SUICIDE BY PILOTS OF
COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT: THE MISSING MALAYSIAN AIRLINES FLIGHT MH370
David Lester
I noted in 2002 (Lester, 2002) that
occasionally pilots of commercial aircraft die by suicide while piloting their
plane full of passengers.[1]
The example I gave was of Gameel-al-Batouti, the co-pilot of EgyptAir flight
900 which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on October 31, 1999, an act which
seemed to be suicidal Langewiesche (2001).
More recently, Langewiesche (2019)
has given more examples of possible suicides by pilots: (1) in 1997, the pilot
of a SilkAir plane (an Indonesian airline) is believed to have disabled the
black boxes of his Boeing 737 and crashed the plane into a river, (2) the pilot
of a LAM Mozambique Airlines flight 470 flew his Embraer E190 into the ground
killing all 27 passengers, and (3) Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot, crashed his
Germanwings Airbus into the French Alps, having locked the pilot out of the
cockpit when the pilot went to the bathroom.
In his new article, Langewiesche
argues that the most likely scenario for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight
370, which disappeared over the Indian Ocean March 8, 2014, was that the pilot
deliberately choose to die by suicide, taking all the passengers and crew (who
were most likely already dead inside the plane) with him.
Langewiesche saw the co-pilot as an
unlikely instigator or collaborator. He was young, an optimist and planning to
get married. He had no history which would suggest suicidal inclinations. In
contrast, the co-pilot of the Germanwings plane that crashed flew for budget
airlines with low pay and showed signs in the past of psychological problems.
In contrast, the pilot of MH370, Amad
Shah Zaharie, although described by his family and the authorities as a happy
family man and excellent pilot, was described by friends as often sad and
lonely. His wife had moved out to their second home, and Zaharie spent the time
between flights pacing empty rooms. He had a wistful relationship with a
married woman who had three children, he was interested in two Internet models
whom he met on social media, and he had a history of liaisons with the flight
attendants. Some who knew him thought he was clinically depressed. Prior to the
disappearance of MH370, Zaharie had experimented in a simulator with the flight
path that MH370 most likely followed.
In none of these cases was a
reputable and thorough psychological autopsy carried by a qualified
suicidologist, and so the conclusion that these pilots and co-pilots chose to
die by suicide, killing their passengers as collateral damage, must remain a
hypothesis. However, suicide remains the most likely cause of the crashes given
current information.
References
Langewiesche, W. (2001). The crash of EgyptAir 900. Atlantic Monthly, 288(4), 68-92.
Langewiesche, W. (2019). “Goodnight Malaysian
three-seven-zero.” Atlantic Monthly, 324(1),
78-94.
Lester, D. (2002). Suicide and aircraft. Crisis, 23, 2.
[1] I also noted cases of
passengers dying by suicide by causing the plane to crash and a pilot who died
by suicide after he had crashed his plane.
