List Of Pilots Who've Committed Suicide While On Duty

Monday, May 23, 2016, 18:34

Though it is rare to hear about a pilot committing suicide, at least 44 pilots until now have been known to have committed suicide in the past 30 years, and this is something that needs to be taken care of.

Here, in this article, we've shared the list of pilots who have committed suicide. These were the people who'd been struggling with various pressures and illnesses which they were suffering from long.

It is a sad plight to see how the human mind can not take negative things in life and hence, we end up in taking such an extreme step.

Find out more about these cases in which pilots have gone ahead and destroyed the life of others as well.

Depression is one of the root causes for these sad tragedies to have taken place. Read on.

Gameel Al-Batouti – EgyptAir Flight 990

An investigation by the American National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) during the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 revealed that the flight pilot Al-Batouti switched off the engine several times and declared "I place my fate in the hands of God." The flight crashed and killed 218 people onboard.

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Andreas Lubitz – Germanwings Flight 9525

This incident happened on March 24th, 2015, in the French Alps. The flight had over 144 passengers and all were killed. The pilot named Andreas Lubitz was facing personal issues when he was onboard. He had locked the pit when his co-pilot had gone out to use the washroom and let the plane get crashed in the French Alps.

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Herminio dos Santos Fernandes – LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470

This flight incident happened in the similar way as the Germanwings Flight 9525 incident. Captain Herminio dos Santos Fernandes had manipulated the autopilot option in a way that it "denotes a clear intention" to bring the plane down. It killed all the 33 innocent passengers who were onboard. This tragic event took place in 2013 and the pilot's motives even today have remained a mystery.

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Tsu Way Ming – SilkAir Flight MI 185 (1997)

Captain Tsu Way Ming suffered from financial crises. He had filed for an insurance for his wife and 3 children before he took this extreme step. The day his insurance took effect, he decided to commit suicide by crashing the plane into a river. The impact was so hard that it killed all the 104 passengers instantly.

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Chris Phatswe – The Air Botswana Incident

Captain Chris Phatswe crashed a plane on October 11, 1999, destroying all but one of the airline's fleet. He took off on Gaborone's Sir Seretse Khama airport and circled on an empty field for at least two hours and announced that "I intend to kill myself" and crashed the plane into two other ATR-42s on the tarmac, which resulted in a destroyed aircraft that killed the pilot.

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