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6 comments

1 Egregious Philbin  Mar 27, 2015 6:31:13am

Yeah, after working in the airlines for a long time, I saw a lot of pilots who were not all there. A dirty little secret of the industry.

2 No Country For Old Haters  Mar 27, 2015 7:03:34am

I’ve dealt with clinical depression so terrible that I just wanted to die, but I never considered killing other people. I hope this isn’t used to stigmatize depressed people by creating the impression that we want to hurt others.

3 Great White Snark  Mar 27, 2015 7:15:23am

Don’t suppose anyone will hold some proverbial feet to the fire over the alleged Muslim -Convert-Radical-Self appointed terrorist theories…

re: #2 No Country For Old Haters

That’s the completely inexplicable part to me. Why take so many innocents with you?

4 lostlakehiker  Mar 27, 2015 7:19:34am

We have disability laws that forbid oil companies to fire oil supertanker pilots who have gotten drunk on the job and who are alcoholic. Even after they’ve already wrecked one supertanker.

Germany, it would appear, also indulges people with medical conditions that make them sketchy prospects for work where reliability is paramount.

5 lostlakehiker  Mar 27, 2015 7:30:39am

re: #2 No Country For Old Haters

I’ve dealt with clinical depression so terrible that I just wanted to die, but I never considered killing other people. I hope this isn’t used to stigmatize depressed people by creating the impression that we want to hurt others.

Ah, but the thing is, how much of a chance do we want to take? Suppose, just to make up some numbers, that one in ten million pilots with no terrorist agenda and no mental health problems, no gambling problems, no wife problems etc. is going to just up and drive his plane into the mountain.

We know, from this event and from events that are loosely similar, that people who do have mental health issues, alcohol issues, gambling issues, domestic problems etc. present different odds. Perhaps one in 100 000, rather than one in ten million. (Just what the numbers should be, I can’t say.) This doesn’t make them cold blooded killers one and all. But a policy of turning a blind eye to the connection between suicide and depression*, between oversights and slips and drunkenness and alcoholism, and so forth, is a policy that is bound to lead to more fatalities and other disasters than a more cautious policy would.

*This is the second time in a year or so that a plane has come to a bad end and the pilot presented some sort of risk factor along these lines.

The law has not so far extended to presidential campaigns. Eagleton was removed from the Democratic ticket after it came out that he’d had mental health problems. We rightly judged that the guy who would be next in line to have the nuclear football shouldn’t have a history of depression.

6 No Country For Old Haters  Mar 27, 2015 7:34:37am

re: #5 lostlakehiker

You’re doing exactly what I said I hope people don’t do.


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