globally mental helths screening for pilots are rare. in the u.s. pilots got an annual or semi- annual physical but they re not required to do regular psychological checks unless the faa thinks there s reason to be alarmed. between 2003 and 2012 the ntsb identified eight cases domestically of pilot suicide, but in only one instance was there a passenger on board. still there s precedent for this most recent case in france. in 1999 egypt air in route to careo from new york crashing off the coast of massachusetts. investigators found the pilot left the cockpit and the crash was the result of the co-pilot s actions, widely to believed to be suicide. some experts say we should do more arguing mental health check-ups must become regular
pilot suicide. yes, it does affect one. i remember when concord crashed. i was in between simulator duty with british airways at the time and we were unable to continue our simulator. a pair of us turned around to the training captain and said, i m sorry, we can t concentrate and we need to stop and do it another day and that is, in fact, what happened. we are not alone in that. of course. but, you know, with time, we will move on. and accidents happen periodically. but rarely. and this particular type of accident was extremely rare. but, you know, anything that makes one question the trust between the flight crewmembers is something you re going to dwell on quite a bit. speaking of that trust, there s got to be some trust between the pilot and co-pilot. how often did you, as a pilot, experience flying with a co-pilot or a crew that you didn t even know? well, you know, occasionally you ll fly with somebody who may
is that correct? reporter: well, it s not entirely correct. i mean, one of the great issues of the global airline industry is the lack of standardization. there are no globally standard rules for pilot training. no rules across the world for the amount of hours they re allowed to fly each day. there are no rules to say they must have a health check every six months. varies from country to country, sometime from airline to airline. if you take the retirement age of pilots, some country, it s 65. some countries it s 67. new zealand, in fact, has no retirement age for pilots as long as they pass the health checks. they can keep on flying. getting these standards all around the world, particularly in this area of health and mental health is something that really needs to be looked at. perhaps it will. pilot suicide has occurred, of course, but rarely it s
pilot beside him. in the initial assessment do they kaukt doctors to find out more or is it an in-house screening process? it is an in-house screening process in germany in particular there is strict rules about releasing medical records. typically what pilots do is ghie for their medical exam for flying to an aviation medical examiner and they have a separate doctor for the rest of thar lif their life. pilots like to have it that way. you re supposed to self-report, but if you self report something on the lines of what we re hearing here you re out of a job, essentially. so you see the inherent conflict of interest. we have seen that pilot
looking for the flight data recorder. they hope it can reveal more on what happened at the flight deck. we have an expert joining us. thank you for taking the time to speak to us. we have heard so many new threads on this story. i want to start by asking you if i may, from what you heard from authorities, who has stood out to you? what is not making not much sense? the fact that it was so easy to do which is astonishing, the fact that the pilot couldn t get back in. i have to say, the speed with which the french authorities actually concluded what happened. and in such detail. that s extraordinary it s done so very quickly. in terms of aircraft safety, as i said, it seemed really simple to do and it shouldn t have been that simple, really. what we have seen of course we ve talked about this before is pilot suicide has