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Andreas Lubitz: The German Co-Pilot Who Flew The Plane Into The Ground

Started by Rad, Mar 28, 2015, 10:47 AM

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Rad

All,

We have all now learned of this insane, narcissistic, suicidal act that killed 149 passenger's. I am attaching his birth chart, Noon time, with transits on that fatal morning. You will notice immediately that the transiting Uranus in Aries was exactly inconjunct his natal Mars in Scorpio. Feel free to comment on anything you see in the chart. Just click on the Lubitz jpg and the chart will enlarge.

God Bless, Rad

cat777

Thanks for posting this Rad. I was looking at it somewhere else but they did not have the birthtime. I read earlier that he may have been being treated for some type of mental problem which he hid from the airline. It will be interesting to watch this story unfold while having this chart to look at.

Katherine

Hi Rad,
How much would the following have been involved in his decisions and choice making then?

Slowest to fastest:
Transiting Neptune in Pisces rising across Juno conjunct the ASC *really spooks me for some reason and makes me wonder how long he had been fantasizing about it..
Transiting Lucifer in Gemini conjunct Chiron in the 4th, exact (with transiting Mercury conjunct transiting Chiron, exact)
Transiting inconjunct from Mars in Aries to his natal Moon in Scorpio

Thank you and
God bless,

Katherine

Rad

Hi Katherine,

All of them .... the exact ones... being equal  ... that got acted upon relative to the captain of the plane having to go to the bathroom: the specific circumstantial trigger 'in the moment'. That moment then symbolized by all of these exact aspects. Elimination, urinating/ defecating, correlates to Scorpio.  So even though his reported psychological issues had been in place for awhile it was the immediacy of the moment that created the 'opportunity' for him to do what he did: in the moment. The fact that ten minutes or so went by while he descended the airplane, knowing what would happen because of, was the 'Uranus affect' in that in those ten minutes he remained essentially detached...breathing normally ... which means he contemplated what he was doing in that time .. possibly going back and forth in his mind whether to follow through with his decision or not.

God Bless, Rad

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The mystery of flight 9525: a locked door, a silent pilot and a secret history of illness

When the Germanwings Airbus disappeared, Europe was united in grief. Then, as the troubling facts behind the crash emerged, shock and incredulity took over

Jamie Doward, Kim Willsher in Paris and Luke Harding in Montabaur
The Guardian
Sunday 29 March 2015 00.04 GMT Last modified on Sunday 29 March 2015 00.07 GMT

The gaggle of 16 German schoolchildren making their way through Barcelona's El Prat airport last Tuesday morning had been up since dawn. As they waited to board Germanwings Flight 9525 to Düsseldorf, some texted friends and family to say that they had enjoyed their week in Llinars del Vallès, the Spanish village twinned with their home town of Haltern in western Germany, but were looking forward to coming home. Several promised to bring souvenirs back from their trip.

It was a promise they were prevented from keeping. Just under 40 minutes into their journey, the plane's 27-year-old co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, turned the Airbus A320 into a missile, guiding it into the southern Alps after locking its captain, Patrick Sonderheimer, out of the cockpit.

In the doomed flight's final minutes, Sonderheimer attempted to force his way through the security door that separates the passengers from the pilots. At one stage he reportedly tried to use an axe. Recordings obtained by crash investigators capture him attempting to remonstrate with Lubitz - whose breathing, according to the microphones in the cockpit, remained sure and steady as the plane made its rapid descent. It was only in the final seconds that there was the sound of screams. Experts said death would have been instant.

For the families of the 150 people who perished, this is the only thin comfort to be grasped in a grotesque tragedy, the first crash of a large passenger jet in France since the Concorde disaster outside Paris nearly 15 years ago.

Within minutes of the plane going down, a frightened world was scrambling for answers. The A320 is the workhorse of the aviation industry and is considered one of its safest planes. Every two seconds of every day, one takes off or lands somewhere.

In Washington, the White House was quick to suggest that the crash did not appear to have been caused by a terrorist attack, while Lufthansa said it was working on the assumption that it had been an accident, adding that any other theory would be speculation.

One popular theory was that the cockpit windscreen had shattered. Another suggested mechanical failure. But there were many unanswered questions. Why had the pilots not issued a mayday? Why, if a mechanical failure had made it impossible to stop the plane from dropping, had they failed to alter course and swerve away from the mountains? And why had they failed to respond to repeated and increasingly frantic calls from air traffic controllers and other aircraft?

It was a mystery. As one former pilot told French television: "The pilots must have been unconscious, or dead, or forced by someone to fly the plane straight into the mountain."

Speculation had reached fever pitch by 5pm on the afternoon of the crash when it was announced that one of the black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder - had been found and would be sent to the French air accident investigation bureau just outside Paris, an operation that inexplicably took until 9.45 the following morning.

The suspense was intense. The black box had been damaged in the 435mph impact and there were doubts it would yield any information. The announcement by Rémi Jouty, the bureau director, that "sounds, voices, alarms" had been extracted from it, sparked enormous relief. Jouty said he was optimistic that accident investigators would solve the mystery but refused to say more and became tetchy when asked to elaborate. It was, in his precisely translated words, "much too soon to draw the slightest conclusion about what happened".

But even as he was speaking, investigators were becoming aware of what had happened to flight 9525.
German police officers carrying items out of the home of Andreas Lubitz's parents
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German police officers carrying items out of the home of Andreas Lubitz's parents, where the pilot also lived part of the time. Photograph: Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters

As the New York Times revealed early on Thursday, French time, the voice recorder confirmed that Lubitz had locked the captain out of the flight deck and set the plane on its descent. The bureau battened down the hatches and refused to comment.

