The investigation into the March 24 Germanwings flight 9525 crash and new revelations about the mental health of 27-year-old co-pilot Andreas Lubitz continue to feature prominently in national outlets. Coverage of the story led evening television news broadcasts and appeared on the front page of several leading newspapers. Yesterday, Germanwings’ parent company Lufthansa revealed that Lubitz had emailed the company’s flight training school in 2009 about his clinical history with depression.
ABC World News (3/31, lead story, 2:25, Muir) broadcast that Lufthansa “knew of that young co-pilot’s troubling medical history,” that “he suffered a severe bout of depression, even before they hired him.”
The CBS Evening News (3/31, lead story, 2:15, Pelley) reported that “Lubitz had been treated for suicidal tendencies,” as evidenced by his medical history, but Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr maintains that “Lubitz was 100 percent air-worthy, without any restrictions.” The CBS Evening News added that, in Germany, physicians “are not obliged to tell airlines if pilots have problems that would preclude them from flying.”