Lufthansa lacks doctors to help pilots: Report

A report says the German national airliner Lufthansa does not have enough medical personnel to render necessary assistance to its entire pilot staff, including workers for its low-cost subsidiary Germanwings.

The report published on Sunday by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag said the German flag carrier’s shortage of medical workers might have been the root cause of the recent Germanwings plane crash, which killed all 150 people on board.

An unnamed source familiar with the issue told the German paper that the healthcare job positions at Lufthansa “remain vacant for a long time,” adding that the lack of sufficient medical services makes it impossible to detect emerging psychological conditions among the carrier’s 5,400 pilots.

According to the report, Lufthansa employs 20 doctors, who work at its medical centers in the German cities of Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich, with five additional doctors available to its pilots at the Frankfurt airport medical facility.

The newspaper stressed that the number of medical staff is insufficient to provide adequate assistance to the pilots.

The revelation comes a day after separate reports stated that Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of the Germanwings A320 jet that crashed in the French Alps, had sought medical treatment for vision problems and depression shortly before the fatal incident.

Andreas Lubitz (seen in the file photo) was the co-pilot on board the Germanwings aircraft en route Barcelona to Dusseldorf.

A record from the plane’s cockpit revealed that Lubitz was alone when the aircraft began its descent. French prosecutor Brice Robin, who is in charge of the crash investigations, has asserted that Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the passenger plane.

The Airbus A320 aircraft disappeared off the radar at about 1030 GMT on March 24, about halfway on its route from the Spanish city of Barcelona to Dusseldorf in Germany.

Eight minutes later the plane crashed into the mountain range, killing 144 passengers and six crew members from more than a dozen countries, including two sports journalists from Iran.

Following the recent incident a number of airlines have joined those applying the “rule of two” to their flights, ensuring two crew members are to be present in the cockpit at all times.