Killing With Kindness

By their employment practices presumably 

The one piece of good news to come out of the Germanwings air disaster is that Lufthansa, the parent company, is reportedly facing compensation claims running into the tens of millions. This for knowingly allowing somebody who had severe mental health problems to fly their planes. We know the airline and aviation authorities were aware of Lubitz’s problem, because Lufthansa admits that he had dropped out of his flying course for 18 months while he was receiving psychiatric treatment and Germany’s Federal Aviation Office confirms that his pilot’s file was flagged with the warning that he needed regular psychological assessments.

The big question is why.

Why did Lufthansa put the lives of more than a hundred passengers into the hands of such a man?

A clue to the answer came in the reaction of numerous mental health charities, lobby groups and progressive journalists to Andreas Lubitz’s suicide murder of 149 passengers and crew of the Germanwings flight.

The reaction of most normal people to that atrocity was a mixture of horror and sadness. We thought of ourselves in the hopeless and terrifying plight of the victims in their final moments and we empathised. Later many of us felt anger when we discovered that Lubitz’s condition was well known to his employers and the authorities.

Not so your average progressive (or your average psychopath).

As reported in the Guardian, the Independent and of course the BBC their main worry in the wake of the horrific murder of 149 innocents is that those suffering depression should not be “stigmatised”. There were also sanctimonious denouncements of those who suggested that somebody suffering from depression should not be flying a passenger jet.

Bear in mind that the only reason that Lubitz was in a position to commit mass-murder was that some kind officials at Lufthansa and in the German Federal Aviation Office had decided not to stigmatise him. In plain terms they had decided to ignore a condition characterised by a substantially elevated risk of suicidal impulse.

It’s obvious that those bearing the stress of enormous responsibility for so many others should have the mental capacity to deal with it. However sad it may be for the individual who is unable to realise his dream of being a pilot, that is as nothing to the consideration of the safety of a hundred passengers. Clearly though it’s only obvious to those not affected with that terribly disabling mental health condition known as progressive liberalism.

In their deranged world view preventing somebody from flying a plane because of a mental illness is an injustice that outweighs the horrific death of 149 innocents. While the rest of us identify with the victims, progressives empathise with Lubitz and any future Lubitzs whose dreams of flying may be crushed by a career bar against those who are mentally ill.

Now in the wake of this mass slaughter perhaps those responsible for approving Lubitz as fit to fly might like to take a good look at the pictures of all those poor people who paid such a terrible price for their kindness in not stigmatising him.

But I wouldn’t bet on the likelihood of those responsible feeling much remorse. They are likely too convinced of their essential virtue in being non-judgmental to consider their part in enabling Lubitz’s evil crime.

That’s why it’s such good news to hear that at least Lufthansa will be held financially responsible for its appalling negligence. The very muted response of the press to the startling revelations that such a man was allowed to fly is eloquent testimony to how widespread is the belief that Lufthansa’s employing a depressive is not the issue. Hence the concentration on technical fixes to the problem: airlines need to ensure that no pilot is ever left alone in the cockpit;  cabin doors need to be rethought; even that there should be a way of overriding the pilots from the ground. All of these are simply a way of misdirecting attention from the terrible and stupid mistake that Lufthansa and the aviation authorities made in not weeding out Lubitz.

Making Lufthansa pay very substantial compensation should at least help to counterbalance the pressure from progressives to employ the mentally ill in positions where cool-headed sanity is a must.

Clearly the best outcome of this tragedy would be a realisation on the part of airlines that depression disqualifies somebody from flying a commercial airliner. But in an age when loopy liberalism is driving out common sense everywhere, cold monetary considerations offer the best hope of bringing sanity back to the employment practices of Lufthansa.