The co-pilot, Gamil El Batouty, could be heard muttering over and over, "I rely on God. The black box recorder then picked up unintelligible commotion and banging on the door. Before the crash, the plane's pilot had apparently excused himself to go to the bathroom. In 1999, EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed near Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing 217 people. Someone was pounding on the cockpit door as the plane went down. The pilot then altered the autopilot to bring it to below ground level and manually switched it to maximum speed. The co-pilot had left the cockpit for the bathroom only to find that the door was locked when he returned. Investigators initially couldn't figure out why the plane had crashed, since the weather was so nice.īut as the International Business Times reported, the plane's black box recorder offered some disturbing clues. In November 2013, Mozambique Airlines Flight TM470 crashed in Namibia, killing 33 people on board. Here's a partial list:Ĭo-pilot muttered, "I Rely on God" over and over The report noted that "factors involved in aircraft-assisted suicides may be depression, social relationships, and financial difficulties, just to name a few problems." The good news? The frequency of these suicides has declined sharply in recent decades, the NTSB said.Įven rarer - but more gruesome - are times when pilots appear to commit suicide while carrying dozens or hundreds of passengers on board. In only one instance was there a passenger on board.įour of the eight pilots had been drinking at the time, while two had been taking antidepressants. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has identified eight cases of pilot suicide between 20. In the United States, most pilot suicides are committed by people flying solo. Yet the possibility of a pilot suicide is incredibly unnerving, since there's seemingly nothing any of the passengers can do. (Dennis Bois/AFP/Getty Images)įlying, as many people know, is one of the safest forms of travel. But, he added, it was "a legitimate question to ask." Pilot suicides are rare - but unnerving when they happenĪ screengrab taken from an AFP TV video on March 24, 2015, shows debris of the Germanwings Airbus A320 at the crash site in the French Alps above the southeastern town of Seyne. "I haven’t used the word suicide," said prosecutor Brice Robin at a press conference. The voice recorder indicated that Lubitz had been breathing up until the moment of the crash, suggesting he meant to destroy the plane. The pilot knocked and tried to get back in, but the doors were fortified - a security precaution taken after the 9/11 attacks. Investigators now believe the plane's co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, locked the pilot out of the cabin after the latter had left for some unknown reason. Now French prosecutors think something similar may have happened with Germanwings Flight 4U99525, which crashed into the French Alps on Tuesday, killing 150 people. The co-pilot seemed to have "an intention to destroy this aircraft" The Aviation Safety Network identifies at least eight instances worldwide since 1976 where pilots appeared to have deliberately crashed airliners, sometimes taking dozens or hundreds of people with them. Pilot suicides are thankfully very rare - and are getting rarer - but they do happen occasionally, sometimes with horrific results. He decides to intentionally crash the plane, killing everyone on board. A pilot is flying an airliner carrying hundreds of unsuspecting passengers.
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