Accidents and Incidents/Pilot Suicide
Pilot Suicide
Aviation Accidents and Incidents related to the story of MH370
Fortunately, incidents of pilot-suicide on commercial passenger flights are rare.
Pattern
Of those incidents that could quite reasonably be attributed to pilot-suicide there is a pattern:- each flight ended suddenly; and one of the pilots may have left the flight deck prior to the descent. SilkAir Flight 185 began a rapid descent from 35,000 feet and started to break up before crashing into the Musi River in Sumatra; EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean with the co-pilot repeating a phrase in Arabic on the way down; on LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470 a Captain with significant personal problems deliberately crashed the aircraft into the Bwabwata National Park in Namibia; Germanwings Flight 9525 was flown into a mountain by a depressed co-pilot while alone in the cockpit; China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 descended steeply and struck the ground at high speed, the descent-climb-descent pattern resembling EgyptAir Flight 990.
Except for MH370
We do not know if one of the MH370 pilots was locked out of the flight deck, but we do know that the aircraft continued flying for hours after deviating from the filed Flight Plan and made several controlled course changes. Human Factors investigators had no concerns about the mental or physical health of the pilots. And instead of a deliberate dive toward land or ocean early in the flight, MH370 only crashed after running out of fuel.
Some Incidents of Probable Pilot Suicide
The following incidents occurred before 2014:-
Saturday, 8 March 2014
- 2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370
The following incidents occurred after 2014:-
Category Index
Further Reading
See Wikipedia Article Suicide by pilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot