Horizon Jumpseater goes crazy

Almost hope they find a Charles Whitman type of problem (admittedly, never confirmed) - no one likes to think of these things being caused by a vague, abstract thing like a chemical imbalance.
 
Just wondering why he didn’t do it on his own flight, in a larger plane with more people.

Strange.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Almost hope they find a Charles Whitman type of problem (admittedly, never confirmed) - no one likes to think of these things being caused by a vague, abstract thing like a chemical imbalance.
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It’s a nice parallel because it really is no different than an attempted mass shooting. He can still talk, and I would imagine he will undergo some sort of thorough psychological evaluation. I’m sure eventually we will have some answers.
 
RyanShort1 said:
Yeah, but that is begging the question. Perhaps addressing the issue early on would prevent it from getting to the point of being dangerous.
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You give the psychologist more credit than I do. I don’t think mental illness is curable. It might be treatable, but usually only with the absolute cooperation of the patient. When it comes to public safety, I really don’t care about some individuals dream of flying. Don’t know why anybody would. There’s enough unknowns out there. I don’t feel like adding another known unknown.
 
mandm said:
The human brain is complex, and it’s easy to say you shouldn’t have these thoughts (aka a mental illness), I think we all experience similar thoughts and ways of thinking, but our upbringing, love received and values is what makes our actions in real life. Aka we can tell the difference from movies and real life.

I don’t think us saying we are better for this and that, helps those who were raised with less, and with social media that isn’t helping either.

There is too much stigma on mental illness, I’m sure we all experience mental health issues at some point in our life.

And I’m not justifying anyones actions, I just want to see everyone live life to their fullest.
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I have never had any mental illness issues ever, not once in my life and I’m 62. So please stop with the ‘I think all’ statement and I don’t care if some kid with Asperger‘s doesn’t get to fulfill his dream of flying commercially. Just to fulfill your goal of everybody should live their life to the fullest. Life often sucks, get over it, move on. No rainbows and unicorns.
it seems that being mentally fragile is the new bid for attention.
 
Something doesn’t smell right with the reporting on this. Those fire handles are closer to the jumpseater than the pilots. If the JS wanted to pull them, then he could before the pilots could do anything about it.

Second, if he wanted to play GermanWings and take out a plane, then why not wait until he was working where he only had to deal with one pilot vs two as a jumpseater.

Third, he left the cockpit without a struggle on his own. No fight or anything.

I’m going to wait to hear the rest of the story on this one. The dots aren’t connecting based on what’s being reported.
 
X3 Skier said:
Yes. It shuts off all fluid to the engine including Jet-A. No gas, no go. Has to be reset by maintenance on the ground.

See post 40
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Never worked the E175, but we pull fire handles in MX for certain checks on a variety of other AC. I do not recall any action other than resetting the switch or handle.
 
Fracpilot said:
Something doesn’t smell right with the reporting on this. Those fire handles are closer to the jumpseater than the pilots. If the JS wanted to pull them, then he could before the pilots could do anything about it.

Second, if he wanted to play GermanWings and take out a plane, then why not wait until he was working where he only had to deal with one pilot vs two as a jumpseater.

Third, he left the cockpit without a struggle on his own. No fight or anything.

I’m going to wait to hear the rest of the story on this one. The dots aren’t connecting based on what’s being reported.
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How do you explain an irrational act, in a rational way?
 
What a lunatic. Work so hard to get to his position only to ruin it for the rest of his life. Glad he failed in his attempt. What a crew though to be able to subdue him.
 
Morgan3820 said:
You give the psychologist more credit than I do. I don’t think mental illness is curable. It might be treatable, but usually only with the absolute cooperation of the patient. When it comes to public safety, I really don’t care about some individuals dream of flying. Don’t know why anybody would. There’s enough unknowns out there. I don’t feel like adding another known unknown.
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You do realize that because of the FAA's firm stance on mental illness, many pilots avoid treatment to avoid losing their medical. That is the negative effect of the FAA medical program. The actual medical evaluation barely scratches the surface, but the impact is pilots avoiding medical and mental health to protect their medical. There are a lot of pilots out there flying today with undiagnosed medical and mental health issues, flying under the radar. Do you think that is better for "public safety".
 
