A week after a Germanwings flight from Barcelona, Spain to Dusseldorf, Germany into the French Alps, the world cannot yet quite grasp the idea that the tragedy was not accident but a deliberate act of the 27-year-old co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz.
Details of Lubitz’s supposed psychosomatic illness are coming out just now, and the emerging picture is devastating. Antidepressants were found in Lubitz’s apartment, and it was discovered he was suffering from “severe subjective burnout syndrome.”
What is clear based on the findings from the voice recorder found at the crash site is that Lubitz locked the captain out of the cockpit when the latter went out, that he refused to open the door when the captain knocked, and that he alone caused the plane’s steep descent.
Why, if Germanwings was a subsidiary of the giant airliner Lufthansa, had the company not been aware of any red flags with regard to Lubitz’s behavior? This was, after all, a young man who once ominously told his girl friend that one day the whole world would know who he was.
Why did he have to include more than a hundred people in his plan to end his life?
This enigma comes at a time when yet another airline mystery has not yet been solved. Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which disappeared March 8, 2014, has not yet been found. Global efforts to predict what might have happened to it, where the plane might be and what might have happened to the passengers, have not yielded any answers.
Here at home, we are also still wondering what really happened in Mamasapano one Sunday in January despite the release of investigative reports from several bodies.
As rational beings, we would always want to have an explanation for everything. We are unsettled when things happen for no reason at all. We are also aware that there may be several versions of the truth, often depending on the interests of those who speak it.
The next few days will be quiet ones, supposedly spent in reflection and the search for answers. May this lull renew our determination and clear our perspective so that we would know which questions deserve immediate answers, and which answers we have to patiently wait for.