Lufthansa Lacks Medical Personnel Needed to Cover All Pilots

According to media reports, Lufthansa does not have enough medical workers to render necessary assistance to all of its pilots.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Lufthansa does not have enough medical workers to render necessary assistance to all of its pilots, which might have been the root cause of the Germanwings A320 plane crash, Welt am Sonntag reports.

"The [healthcare] job positions remain vacant for a long time," a source familiar with the matter told the German Sunday newspaper, adding that the lack of sufficient medical services makes it impossible to pin down emerging psychological conditions among people working for Lufthansa and its low-cost subsidiary Germanwings.

On Saturday, reports emerged that Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of the A320 jet that crashed in the French Alps earlier this week, had sought treatment for vision problems and depression shortly before the incident.

According to Welt am Sonntag, only 20 doctors work in Lufthansa medical centers in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich. Five more are available to Lufthansa and Germanwings pilots at the Frankfurt Airport medical center. This is not enough to offer adequate medical assistance to 5.4 thousand pilots, the newspaper stressed.

The Germanwings Airbus A320, en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, crashed on Tuesday in the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board.

A record from the cockpit revealed that Lubitz was alone when the plane started its descent. On Thursday, Marseille's public prosecutor asserted that Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit and intentionally crashed the aircraft.