There were claims that the investigators, who come under the authority of the transport ministry, had been leant on to delay revealing its findings, to allow someone high-profile to break the "exclusive". The French pilots' union was outraged at the leak to the paper and announced that it was taking legal action to find out who had breached investigation secrecy rules.

Brice Robin, the French public prosecutor appointed to head the crash investigation, had not been immediately informed either, and was also angry. Robin began his press conference on Thursday saying that he had received the information he was about to give "a bit late for my liking", but his irritation was quickly overshadowed by the extraordinary information he then released.

As Robin outlined slowly and clearly the grim and almost unbelievable events that brought the plane down, a sense of shock and incredulity spread around Europe and beyond. Half of the 150 victims of Tuesday's disaster were German, with Spain accounting for at least 50, but the dead came from more than a dozen countries.

Politicians found themselves struggling for words. France's prime minister, Manuel Valls, said that all the signs were "pointing towards an act that we can't describe: criminal, crazy, suicidal". German chancellor Angela Merkel said the conclusions brought the tragedy to a "new, simply incomprehensible, dimension".

Comparisons were quickly made with the doomed flight MH370 that plunged into the Indian Ocean last year and has never been found. Many believe that plane was deliberately brought down, a scenario that is rare but not unprecedented.

In November 2013, a flight between Mozambique and Angola crashed in Namibia, killing 33 people. Initial investigations suggested the accident was deliberately caused by the captain shortly after his co-pilot had left the flight deck. In October 1999, an EgyptAir Boeing 767 went into a rapid descent 30 minutes after taking off from New York, killing 217 people. An investigation suggested that the crash was caused deliberately by the relief first officer, although the evidence was not conclusive. And in December 1997, more than 100 people were killed when a Boeing 737 flying from Indonesia to Singapore crashed; the pilot, who was said to be suffering from "multiple work-related difficulties", was suspected of switching off the flight recorders and intentionally putting the plane into a dive.

But many who knew Lubitz were quick to defend him from being placed in the same category, saying that they did not believe he would have intentionally downed a plane in a deliberate act of mass murder.

Neighbours in his small home town of Montabaur in the Rhineland, where he lived some of the time with his parents, described him as a keen runner in excellent physical health. Several said they had seen him in the weeks before the crash and remarked that he seemed untroubled.

But this picture was contradicted dramatically by his ex-girlfriend. In an interview with the bestselling German tabloid Bild, the 26-year-old flight attendant, known only as Maria W, said that they had separated "because it became increasingly clear that he had a problem". She said that he was plagued by nightmares and would wake up and scream "we're going down".

Last year he told her: "One day I'm going to do something that will change the whole system, and everyone will know my name and remember."

Bild also reported that Lubitz had sought psychiatric help for "a bout of serious depression" in 2009 and was still receiving assistance.

A search of his parents' home, and an apartment he kept in Düsseldorf, unearthed what prosecutors describe as "medical documents that suggest an existing illness and appropriate medical treatment". The documents included "torn-up and current sick leave notes, among them one covering the day of the crash".

Carsten Spohr, chief executive officer of Lufthansa, Germanwings' parent company, said that Lubitz had suspended his pilot training "for a certain period", before restarting and qualifying for the Airbus A320 in 2013.

On Saturday the New York Times reported that Lubitz had sought treatment for vision problems "that may have jeopardised his ability to continue working as a pilot", according to two officials with knowledge of the investigation.

Lubitz's ex-girlfriend suggested that if he did deliberately crash the plane, it was "because he understood that ... his health problems, his big dream of a job at Lufthansa, as captain and as a long-haul pilot, was practically impossible."

Mental health charities have urged people to avoid linking depression with murderous acts. But it is clear that understanding Lubitz's psychology will form an integral part of an investigation that will shine a spotlight on the pressures facing today's pilots.

"This tragedy has opened a window into the issues of pilot pressures and mental health," tweeted Brendan O'Neal, chair of pilots' union Balpa. "No kneejerk but the issues are real."

A debate now rages about the extent to which companies and regulators can monitor a person's mental health, especially if they perform a job that carries responsibility for the lives of others. The UN world aviation body has stressed that all pilots must have regular mental and physical checkups. But psychological assessments can be fallible. "If someone dissimulates - that is, they don't want other people to notice - it's very, very difficult," Reiner Kemmler, a psychologist who specialises in training pilots, told Deutschlandfunk public radio.

The task of sifting through Lubitz's back story, trying to discern the causes of his actions, is almost as complex as the forensic combing of the crash site. French police said that they have so far recovered between 400 and 600 pieces of human remains.

Germanwings crash: "˜The feeling among recovery teams is of injustice. These people didn't deserve to die'

Colonel Patrick Touron of the Gendarmerie Nationale said DNA samples had been taken from objects provided by victims' families, such as combs or toothbrushes, that could help identify their loved ones. "We haven't found a single body intact," said Touron, who explained that the rough terrain meant that recovery workers must be backed up by mountain rescuers. "We have particularly difficult conditions, and each person needs to be roped up," he said.

There is speculation that Lubitz picked the crash site intentionally. He is known to have visited the region regularly as a member of a gliding club.

Already, the tragedy has prompted a shake-up of airline safety rules. The European Aviation Safety Agency has recommended that at least two people are present in the cockpit at all times, something already standard in the US.

German authorities have agreed to the rule for Lufthansa, its subsidiary Germanwings, and other companies. Austria and Portugal also announced that they would be requiring the adoption of the "rule of two", which has been backed by Air France, KLM, Britain's easyJet, Brussels Airlines and Norwegian Air Shuttle, among other airlines. Ireland's Ryanair, Finland's Finnair and Spanish carrier Iberia already adhere to the rule.

