ABSTRACT
The recent tragic crash of Germanwings Flight 9525, an apparent suicide of the copilot, Andreas Lubitz, that also took the lives of 149 innocent people, has captured the attention of the flying public, commercial airlines and regulatory agencies. How could a pilot with apparent psychological problems be hired by a commercial airline and be trusted with the lives of hundreds of passengers each day? The impact of this tragedy was amplified by other recent crashes. Perhaps the most mysterious was Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on 4 March 2014. At the time of this writing there remains speculation about what role, if any, the pilots played in the disappearance and crash of the aircraft hundreds of miles away from its planned flight path, causing the deaths of 239 passengers and crew.
