The key words being that you've never felt suicidal. You're trying to get inside of the head of something that you don't understand. I've never been suicidal, either, but I have read that people who are suicidal do practice before they actually do it. For example, putting an unloaded gun to their heads and pulling the trigger.
That German plane that crashed a few years ago when the co-pilot took over and flew it right into the ground - didn't they find the same thing on his home flight sim?
I don't recall anything being found on the German pilot's flightsim. The only thing I remember is something about him practicing steep descents in the real plane (or something like that).
I think you missed my point though. I'd never try to get into the head of a suicidal person. All I'm saying is that it is careless and reckless on the part of the media to associate some random Flightsim routes on his computer with, "a suicide route", when there isn't a shred of evidence that he was suicidal or under medical care or taking medication for depression. The German pilot had a history of mental issues that came to light after what he did. The authorities even found a balled up letter or doctor's note in his trash can, indicating that he was unfit for flight.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/02/europe/france-germanwings-plane-crash-main/
http://nyti.ms/1yEGWMn
Another point I forgot to make about our PC/Flightsim hobby. As a builder of high end PC's for demanding 'games' such as FSX (with countless addons), part of the challenge is the need to constantly tweak and improve performance. As well as the need to troubleshoot PC lock-ups/freezes. Sometimes it's a hardware issue (memory, overclocking, excessive heat/poor cooling issue,etc), or a software issue. MSFS is known for having several bugs over the years.
It is not uncommon to startup the sim, climb to some random altitude, set the autopilot to some random heading, and let the PC run all night (with my monitors turned off) while I'm in bed sleeping. Next morning (or whenever I get a chance) go check it for stability to see if the PC locked up or not.
They searched his home, medical records, Internet search history, etc and found nothing. Is it possible that he did indeed crashed the plane, killing himself and everyone else? Of course it is, but in my opinion, it's highly unlikely that he'd be practicing or even need to practice such on his home built simulator.
Heck, check my FSX/X-Plane/P3D hard drive and flightsim deleted files, you'd probably find all kinds of weird ****, lol. But nothing remotely resembling anything nefarious.