Balpa said such a reaction needed to be part of more fundamental changes. "Suggesting temporary measures such as this as an immediate response to this tragic incident is understandable," a spokesman said. "When the investigation into this crash is completed, pilots want to work with regulators, airlines and other specialists to identify and thoroughly test all of the long-term solutions that will ensure it does not happen again."

But this offers little comfort for those grieving. On Saturday Lufthansa and Germanwings took out a full-page advert in all major German newspapers expressing "deepest sorrow" at the crash. The black-bordered announcement read: "In deepest sympathy. The incomprehensible loss of 150 human lives fills us with deepest mourning. Our sincere condolences, our thoughts and our prayers go out to relatives and friends, and to our customers and colleagues. We would like to thank the many thousands of helpers from France, Spain and Germany and from numerous other countries of the world for your help and support."

In Haltern, where pupils at Joseph Koenig school are trying to come to terms with the fact that they will never again see 16 of their friends and two of their teachers, there is a plea for people to be left alone. Cards reading "camera keep away - accept mourning" have been placed on the cars of the scores of journalists who have descended on the small town. Meanwhile, in Montabaur, the mayor, Edmund Schaaf, urged reporters to show restraint towards Lubitz's parents. "Regardless of whether the accusations against the co-pilot are true, we sympathise with his family and ask the media to be considerate," he said.

But the world wants answers and all eyes are on Montabaur. Johannes Seeman, the priest at St Paul's, the town's evangelical church where Lubitz's mother played the organ, admitted: "We don't know what to do as a community. It's unreal for us."

************

SPIEGEL ONLINE
03/27/2015 07:54 PM

Descent to Oblivion: The Death Wish of a Germanwings Co-Pilot

The flight was routine, but it ended in disaster. On Tuesday, a Germanwings co-pilot apparently intentionally flew Flight 4U9525 into the ground, killing 149 people and himself. It is unlikely we will even know why he did. By SPIEGEL Staff

The pressing question in the immediate aftermath was not initially "why?" The question, rather, was whether the passengers of Germanwings Flight 4U9525 suffered in the last moments of their lives. Whether they suspected, or even knew, that their plane's eight-minute-long descent over the Alps was not a normal course correction but was, in fact, part of the diabolical plan of a mass murderer. Whether people on board cried, screamed or prayed. Whether panic broke out on board. On Thursday, the tragic answers to those questions became known. And the question as to "why" returned to the forefront.

The French prosecutor in charge of the investigation was the first to provide certainty. It was, he said in a Marseille press conference, not an accident. It was a crime. The head of Lufthansa concurred as did, soon after, the German government.

Why would someone suddenly decide to kill himself and take the lives of 149 others along with him? Why was someone carrying the seeds of such lunacy able to become a pilot? Why did Andreas Lubitz -- the 27-year-old from Montabaur who had only been working for the airline for a year and a half -- become one of the most cold-blooded killers the world has seen in recent years?

It might sound cynical to say that, had a technical glitch been responsible for the crash, the tragedy would be easier to digest in the long term. But it's true. The search for concrete causes such as material defects and hairline fractures; the careful analysis of wreckage; the detailed review of maintenance schedules; the legal and journalistic hunt for those ultimately responsible: All of that would at least have provided a rational anchor to the deep mourning. Such an investigation would have provided a framework for the family members of those who lost their lives, and for a grieving society at large, to slowly move beyond the catastrophe. But this?

Andreas Lubitz would seem to have inflicted a tragedy whose ultimate source will remain a mystery. As of Thursday evening, it appeared that he left nothing behind that might provide further insight into his thoughts. He appears to have been a man without an agenda, without a motive and without a plan. Investigators and police who spent hours searching through his home on Thursday did find indications of a psychological illness, but details regarding what that illness might be were not forthcoming.

Furthermore, on Friday it became known that Lubitz had apparently concealed an illness from Germanwings. During the search of his apartment on Thursday, investigators found a "torn up, current sick note," one that also encompassed the day of the crash, Düsseldorf prosecutors said. Documents "indicating an existing illness and corresponding medical treatment" were also found. They did not, however, find a claim of responsibility for the crime.

Megalomaniacal Narcissist

Lubitz used the same weapon as the Sept. 11, 2001 attackers, but in contrast to them, there was apparently no larger message. He seems more similar to the insane Norwegian Anders Breivik, but in contrast to him, Lubitz didn't leave behind a muddled treatise. Perhaps he killed only because -- in the position he found himself shortly after 10:30 a.m. last Tuesday, in the air above France -- he could. Perhaps he was merely a megalomaniacal narcissist and nihilist.

Lubitz, of course, was the co-pilot of the Airbus A320, with the tail number D-AIPX, flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf. In the cockpit with Lubitz was Captain Patrick Sondenheimer, 34, and the plane was carrying 144 passengers and four crew members. Shortly after takeoff, the plane turned to the northwest according to its registered flight plan and headed out over the Mediterranean as it climbed to its cruising altitude of 11,500 meters (38,000 feet).

It was the kind of routine flight that Lufthansa, which owns Germanwings, makes 2,000 times a day -- and the German flag carrier hadn't had an accident in 22 years. But at exactly 10:31, the plane began losing altitude at a steady rate of 1,000 meters per minute as though it were preparing for a normal landing. But below the jet, there was no runway. Just the mountains of the Alps.