Katamarino said:
Attempted murder is still very much a crime. Just not necessarily the one he was aiming for.
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midwestpa24 said:
You do realize that because of the FAA's firm stance on mental illness, many pilots avoid treatment to avoid losing their medical. That is the negative effect of the FAA medical program. The actual medical evaluation barely scratches the surface, but the impact is pilots avoiding medical and mental health to protect their medical. There are a lot of pilots out there flying today with undiagnosed medical and mental health issues, flying under the radar. Do you think that is better for "public safety".
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I don’t think it would be any different if the solution was “well suspend your flying privileges for a year or two until you’re better.” That just leaves “it’s ok to fly with mental illness” as the solution to pilots not self-grounding for mental illness.
 
midwestpa24 said:
You do realize that because of the FAA's firm stance on mental illness, many pilots avoid treatment to avoid losing their medical. That is the negative effect of the FAA medical program. The actual medical evaluation barely scratches the surface, but the impact is pilots avoiding medical and mental health to protect their medical. There are a lot of pilots out there flying today with undiagnosed medical and mental health issues, flying under the radar. Do you think that is better for "public safety".
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So then you think we should have people with diagnosed, documented but ‘treated’ mental illness is flying large aircraft with hundreds of people in it. is that your stance?
My position, then would be that they shouldn’t have been flying in the first place. And that mental health screening should be even more rigorous.
I have no interest in this current trend of main streaming mental illness.
 
Hmmm…

It ain’t that easy. “Mental health” ain’t a virus you can see under a microscope. We don’t understand it ANYWHERE near well enough to do it fairly.

So…

More vigorously? Just eliminate ANYONE who MIGHT have an issue? Cool, until it’s YOU. Can’t ignore it either.

The FAA operates (generally) under the premise flying AINT safe. Gotta mitigate safety things until it’s SAFE ENOUGH. This sort of incident don’t happen much. At some point we gotta decide if it’s safe enough considering REAL data. Not irrational fear of what MIGHT happen.

Suicidal pilots have killed quite a few people. Unlike this guy, they are smart, and have a GOOD plan. Scary… not sure how you make it better. Administratively the FAA sits you down for like ten years if you express suicidal ideation. System might need bolstering.

Alcoholic pilots have NEVER killed in part 121 aviation. Yet these guys are CLOBBERED with unreasonable recertification requirements. There is no REAL danger.

Sidebar: if an alcoholic pilot expresses suicidal ideation, 35 days inpatient, a year of sitting around, right back to flying. I know a couple that later killed themselves… all part 121. Food for thought.

Drug users have killed. It’s EXCEEDINGLY rare, system is probably ok.

Fatigued pilots kill more often than suicidal pilots… this IS recognizable and fixable, yet it’s not (think dollars).

Pick your battle. This guy was crying for help. Rare, and not exceedingly dangerous. He is being eliminated from the flying gene pool. System is probably ok.
 
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Morgan3820 said:
You give the psychologist more credit than I do. I don’t think mental illness is curable. It might be treatable, but usually only with the absolute cooperation of the patient.
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You are incorrect. There are many people who have been cured of mental illness. There are also mentally well people that later develop mental illness. The brain is not static and it's dumb to treat it as such.
 
Maybe we first need to start with a definition of what mental illness is so that everyone is on the same starting page.
 
Mental illness is a terrible disease. Unfortunately the term covers a large umbrella of things, some mild, some severe. The problem is determining a diagnosis, then getting it treated. Unfortunately I've had experience dealing with people who were very ill and I would not want them piloting an aircraft.

The people I've known are mostly not bad people, they have an illness. But a lot of these illnesses are insidious, if not treated they slowly get worse and turn into a crisis. When the crisis comes, they become irrational, emotional and unpredictable. Some can be reasoned with, many cannot. The people who act out, usually can be convinced, or forced to take medicine. Some manage to live a life without medicine, usually using some type of self medication, that doesn't work well.

The more disabled in this category usually end up unable to function rationally, they become homeless and withdraw from society. Others either voluntarily or otherwise are medicated, recover, but need lifelong medicine. The downside is once they feel better and function normally, after a while, they think they are "cured" and stop the medicine that allows them to function, with predictable results.

If you watch, you can see some manifestations of mental illness when you are in public. The most obvious are irrational, disproportionate outbursts of anger. Not all have a mental illness, some were just badly raised, but a good amount of people like this probably have a problem.

