Posted on 03/30/2015 8:03:01 AM PDT by rickmichaels
The case of a British Airways pilot who killed his estranged wife in a hammer attack then planned to crash his jumbo jet “to make a statement” shows airlines are not doing enough to monitor the mental conditions of their crews, it was claimed yesterday.
Robert Brown, 47, hit his estranged wife Joanna at least 14 times with a claw hammer in 2010, following a bitter and costly divorce battle.
He had been due to fly a Boeing 747 jumbo jet from Heathrow to Lagos the next day but rang in sick at the last minute. Brown told his trial: “I didn’t want to be another husband who kills his wife and then himself and nobody cares. I thought if I got to work I could crash an aircraft, or fly to Lagos and crash it there. I wanted to make a statement.”
He was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder after convincing the jury that he had been suffering extreme stress due to his marital breakdown.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalpost.com ...
Airlines like to claim they are serious about mental health screening, yet, so many pilots have serious issues like alcoholism and other personal issues in their lives.
Do you really want a pilot flying your plane that is going through a nasty divorce and just had the cops called on him because he bashed in his ex-wife’s door? Or a pilot who is going through his third divorce and is extremely upset about his child support payments?
Pilots are people, just like anyone else. They have the same problems everyone else does. In fact, it can be magnified by the “God Complex” of perfection that many highly-paid pilots get.
If they can’t keep 100% of all mental problems out of the Missile silos, what makes anyone think they can keep 100% of it of the cockpit?
“If they can’t keep 100% of all mental problems out of the Missile silos,”
Actually, the US has an exemplary nuclear record. But, then the military can look deeper into your background than an airline.
Since it’s pretty normal that women in divorce cases make untrue allegations it puts an extra burden on airlines. Probably the best defense would be training coworkers to recognize and report potential problems and legislation allowing the airlines to further investigate. Almost always the coworkers are aware of situations affecting the performance of people they work with daily.
You can't profile Muslims (even though they commit 99.44% of all the terrorist acts on the planet) because most of them don't commit terrorist acts, which is true. For every one which does, there are at least 100 more who finance, encourage and cheerlead them.
You can't stop self-avowed homosexuals from working with children because just as many heterosexuals do it. (And, pointing out that heterosexuals are 97% of the population and getting caught taking a whiz on a public street at night isn't as serious of a sex crime as diddling a little kid is "hate speech."
I could go on with a hundred more examples, but you get the idea. Common sense has been replaced by intricate and complicated procedures which profiles stuff instead of criminals. As a result, the next Mohammed Atta is more likely to board an airline flight than a C-PAP machine which hasn't been "checked" by unionized government employees, many of whom wouldn't last a day at McDonald's.
In this last case, no one could get in that cockpit because it's locked to avoid another 911. A requirement for always having two people in the cockpit would've prevented what happened.
So women are responsible for men intentionally crashing passenger airliners?
She's lucky guns are outlawed in Jolly Old England or she might've gotten hurt.
Of course. It’s the airlines’ fault.
“If they can’t keep 100% of all mental problems out of the Missile silos, what makes anyone think they can keep 100% of it of the cockpit?”
Pilots get far more screenings than missile guys, and they can keep the mental problems out of the silos, they just don’t want to. (Professional experience with both. :) )
“The problem, and it’s a huge one, is that when governments and employers can screen people for potential mental breakdowns, we’re in “future crimes” territory.”
For pilots, damned straight we are into future crimes territory. We need to know when someone exhibits a mental condition that usually results in bad decision making when it comes to people like pilots. We have had such programs for pilots going back decades.
Ahh another one of those grand “we should do something” without bothering to contemplate logistics. Are we supposed to be putting pilots through a psych workup before every flight? Leave of absences during all life stress? Automatic prozac drips for the cockpit?
It may have improved the odds, but will not work every time.
What is a 98 lb flight attendant going to do to stop a 250 lb suicidal copilot?
What are is the captain going to do when he dozes off and the copilot has full control of a cockpit?
A person who wants to die will find a way.
Just remember, you made the same argument that liberals make against gun owners.
Do you want a mental health screening each time you buy a firearm? Do you want your financial and marital history investigated each time you want to buy bullets?
This case shows that no matter how much training, licensing, certification, health and mental health checks you do....you will never stop every suicidal person from trying to make a name for themselves....using a firearm, an automobile or a plane.
The F’N PROBLEM is screening the lives and “statements” of these monsters on national TV for weeks or months.
This needs to be addressed somehow or they will keep killing people to get famous.
And they want to make planes bigger and bigger.
I sincerely believe that if you stigmatized mental health, more people would get treatment since mental health patients would be expected to adhere to the same standards of society. It would encouraged mental health patients to stop using their illness as an excuse to do destructive things.
That is the bottom line. Nothing is 100% safe, as this situation demonstrates. Any solution to a problem is going to have unintended consequences, not all of them good.
What would be wrong with having a new breed of stewards and stewardesses, who were trained to handle violent and emergency situations? No more 98 pound attendants unless they can take down an assailant!
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