French air traffic controllers, following Flight 4U9525 on their screens, were immediately concerned. They radioed the crew using a standard voice frequency, but received no response. They then tried to use the emergency frequency of 121.5 MHz, which all airplanes are required to monitor at all times. Again, nothing.

At 10:36, the air traffic controllers made a final attempt and again were met only with silence. A new routine was set in motion -- the one followed for emergencies. A Mirage fighter plane was scrambled from its base in Orange, France, to look for problems with the German passenger jet and civil defense groups on the ground were alerted. At 10:40 a.m., the Germanwings Airbus disappeared from radar screens. One-hundred-and-fifty people had perished.


Left Unspoken

News of the crash spread quickly and reporters in France, Spain and Germany rushed to gather as much information as possible. Television stations went to live coverage and newspapers began churning out headlines, but initially, nobody knew that what had happened was no accident.

Experts, of course, began to suspect as much almost immediately, based on analysis of the flight. Had the pilots really sought to reduce altitude in response to a sudden loss of cabin pressure, they would have chosen a safer altitude. But initial speculation focused on the possibility of a technical failure and the possibility that the pilots may have lost consciousness. Or that they weren't able to bring the plane back under their control. The possibility that a pilot had intentionally crashed the plane was left unspoken.

That changed on Wednesday night. Citing investigators who had analyzed the cockpit voice recorder, the New York Times reported that the pilot left the cockpit and returned a few minutes later to find the door to the flight deck locked. In the recording, the paper reported, a knock could be heard as well as the pilot's voice asking his co-pilot to open the door for him. The knocking became louder and louder until, in the end, it sounded as though the captain was trying to break down the door.

Inside the cockpit, it was initially quiet, apart from Lubitz's breathing, which was picked up by the voice recorder. But the noise from the door became louder and louder, to the point that it's almost certain that all the passengers saw and heard what was going on -- and that they must have known that their situation was hopeless.

To understand why it wasn't possible to stop Andreas Lubitz in that moment, one must have a grasp of how cockpit doors were changed in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. It is those modifications, designed to protect pilots from attackers, that transformed Flight 4U9525 passengers into Lubitz's hostages.

Under normal circumstances, the crew enters the cockpit by typing a code, known to the pilots and the flight crew, into a code pad. To prevent the possibility that hijackers might force a crewmember to divulge the code, the pilot(s) in the cockpit have ultimate control over whether the door opens or not via a toggle switch in the center console. If the toggle is pushed forward, the door opens. If it is pushed back, the door remains locked.

'Pull Up! Pull Up!'

For the eventuality that a pilot in the cockpit loses consciousness while the other is away, there is an emergency code. When it is entered from the outside, the door pops open after a 30 second interval -- unless the pilot inside the cockpit uses the toggle to override the request. On Thursday, French investigators seemed certain that that is what happened aboard the Germanwings Airbus.

At 55 seconds past 10:30 a.m., Lubitz reprogrammed the autopilot. He retained the flight path, but changed the altitude -- from 38,000 feet to 96 feet.

The plane quickly began descending at a rate of 1,000 meters per minute. Lubitz was sitting in the right-hand seat and he ignored the banging on the door, he ignored the calls of his captain and he ignored the radio calls of air traffic controllers concerned by the loss of altitude. He ignored the plane's instruments and the electronic voice alerting him that he had come too close to the ground: "Pull up! Pull up!"

He continued breathing normally, and otherwise did nothing. And said nothing. Perhaps he watched as the Alps grew closer and closer out the window. Toward the end of the recording on the voice recorder, screams from outside in the cabin can be heard.

Lubitz comes from an unremarkable single-family home at the edge of Montabaur. When reports began to emerge on Thursday morning about the true nature of the crash, a thin-haired, medium-sized man quickly closed the door to the garden shed before fleeing inside the house. Shortly afterwards, he said two short sentences over the intercom: "We are endlessly sorrowful." And he asked for understanding that he wouldn't be making further comment.

The man's son, Andreas Lubitz, was 14 when he began flying. On almost every summer weekend, he went to the nearby knoll where the grass runway belonging to the local glider club, LSC Westerwald, could be found. He started out in a two-seater with a flight teacher before soon being able to go up by himself. "He loved flying," says Klaus Radke, 66, head of the club.

Often, Andi -- as they called him -- would make eight to 10 flights a day, using a winch launcher to propel his glider into the air above the rolling hills of the Mittelgebirge, a low-lying range in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

There were several other young flying fanatics in the club with whom Lubitz learned to fly -- a group of 10 or 12 boys and girls who regularly met at the club's runway. "They also partied together or barbequed. They studied together for high-school final exams while waiting their turn for the next flight," says Peter Rücker, the club's technician. "Andi was a likeable guy; we laughed together a lot."

Low-Key, Happy and Average

Lubitz passed his final exams in 2007 in Montabaur and soon thereafter his career dream came true: He was accepted to the Lufthansa flight school in Bremen. He celebrated his achievement at the glider club. Later, he told his friends that he had been offered a job as co-pilot with Germanwings and not, unfortunately, with the well-respected parent company Lufthansa, which offers better terms to its young pilots. Club leader Radke, though, says that Lubitz was lucky anyway. Young pilots who now finish their training with Lufthansa often have to wait extended periods for jobs to open up.

Radke says he last saw Lubitz at the club last autumn. He and others in his group of friends needed to renew their glider licenses and had come together on several successive weekends to perform the necessary take-offs and landings. Andi, Radke says, had seemed "completely normal" and didn't look at all unhappy or otherwise in need of help. "They sat together happily and barbequed after flying just like they always had," Radke says.

