Tragic Germanwings air disaster families suffer the preventable losses

Although Europeans were spared the horror of finding the Germanwings flight diaster was not the result of terrorism or an airplane malfunction, the mass murder-suicide by co-pilot Andreas Lutitz was, nevertheless a wake up call about the future potential for such an event.

Exacerbating the devastating Germanwings disaster in the French alps, are the enormities  of the sufferings experienced by the victims' families. Survivors of the 149 victims of the Lubitz suicide how realize how the airline tragedy was preventable. It turned out, Lubitz was unfit to fly. Nevertheless, he was obviously too delusional to accept his fate. Instead of facing the reality of the depressive disorder he suffered from, Lubitz decided to avenge his fate and take innocent lives along with him, as he took the Germanwings airplane into a delusional plunge into the alps.

Of course, Europeans and people around the world held our collective breaths about the Germanwings disaster, thinking it had the look and feel of a terrorism plot.  Realistically, why else would a sane pilot take an airplane into a deliberate decline, heading into a mountain, on a clear night during an otherwise uneventful flight? Well, of course, Lubitz was not sane. Rather, he was experiencing a psychotic episode most likely accompanied by delusions. We'll never know for sure what Lubitz was thinking, but I'm confident he had a history of paranoid delusional behavior.  Left untreated, the victims of this mental disease are difficult to treat because they refuse to believe anything is wrong. They deny treatment and eventually wind up doing some kind of a delusional deed. Tragically, Lubitz wasn't caught in time to save the lives of those who were killed in his delusional psychosis.

There's no solace for families and friends of the Germanwings victims in knowing their loved ones were killed by one psychotic airline pilot. It's hard to accept the fact that the deaths were preventable.

Yet, the Germanwings disaster brought grieving European leaders together in realizing how the crash may, indeed, have dodged a terrorism bullet. Hopefully, it was a major wake up call for the Europeans, alerting them to be hyper aware about the risk of terrorists who, very likely, would be in a mind set to "copy cat" the Lubitz delusional plan.  

Those suffering Germanwings disaster surviving family members, colleagues and friends will never overcome the emotional trauma caused by one delusional airline pilot. Yet, those killed may have raised European awareness to prevent the potential for something worse, in the future.