The recent airline tragedy involving a Germanwings flight operated by Lufthansa German Airlines has drawn the attention of the world to mental health issues in the workplace. Apparently, the said crash was not caused by any technical error, but a suicide attempt that killed everyone on board.
Hence, the tragedy sparked issues on what the airline should have known or could have done about its pilot's mental health. On March 24, Flight 9525 of the Germanwings crashed into the French Alps after co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately brought the plane down killing all 150 on board.
CNN reports that Lubitz's tablet device showed that he researched on suicide methods days before the plane crash. More reports from the black box of the plane showed that he intentionally locked the cockpit door in order for the other pilot to be locked outside giving time for him to bring the plane down and crash into the mountains.
Lufthansa now could face unlimited liability after this tragedy. Employment experts say that monitoring the mental status of employees is very important especially when dealing with the lives of people. Air Line Pilots Association says that most pilots in the United States undergo medical testing which encompasses mental and emotional assessment at least once a year by an approved doctor by the Federal Aviation Administration as reported by NPR.org.
NPR added that based on statistics, a pilot somewhere in the world deliberately crashes a plane. In fact, Aviation Safety reports that there are other airliner accidents and crashes that were reported to be caused by intentional actions of the pilots. Since 1974, there were already 13 planes that were deliberately crashed by their pilots.
Employment attorney Jonathan Segal, of Duane Morris Institute in Philadelphia said, "It's a very complicated issue." He added, "We're balancing and anytime you're balancing, you're playing in the gray." Furthermore, he reiterated that employers must respect health privacy and discrimination laws in addressing workplace concerns or concerns for public safety.
Huffington Post reported that pilots and safety experts say that there is only little effective and real-world screening of airline pilots for mental problems despite regulations in the United States and Europe. They added that routine mental health assessment should be done before pilots are allowed to maneuver airline planes.
However, airline companies from other countries have become stricter when it comes to their mental health assessment procedures following the crash last month. In fact, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), India's aviation regulator, was asked to formulate new norms and policies to assess mental health of commercial pilots following a review meeting chaired by Civil Aviation Minister A Gajapathi Raju, NDTV reports.