Radke's account is consistent with all that is known about Lubitz's life. He was apparently a low-key, happy, average guy, which is exactly how he looks in photos from his high school yearbook. In his portrait, he has short hair and appears to be in good spirits. Nothing stands out. Of his future, the year book notes that he "will become a professional pilot so as to sell his cocktails around the world. "¦ After years of training, he will participate in the Iron Man in Hawaii." On the back of the yearbook is a Lufthansa ad claiming "fascinating opportunities." The ad was placed by the company's recruiting department; Lufthansa, it said, was looking for candidates for its training program.

Such artefacts and images from the past seem not to fit with the present. Nothing is there that might provide an answer to the question: Why? None of the past clues help to explain why a young pilot would do something so horrific. And it could be that none will be found that might lead into the mass murderer's deeper thoughts -- because there may not be any deeper thoughts to be found. Not even when the mountains and valleys of the Trois Èvêchés Massif grew larger and larger in front of the cockpit windshield. Others must now live with the consequences.

On Thursday, two days after the disaster, Max Tranchard stood on the scruffy meadow next to the Le Vernet campground. Nearby, low wooden houses are built into the hillside and in front of him, two blue vans belonging to the Gendarmerie are parked, along with two red SUVs from the fire department. Mountains are all around, Tranchard's mountains. With decades of experience as a mountain guide, he knows the area better than anyone.

Steep Mountain Walls

Countless times, he has trudged up the plateau to Col de Mariaud, behind which the rugged terrain of the Trois Èvêchés Massif begins. It is an area of gray ravines of marlstone, sandstone and limestone, many of them filled with scree. There are few trees. In the local dialect, Mariaud means "mauvais pays," or bad land. There are few trails in the craggy hills and the ground is too barren even for sheep or goats. It is here where the Germanwings Airbus shattered into thousands of small pieces, spread over an area of more than four hectares (10 acres). Workers now have the task of finding and recovering 150 bodies, or whatever is left of them. Exactly as many people as live in Le Vernet.

On the day of the crash, 63-year-old Max Tranchard got a call from his friend François, who has been the mayor of Le Vernet for three decades. The mayor informed him that a German plane had crashed and asked if he could lead 20 members of the Gendarmerie, France's federal police, to the site where they suspected the crash had taken place.

An hour and a half later, four all-terrain vehicles spent 40 minutes driving along dirt roads. Another hour was spent on foot, trudging through rugged terrain. The area doesn't even have trails, just rough slopes and steep mountain walls.

When they arrived at the site, they discovered wreckage so fragmented that it bore little resemblance to an aircraft, Tranchard says. He says it looked more like the mountain had swallowed the plane whole and only left a few crumbs behind. There were bits of the plane's body and unidentifiable scrap, much of which had melted together into clumps. The gendarmes then moved to secure the site, which is the habitat of vultures and wolves.

A narrow, winding road connects Tranchard's village, Le Vernet, with Seyne-les-Alpes, a hamlet of 1,400 residents living in weathered, stone homes with colorful window shutters and paved alleys between them. The crash has transformed Seyne into a makeshift logistics center. A helicopter carrying the French president and the German chancellor landed on Wednesday on a field between the supermarket and the lumber mill that normally wouldn't be used for much more than glider take-offs. Surrounded by mourners, helpers, officials and local residents, they created one of those touching European moments together with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. At the time, they still spoke of an accident, not yet knowing that they were, in fact, visiting a crime scene. But the politicians' solidarity and dismay felt authentic and palpable. It's the same spirit that has characterized the people helping in Seyne-les-Alpes.

Families of the victims have been received in the local youth center and the local gymnasium has been converted into a temporary chapel. Bouquets of flowers and floral Arrangements were lined up beneath a basketball hoop and a German flag was placed in the corner. As the first German family arrived on Wednesday, psychologists and their interpreters were on hand to provide support.

City Hall, a simple stone building in the Grand Rue with France's tricolored flag flying over its entrance, has become the catastrophe response operations center. With the mayor is constantly on the move, his deputy, Michel Astier, 66, has moved into his office. Astier shakes his head and says he's never experienced anything like this. "And I don't ever want to experience something like this again," he says.

Tracing the Path

Two soldiers guard the entrance and stone steps with wooden railing lead to the first floor. Astier peers out a long window over the rooftops of Seyne all the way over to the youth center. He and his secretary have pushed their desks together and laid maps out on them. The office has also become the home of those deployed with the French mountain Gendarmerie who are coordinating the salvage effort. A red star on the map marks the site of the airplane's impact, a mountain ridge at an altitude of about 2,100 meters (6,890 feet). Two members of the mountain infantry lean over the maps and trace a path with their fingers.

The remains of the dead are being brought to a site on the outskirts of Seyne -- located just 200 meters away from the place where the victims' families are being brought -- and forensics detectives take delivery of the body parts. White tents, cooled by generators, have been set up in a lumber yard that is shielded from view by surrounding structures. Forensics detectives wearing white overalls and face masks have outfitted the tents with technical equipment. The property is guarded by a dozen gendarmes and they wave away anyone who gets too close to the site.

