Suit Claims That Airline Training Center In AZ Where Andreas Lubitz Trained did Not Properly Screen His Mental State

A federal wrongful death lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Phoenix, AZ, against The Airline Training Center (ATCA) in Arizona by 80 families of victims of the March 24, 2015, Germanwings Flight 4U9525 pilot-suicide disaster in the French Alps that took 150 lives.

ATCA is a company of the Lufthansa global airline organization. The suit was filed by the law firm Kreindler & Kreindler LLP, along with co-counsel from law firms in Germany, Holland and the United Kingdom 

The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona.

“Andreas Lubitz, the suicidal pilot, should never have been allowed to enter ATCA’s commercial airline pilot training program," said Brian Alexander, a Kreindler partner and military-trained pilot, said in a news release.

"ATCA was one of the most important gateways or checkpoints in Lubitz’s desire to become a Lufthansa commercial pilot. ATCA was not just negligent, but also careless, and even reckless, in failing to apply its own well-advertised ’stringent’ standards to discover the history of Lubitz’s severe mental illness that should have kept Lubitz from admission to ATCA’s flight school. The company missed several readilyapparent red flags, including that Lubitz’s German medical certificate had a restricting legend on its face specifically because of that mental illness history, which included severe depression and suicidal ideations. That restriction was a clear warning that Lubitz was a man with a history of unresolved problems. He even lied to the Federal Aviation Administration in an effort to conceal those problems.”

The complaint filed on behalf of victims’ families summarizes their claims as follows:

• “ATCA was negligent, careless and reckless and breached its duty of care to the passengers of Germanwings Flight 4U9525 in failing to properly screen Lubitz when he applied for admission to its commercial airline training center because, among other things, proper screening would have revealed his history of severe depression, suicidal ideations, hospitalization on account of such mental disorders, his dishonesty and untrustworthiness, making him unqualified to become a Lufthansa commercial airline pilot.
• “During his flight training, ATCA failed to properly monitor Lubitz for symptoms of psychological abnormalities, reactive depression and personality disorders and when Lubitz exhibited such symptoms ATCA failed to disqualify him from continuing his training to become a commercial airline pilot.
• “Furthermore, ATCA was the gatekeeper to Lubitz's career as a Lufthansa commercial airline pilot and knew or should have known that Lubitz's mental disorders and lack of trustworthiness created the risk that were he not denied admission to its flight training program passengers in planes he piloted would be exposed to unreasonable risk of death and harm.”
• “Lubitz’s particular history of depression and mental instability made him a suicide time bomb, triggered to go off under the ordinary stresses of life, particularly the kind of stresses a commercial pilot routinely faces," said Attorney Marc S. Moller, also a partner of the Kreindler firm. "That episodes of severe depression and suicidal ideations will recur is well known, even though when they will recur is unpredictable. That said, the fuse which culminated in Lubitz’s suicide on March 24, 2015, that took the lives of 149 passengers and his fellow crewmates was lit when ATCA negligently allowed him to begin commercial pilot training. The plaintiffs in this case correctly claim that ATCA enabled Lubitz to make the Flight 4U9525 passengers the victims of his derangement.”

“Suggestions that physician/patient privacy issues prevented Lubitz’s medical providers from disclosing the scope of his problems are bogus,” said Moller. “Nothing prevented ATCA, a U.S. company, from inquiring further into Lubitz’s background and even requiring that he waive any ‘privacy’ issues to ensure that the safety of the passengers on aircraft he piloted would not be compromised.”

“A goal of this lawsuit,” said Alexander, “beyond seeking fair compensation for the families affected by the Germanwings disaster, is to focus attention on the urgent need for regular periodic mental health screening of all pilots to further ensure the safety of airline passengers.”

(Source: Kreindler & Kreindler news release)

FMI: www.kreindler.com