Pilots to face psychological screening

Airline pilots should be psychologically screened and details of their medical visits shared in a proposed European database, according to new recommendations delivered to the European Commission in the wake of the Germanwings disaster.

A task force led by Europe’s aviation safety regulator has also called for random drugs and alcohol testing of pilots and better oversight of the doctors responsible for their medical checks. European Union Transport Commissioner, Violeta Bulc, ordered the review after a young pilot barricaded himself inside the cockpit and crashed his Germanwings jetliner into the Alps, in March, killing all 150 people on board.

The co-pilot, who had suffered severe depression and may have feared losing his job, had researched suicide methods and concealed an illness from his employer, sparking a debate on supervision and medical secrecy.

“We don’t know everything that happened in this tragedy, but we know a certain number of causes and we thought we may not want to wait until the final report of the accident investigation to launch actions,” said Patrick Ky, executive director of the European Aviation Safety Agency.

The idea is to “minimise the risk of a similar tragedy in the future”, he said.

Coupled with the clampdown on testing is a proposal to set up better support schemes to allow pilots to come forward with concerns about their health, careers or other problems.