And it's a huge problem. The last dealings I knowingly had with a mentally ill person was a lady who worked with me. She called in sick for a few weeks. When she finally started working again, I asked her what happened, and if she was ok. She said she was better now, I asked if she had had the flu. She said no, english is a second language for her, she pointed to her head and said she had an issue and needed her medicine adjusted, but she was better now. So I told her I was glad she was feeling better, and happy that she recognized whatever her issue was and worked to make it better.

Unfortunately, many mentally ill do not have that level of awareness.

I think the FAA has done a pretty good job with this issue, but of course, nothing is perfect. Some make an arguments that more people have been killed by fatigued pilots than mentally ill pilots, not sure if that is true or not, but I think the screening process has made us safer. I think it works in a few ways. People who have these illnesses learn that they are not suitable pilot candidates, accept that fact and move on. Then there are people who may be eligible, they go through the screening process and are either cleared or not, either way they accept the result and move on. Then you have those know they have an issue and hide it. These people are the reason why the system seems draconian. Screw them. Then there are people who are fine all their life, but something happens and they snap. Those are tough cases, but I think usually there are signs that get ignored, either willfully or they are missed.


The system is what it is. I think cases like this will be brought up when people question it and its effectiveness. I've said this before and I'll say it again. I wish pilots who have stupid ideas would step back and not act out in an airplane, especially pilots. It just makes it worse for the rest of us.
 
mandm said:
Maybe we first need to start with a definition of what mental illness is so that everyone is on the same starting page.
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Many of us are flying planes that were built when the APA still defined homosexuality as a mental illness. Clearly the definition is fluid and can include a wide variety of diagnoses, many of which exist on a spectrum.
 
Baked Potato said:
Many of us are flying planes that were built when the APA still defined homosexuality as a mental illness. Clearly the definition is fluid and can include a wide variety of diagnoses, many of which exist on a spectrum.
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Everyone that society demoralized is now actively working and contributing to society.

Back to the above post, I’m not saying to give someone a medical who is like hey I have this problem I want to be a pilot. That is a question for another day. The question today is hey this guy invested time and money to be a captain, he was fine to get to this point, now he has a problem, let him speak freely without fear of losing his livelihood!

Someone else bashed me in a previous post, thank you Ken (or Karen), it’s people like that who make pilots fearful for talking about this “sensitive” subject, easy to beat someone when they are down when they have the power of the government behind them.
 
Morgan3820 said:
So then you think we should have people with diagnosed, documented but ‘treated’ mental illness is flying large aircraft with hundreds of people in it. is that your stance?
My position, then would be that they shouldn’t have been flying in the first place. And that mental health screening should be even more rigorous.
I have no interest in this current trend of main streaming mental illness.
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Where do you draw the line? Like others have mentioned, mental illness is a very broad and fluid term. It can range from full blown autism, paranoid schizophrenic, or just someone having a hard time with the loss of a spouse or parent. All the FAA sees is that you were seen and treated, and makes you jump through the same hoops. Again, many pilots are flying with various forms of undiagnosed and untreated illness. Not even just mental illness, but physical as well. How many have avoided being diagnosed high blood pressure, diabetic, heart disease, etc., by just avoiding the doctor. All of which could be treated and managed, but having that diagnosis makes maintaining your medical more difficult and more expensive.

Just one example of many I have. One of my former students got arrested on a drug possession charge when he was young and dumb. Fast forward 20 years later as a very responsible adult, successful business owner, that he wants to be a pilot. His medical application, because of the single event in his past, gets pushed to HIMS. He spent $10,000 and two years of his life proving that he was not on drugs, doesn't even drink alcohol, and has no neurological defects, just to get a 6 month special issuance with the promise of a clean medical. 6 months later goes back to get his medical, is told he needs to undergo another two years of HIMS evaluation. The common belief was that he was given the Special Issuance just so he could go Basicmed, which is what he did.

I'm not offering a solution, but tell me what part of this process is making flying safer?
 
midwestpa24 said:
Where do you draw the line? Like others have mentioned, mental illness is a very broad and fluid term. It can range from full blown autism, paranoid schizophrenic, or just someone having a hard time with the loss of a spouse or parent. All the FAA sees is that you were seen and treated, and makes you jump through the same hoops. Again, many pilots are flying with various forms of undiagnosed and untreated illness. Not even just mental illness, but physical as well. How many have avoided being diagnosed high blood pressure, diabetic, heart disease, etc., by just avoiding the doctor. All of which could be treated and managed, but having that diagnosis makes maintaining your medical more difficult and more expensive.

