It's a terrifying scenario. A pilot is flying an airliner carrying hundreds of unsuspecting passengers. He decides to intentionally crash the plane, killing everyone on board.
Pilot suicides are thankfully very rare — and are getting rarer — but they do happen occasionally, sometimes with horrific results. 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.
Now French prosecutors think something similar may have happened with Germanwings Flight 4U99525, which crashed into the French Alps on Tuesday, killing 150 people.
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. The pilot knocked and tried to get back in, but the doors were fortified — a security precaution taken after the 9/11 attacks. The voice recorder indicated that Lubitz had been breathing up until the moment of the crash, suggesting he meant to destroy the plane. We still don't know why.
