcements in the wake of the French Alps crash that killed all 150 people on board came from the Canadian government, Icelandair and Norwegian Air Shuttle.

The second person could be a flight attendant if the pilot or co-pilot has to leave the cockpit during the flight.

Meanwhile, the German tabloid newspaper Bild reported on Friday that Lubitz, 27, received psychiatric treatment for a "serious depressive episode" six years ago.

Citing internal documents and Lufthansa sources, Bild said Lubitz spent a total of one and a half years in psychiatric treatment, and that related documents would be passed on to French investigators once they had been examined by German authorities.

Also on Friday, prosecutors in Duesseldorf, Germany, said that searches of Lubitz's homes had netted "medical documents that suggest an existing illness and appropriate medical treatment", including "torn-up and current sick leave notices, among them one covering the day of the crash", they said.

This "backs up the suspicion" that Lubitz "hid his illness from his employer and his colleagues", prosecutors said in a statement.

Thomas Hesthammer, head of flight operations at Norwegian Air Shuttle, Europe's third-largest low-cost carrier, said the Alps disaster was the trigger for his company's change of cockpit procedure.

Icelandair said it too had been spurred to act by the revelations about the final minutes of Germanwings Flight 4U 9525, from Barcelona, Spain, to Duesseldorf.

Canada also ordered all its airlines always to have two people in the cockpit, in an emergency directive the government said was mandatory and effective immediately.

Canadian flagship carrier Air Canada, Westjet and charter airline Air Transat had already said they were putting the policy in place.

In Europe, any other airlines that follow suit will do so voluntarily because European air safety regulations - unlike those in the United States and now Canada - do not address the subject.

The US Federal Aviation Administration already requires a crew member to sit in the locked cockpit if one of the plane's pilots needs to go to the restroom or take care of another "physiological" need.

AFP - Reuters

(China Daily 03/28/2015 page11)