Among those who perished in the crash are Maria Radner, 33, an alto opera singer from Düsseldorf, and Oleg Bryjak, 54, a bass baritone born in Kazakhstan. They also include Manfed Jockheck of Dortmund, a married man and father, local politician, artist and college lecturer with myriad honorary posts. His wife Sabine also died in the crash. Ramón de Santiago, a 60-year-old entrepreneur from the town of Mataró near Barcelona who goes by the name Don Ramón, also perished along with his son of the same name, a nephew and his company's head of manufacturing. The dead include Josep Borrell, a 66-year-old mechanical engineer from Angles, Spain, a man regarded as hard-working and conscientious. There's Mohamed Tahrioui, 24, an immigrant originally from Morocco living in La Llagosta near Barcelona who had just found a job in Duisburg, Germany. He died together with his wife Asmae Ouahhoud, whom he had only married days prior to the crash. Marina Bandrés, a 38-year-old woman from Jaca, Spain, perished together with her baby en route to Manchester in Britain. Laura Altimira Barri, an executive at high street fashion chain Desigual who had wanted to visit one of the company's stores near Düsseldorf, also died.

The dead also include Sonja Cercek and Stefanie Tegethoff, teachers at the Joseph König Gymnasium in Haltern am See in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and 16 boys and girls who were their students. Yvonne and Emily Selke, a mother and daughter from the United States who were touring Europe, perished. Gabriela Maumus and her boyfriend Sebastian Greco of Buenos Aires died too. They had been on vacation in Spain. Paul Bramley, a 28-year-old studying hospitality and hotel management from Kingston upon Hull, died. Milad Hojjatoleslami, an Iranian journalist with the news agency Tasnim, died together with his colleague Hossein Javadi of the Iranian newspaper Vatan Emruz. The two had traveled to Barcelona to cover a match between the football teams FC Barcelona and Real Madrid. The victims included Japanese, Colombians, Brits, Germans, Americans, and Spaniards.

They all died because of Andreas Lubitz. But as unimaginable and singular as the crime may appear, there have been similar incidents in the history of air travel.

Progressively Lower

In November 2013, a LAM airlines Embraer 190 jet took off in Mozambique on a flight to Angola. The jet was only one year old and was free of technical problems, but the plane crashed in Namibia, halfway to its destination, killing 33 people.

Investigators were able to accurately reconstruct the events leading up to the crash. The machine flew to a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet -- the point at which the co-pilot left the cockpit and took a break to go to the lavatory. The captain remained in the cockpit, a man investigators would later discover had marital problems and had lost a son. He programmed three successive flight altitudes into the auto-pilot, each progressively lower.

Data from the cockpit voice recorder provided clear evidence in the case. For minutes, the co-pilot could be heard pounding against the door, to no avail. The captain also didn't respond to air traffic control's attempts to communicate with him. He activated the spoilers on the wings, putting the aircraft into a faster descent. In this instance, the co-pilot finally managed to get back into the cockpit, but it was too late. The plane shattered on impact.

There are also further examples of murder-suicides of this type. In December 1990, soon after takeoff en route from New York to Cairo, a life and death battle ensued aboard Egyptair Flight 990. The co-pilot suddenly pushed the control yoke sharply forward as the captain used all his strength to pull his control yoke as he tried to pull up the nose to keep the plane from crashing. But the co-pilot, who was clearly disturbed, prevailed. Calling out "I trust on God," he drove the plane into the ocean, killing all 217 passengers on board. US investigators at the time concluded they had sufficient evidence of a murder-suicide, but Egyptian authorities never accepted the finding.

A Silk Airways Boeing 737 jet from Singapore had only been flying for a year and was in perfect flying condition when it began plunging from an altitude of 10,600 meters in December 1997. Only a minute later, it crashed into the ground, killing all 104 people on board. The investigation concluded that Captain Tsu Way Ming had forced the aircraft into a nose dive, causing it to break the sound barrier before it crashed.

Of course, there's also the mystery of MH370. Over a year after its disappearance in March 2014, nobody really knows that happened aboard the plane. A technical malfunction remains a possibility, but investigators are also pursuing the scenario of a possible pilot suicide.

Pilots struggling with mental illness have a good reason to hide it. As soon as they inform their employers, they are stripped of their suitability for flight and thus lose their jobs. In the case of Andreas Lubitz, there are indications that he had to suspend his pilot training for a short time because he was battling with depression. Later, however, Lufthansa doctors determined him to be "fit to fly." The airline is certain to face further questions about its diagnosis, but even if Lubitz were found to have been suffering from depression, such an explanation would hardly be satisfactory. The crime is simply too horrendous, combining as it does two of the greatest fears of our times: mass murder and airplane crashes.

Suicidal Tendencies

People who knew Lubitz as Andi -- people like classmates from his school days and his teachers -- say they are unable to explain how he could have done something like this. A former teacher of Lubitz's at the Mons Tabor Gymnasium said he had not spoken to a single former classmate of the co-pilot who had heard anything about possible depression, behavioral problems or suicidal tendencies.

Of course, that doesn't mean much and a person's life can go off the rails from one day to the next. For the moment, though, it appears that no one is able to make sense of what happened. "Everyone has incredibly positive memories of him," says the former teacher. They are memories of a man who was a blank canvas. Lubitz had no criminal record, his name cannot be found in major German police databases, and he's an unknown quantity to state criminal police as well as the domestic intelligence agency, which is in charge of monitoring possible extremist activity in Germany.

If there are any lessons to be learned from this tragedy, it is in the organization of the work that takes place in the cockpit. Many US airlines dictate to their crews that no pilot can be left alone in the cockpit. If one of the two has to go to the bathroom, a member of the cabin crew takes that person's seat as a watchdog. Lufthansa didn't have such guidelines, though many companies have now changed their rules, requiring that two crew members be in the cockpit at all times.