Just one example of many I have. One of my former students got arrested on a drug possession charge when he was young and dumb. Fast forward 20 years later as a very responsible adult, successful business owner, that he wants to be a pilot. His medical application, because of the single event in his past, gets pushed to HIMS. He spent $10,000 and two years of his life proving that he was not on drugs, doesn't even drink alcohol, and has no neurological defects, just to get a 6 month special issuance with the promise of a clean medical. 6 months later goes back to get his medical, is told he needs to undergo another two years of HIMS evaluation. The common belief was that he was given the Special Issuance just so he could go Basicmed, which is what he did.

I'm not offering a solution, but tell me what part of this process is making flying safer?
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The FAA still operates largely on the honor system. A periodic, cursory medical exam, with the assumption that if anything else happens the pilot will seek appropriate care, self-ground if necessary, and advise the FAA on the next medical application.

Unfortunately Honor systems fall short, so the only real solution would be $10,000 aviation medical exams.
 
Look at what can happen to a kid who gets a minor in possession charge as a college freshman, if he’s in a state that punishes a non-driving alcohol offense by yanking his license. Ten or 15 years pass, he’s well into his 30s, not so much as a parking ticket since then, doesn’t drink any more than maybe a beer on Saturday afternoon. He wants tobe a pilot, goes for his medical, and has to spend more money and time convincing the FAA that he’s not a hardcore alcoholic than he’d spend on getting his pilot training.

There needs to be a timeline cutoff, especially when it’s just some kid doing exactly what kids away at college do. Even if it’s a DUI, at some point with a clean driving and court record, it’s pretty clear that we’re not dealing with a chronic drunk.
 
MauleSkinner said:
The assumption being that everybody does it (untrue), and/or it’s acceptable behavior at that point (also untrue)?
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I don't think it's necessary to assume that everybody does a particular behavior in order to recognize that people often grow out of adolescent behaviors.
 
Palmpilot said:
I don't think it's necessary to assume that everybody does a particular behavior in order to recognize that people often grow out of adolescent behaviors.
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But often they don’t, and one of the things many people seem to learn in college is how to avoid legal detection as a functional alcoholic or general drunk.

So we’re kind of back to it being necessary to prove you've grown out of it.

Actions can be forgiven, but consequences of those actions may be unavoidable.
 
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midwestpa24 said:
Where do you draw the line? Like others have mentioned, mental illness is a very broad and fluid term. It can range from full blown autism, paranoid schizophrenic, or just someone having a hard time with the loss of a spouse or parent. All the FAA sees is that you were seen and treated, and makes you jump through the same hoops. Again, many pilots are flying with various forms of undiagnosed and untreated illness. Not even just mental illness, but physical as well. How many have avoided being diagnosed high blood pressure, diabetic, heart disease, etc., by just avoiding the doctor. All of which could be treated and managed, but having that diagnosis makes maintaining your medical more difficult and more expensive.

Just one example of many I have. One of my former students got arrested on a drug possession charge when he was young and dumb. Fast forward 20 years later as a very responsible adult, successful business owner, that he wants to be a pilot. His medical application, because of the single event in his past, gets pushed to HIMS. He spent $10,000 and two years of his life proving that he was not on drugs, doesn't even drink alcohol, and has no neurological defects, just to get a 6 month special issuance with the promise of a clean medical. 6 months later goes back to get his medical, is told he needs to undergo another two years of HIMS evaluation. The common belief was that he was given the Special Issuance just so he could go Basicmed, which is what he did.

I'm not offering a solution, but tell me what part of this process is making flying safer?
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Does indeed sound like a bureaucratic overreach.
But then there’s a story about my brother-in-law shortly before I met him he was in treatment for a drug and alcohol addiction. For 25+ years he was married with a child, held a responsible job. payed the bills. All sober. Even though I thought his addiction was behind him. Now at age 51 he has relapsed, lost his job, lost his house. Last I heard he was living in a dive motel, working fast food. But I don’t know for sure because we can’t contact him to let him know that his father’s dying of heart disease, and would really like to talk to him.
So, What if at age 35 he decided that he wanted to be an airline pilot more than anything in the world?
 
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