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Clues Shed Light on Co-Pilot Motive in Plane Crash

CBN

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Lufthansa and Germanwings executives visited the site Wednesday where a Germanwings flight crashed last week, killing 150 people aboard the plane.

The visit comes amid mounting questions about the co-pilot and how much his employers knew about his mental health.

Based on audio from the plane's voice data recorder, investigators believe co-pilot Andreas Lubitz intentionally crashed the plane.

Today Lufthansa's chief executive said it will take "a long, long time" to understand what led to the deadly crash.

Click play to watch Dr. Linda Mintle discuss why more work needs to be done to end the stigma attached to mental health so that people can be honest with employers.

But German prosecutors say Lubitz's medical records from before he received his pilot's license referred to "suicidal tendencies." Still, visits to doctors since then did not reveal suicidal tendencies or aggression against others.

Family therapist Dr. Linda Mintle told CBN News it's unusual for a person to commit suicide and take so many strangers with them in their death. That's one reason this case has been so puzzling.

After the crash, investigators found a letter from a doctor in Lubitz's garbage can saying he wasn't fit to fly anymore.

The fact that Lubitz was possibly about to lose his beloved career because of health problems could offer part of the explanation.

"Of course we're speculating at this point, but it does make a little bit of sense because I've read that he was very into flying and that was his whole life and he had been doing that since he was a teenager," Mintle said.

"If he had ripped up the doctor's orders that said he was unfit to fly and if he was looking at possibly the end of his career, if he did have conditions that said he couldn't fly, then it is somewhat conceivable that he could have been so angry that he would have said that 'When I'm taking the plane down I'm taking people with me,'" she continued.

A German newspaper reports Lubitz had told an ex-girlfriend that, "One day I'm going to do something that will change the whole system, and everyone will know my name and remember."

"That tells me that he was very angry," Mintle said, and that could be the missing clue to explain why Lubitz killed so many people.

"He knew that that would create the very thing that is happening, is that we all do know his name and he did take a lot of people and he did make a mark on history in a very negative way," she said.

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