As tempting as it may be, one shouldn't imagine the people in the cockpit as teams or partners who know each other well and have done so for a long time. The opposite is actually true. At major airlines, pilots often aren't very familiar with each other, if at all. The pilot and co-pilot are often teamed up for a flight by throw of dice. Afterwards, they have a few days off and then fly again with a different colleague. The lack of familiarity is deliberate because the airlines want to avoid situations where too much trust gets built up. Everyone is meant to work as dictated by the rules and not like some old couple who create their own. This lack of familiarity is considered to be beneficial to safety, but is it? Could problems with a man like Lubitz have been detected earlier if someone had been more closely associated with him?

In many ways, the fact that taking a closer look at the life of Andreas Lubitz may not get us closer to solving the mystery is even more disturbing than it would have been if a convincing motive could be found. A closer look at the life of a co-pilot who became a murderer shows a lot of signs of ordinariness, with nothing to indicate he might be close to the abyss. Throughout his life, Lubitz cracked ordinary jokes, he listened to ordinary music and he wrote ordinary things. By all appearances, he seemed to be just a normal guy.

It's possible that his insanity was buried so deep in his head that even his girlfriend had no idea about it. It has been reported that the two lived in Düsseldorf and that they wanted to get married. She worked as a math teacher and was reportedly already on her way to the site of the crash in southern France when she learned that her boyfriend had not been a victim, but rather a likely perpetrator responsible for killing 149 people.

Skywalker

Hi Rad,

What stands out for me firstly is the fact he has Mars conjunct Pluto and the Moon in Scorpio which shows the potential for extreme intensity the Soul can experience in order to evolve. This intensity can correlate with pure violence and power displays or struggles and a potential for wars in his recent past lives and suicidal or "kamikazi" tendencies.

Then natal Lucifer in Sagittarius conjunct the ruler of his Virgo South Node, Mercury, and is also conjunct Saturn and the Sun by extension. Lucifer being the influence of evil and Sagittarius being connected to long distance travel and aviation shows the potential for evil to influence him, relative to his belief system or religion, to commit such an act, if he really did do it.

At the moment of the crash transiting Lucifer was on his Chiron in Gemini and just opposed his natal Lucifer and was  opposing his Sun/Mercury/Saturn in Sagittarius. The influence of evil is clear here.

Transiting Pallas which is also connected to warfare is in Sagittarius, exactly square his nodal axis, showing the potential for using the plane as a weapon . He also possibly had desire to be a martyr for his ideals with the  North Node being in Pisces and all the Sagittarius planets squaring the nodal axis.

The ruler of his North node is Neptune, which is conjunct Pallas in Capricorn which seems to show the whole "ends justify the means" attitude towards his ideals and his direction in life, and the connection to warfare to achieve those means.

All the best

www.mettarocks.com asteroids, crystal info and more

Maya

Hi ,

A lot of squares - Nodes...why should 149 souls "choose" to die like this??? This is so terrible.

Maya

Skywalker

Hi Rad,

Do you have any idea of his motives? There seems to be no connection to religions from what I have read in the media. To me it seems there are evil influences that may of influenced him.

Thank you

All the best
www.mettarocks.com asteroids, crystal info and more

Rad

Hi Skywalker,

From what I have read it appears that he was fearing loosing his job and dream of being a pilot, and specifically a long range pilot for Lufthansa. This set in motion, again, his cycles of severe depression that caused him to research on his computer methods of suicide while at the same time researching different kinds of psychiatric and psychological doctors whom he either thought could help him and/or provide a diagnosis favorable to him, and thus Lufthansa that he worked for. Within this he told his ex-girlfriend, at some point, that he would do something one day in which the world would remember his name. This inner orientation to himself reflects his S.Node in Virgo to me: a sense of being nobody with the resulting compensation manifesting as that sort of attitude. To me this Soul was a narcissistic megalomaniac.

God Bless, Rad

Skywalker

Hi Rad,

The symbols do reflect that possibility quite strongly. Interesting how he said the world would remember him. The North Node conjunct Neptune in Capricorn with Saturn in Sagittarius stands out as he touched the collective, Neptune, via the crash.

Thank you

All the best
www.mettarocks.com asteroids, crystal info and more

Gonzalo

Hi Rad, Cat, Skywalker,

I was wondering what happened within this individual's brain that allowed him to make up his mind so quickly and then keep up with the sudden decision to crash the plane. I think part of answer can be found in the individual's brain chemistry.  

It transpired Lubitz had been under psychiatric therapy for depression and suicide ideation and that he seemingly was or had been taking an SSRI. These types of antidepressants have been known to have some paradoxical or weird effects, especially at the onset of treatment in which levels of Serotonin can rise but without mood improvement for several weeks, or during withdrawal in which imbalances of Serotonin levels and mood swings can be quite abrupt. It seems these types of imbalances and the specific type of antidepressants have been connected with various cases of violent murders and/or suicides. These effects on mood have been thought to depend on the SSRI impact on levels of other neurotransmitters, like Dopamine and Norepinephrine.

Serotonin correlates with Uranus, Saturn and the Moon. The potential for Imbalance of brain serotonin is indicated in the Nodal squares of Uranus/Saturn and Neptune and further, the trine of Venus/Ceres to the Virgo South Node, Venus/Ceres being in Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, and the North Node ruler, Neptune, is in Capricorn too. These symbols reflect the potential for very low levels of serotonin at times, which basically are due to PTS. Also, these symbols reflect depression and, with Pluto/Mars and Moon conjunction in Scorpio, relative to the South Node in Virgo, intense levels of resentment, anger, rage, etc. with hyperactivity of the Amygdala and parts of the frontal cortex -Venus in Capricorn-which are connected with such states.

It's interesting to consider that some symbols do suggest the potential for bipolar depression. At least, some possible chemical and psychological dynamics of that type. First, there are very high levels of dopamine activity, which is connected in this case with psychological dynamics of compensation through believing to have a very special destiny to fulfill "¦ it is reported that he said "one day I will do something that will change the system and then everyone will know my name and remember it." This is reflected in all the Sagittarius planets square the Moon's nodes, these planets ruled by Jupiter in Aries, and the North node in Pisces (dopamine correlates with Jupiter and Neptune; dopamine circuits relating to motivation, drive, and addiction connect the Ventral Tegmental Area -which I provisionally think correlate with Sagittarius and Pisces-with the nucleus accumbens-Sagittarius/Pisces-in the Basal Ganglia-Sagittarius; and to the Limbic system-Moon/Pluto/Neptune-the Amygdala, Pluto/Moon/Uranus/Mercury/Neptune; and further, with the frontal cortex-Venus, Neptune; and the hypothalamus-Moon Uranus and Neptune). Because of the prior lives unresolved PTSD -Uranus square the nodes- the Mars conjunct Pluto indicates that there have been high level of circulating stress hormones, which in turn have sensitized the dopamine system to respond even further. This occurs because stress can deplete the levels of dopamine in certain paths, with consequent development of hypersensitivity in the receptors to the little dopamine that is left: Neptune in Capricorn. It looks to me like a signature that could, potentially create maniac or hypomaniac states even coexisting or overlapping with the depressed states. Not only would dopamine run high, but also norepinephrine (and glutamate). Thus, the recent "˜burnout' experienced by Lubitz, that would need to occur on a cyclic basis.

However if such were the case. ie. if the actual medical condition had been bipolar depression rather than just depression, the treatment could not have been with an SSRI only, since these drugs can be quite dangerous in cases of a bipolar mood disorder because of the other neurotransmitters involved. The potential for bipolar disorder or bipolar dynamics is symbolized first, in the Gemini Chiron opposition to the Sagittarius planets, squaring the nodal axis: Mercury, Saturn, Sun, Uranus. Further, the nodal rulers being Mercury in Sagittarius square the nodes correlating with mania and Neptune in Capricorn correlating with depression-Neptune/Pallas and Venus/Ceres are all in Capricorn.

Depletion of serotonin created by inner stress would affect multiple neurotransmitter systems, ie. glutamate, GABA, norepinephrine, acetylcholine, and dopamine, impacting the balance between an executing or motivated approach and withdrawal or behavioral inhibition (which is thought to depend basically on the balance between dopamine and serotonin in the ventral striatum- provisionally correlated with Sagittarius).  There is a direct link between impulsive aggressive behavior and altered levels of serotonin in prefrontal cortex where it operates by inhibitory synaptic transmission to lower brain areas.  Dopamine hyperactivity in brain regions linked with motivation and reward, as the prefrontal cortex, increases impulsive and aggressive behavior.  This behavior can also be contributed to by other substances, like norepinephrine (Saturn/Pluto), glutamate (provisionally, Uranus) and testosterone (Mars), which would also be imbalanced and tend to reach high extremes in Lubitz's brain.  

God Bless, Gonzalo

cat777

Hi Gonzalo,

Thank you for posting that. One of the things that crossed my mind when I read that he was being treated for depression was prescription drugs. So many prescription drugs have suicide as a possible side effect these days. I didn't think about it as deeply as you have but sure do appreciate you sharing that!

cat

Skywalker

Hi All,

Gonzalo amazing detail about the brain chemistry! Thanks for sharing. I think he probably had made up his mind prior to the crash thou. It´s possible the antidepressants are what allowed him to remain so detached while he descended towards the mountain.

All the best

www.mettarocks.com asteroids, crystal info and more

Rad

Hi Gonzalo,

Thanks for that excellent brain/ chemical analysis of this guy. I also feel that this was a 'plan' that preexisted in his Soul/ consciousness due to all the various circumstances that we have all become aware of. Thus, he waited for the 'opportunity' to present itself: the captain of the aircraft need to go to the restroom. Once that opportunity presented itself he then acted upon that preexisting plan with all the attendant physiological reactions in his brain that reflected this. Anti-depressants typically inhibit the uptake of serotonin which would help account for the emotional reality within his overall consciousness.

God Bless, Rad


Rad


Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz may have spiked captain's drink with diuretic to force him from cabin

Prosecutors are searching Lubitz's computers for evidence

Kashmira Gander
Friday 10 April 2015
The Independent

Investigators probing last month's Germanwings crash are trying to determine whether the Andreas Lubitz placed a chemical in the captain's drink to force him to go to the toilet.

The 27-year-old co-pilot crashed the Airbus 320 into an Alpine ravine in France, killing himself and the other 149 passengers and crew on board.

A black box recorder found in the flight revealed that Lubitz locked the cockpit door when the captain left for a toilet break. He then used controls to override the entry code, and took the chance to crash the plane as the captain desperately tried to break back in.

German prosecutors investigating Lubitz's computer are now attempting to confirm whether Lubtiz secretly added a diuretic - which gives a person the urge to urinate - to Captain Patrick Sodenheimer's coffee to make him leave the flight deck, according to reports in Germany seen by Mail Online.

Investigators have already uncovered how Lubitz searched for suicide methods and information on cockpit doors before the crash.

In the days running up to the tragedy, Lubitz, who was known to have suffered with depression, logged on to his computer under the name "Skydevil" and searched for information on cockpit security.

Between 16 to 23 March - the day before the disaster - Lubtiz repeatedly searched terms including "bipolarity", "manic depression", "migraines", "impaired vision" and "acoustic trauma", investigators with access to a tablet computer found in his apartment told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.