Investigators: Co-pilot seized control of Germanwings flight and crashed it on purpose

Twenty-eight-year-old Andreas Lubitz doesn't appear to have fit any terrorist profile, so he had no trouble becoming a pilot for Germanwings. But he obviously had some sort of agenda, and I suspect that when investigators really dig into his background, they'll find some sort of hint as to why he did this:

Andreas Lubitz gained sole control of the aircraft after the captain left the cockpit, refused to re-open the door and appears to have operated controls, sending the plane into its fatal descent, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said. He did this "for a reason we cannot fathom right now but which looks like intent to destroy this aircraft," Robin told a news conference in Marseille broadcast live on national TV. Describing the final 10 minutes of the passengers on board as the plane hurtled towards a mountain range, Robin said sound recordings from one of its black boxes suggested most of them would not have been aware of their fate until the very end. "Only towards the end do you hear screams," he said. "And bear in mind that death would have been instantaneous ... the aircraft was literally smashed to bits." The world's attention will now focus on the motivations of Lubitz, a German national who joined the budget carrier in September 2013 and had just 630 hours of flying time - compared with the 6,000 hours of the flight captain, named in German media only as "Patrick S." in accordance with usual practice. Robin said there were no grounds to suspect that Lubitz was carrying out a terrorist attack. "Suicide" was also the wrong word to describe actions which killed so many other people, the prosecutor added: "I don't necessarily call it suicide when you have responsibility for 100 or so lives."

---

There are no grounds to suspect he carried out a terrorist attack, except for the fact that he murdered 100 people by crashing into a mountain. Other than that, nothing. If they're just saying they can't identify a traditional terrorist motive, if only because they don't know anything about him that would point to one, I can understand that. But come on. He was either suicidal to the point that it was nothing for him to take 100 innocent people along for the ride, or he had some sort of terrorist agenda in mind. And really, if he just wanted to take his own life, there are tall buildings and guns you can use for that. You don't have to do this. Unless there's some reason you specifically want to. This is probably going to spur talk about changes in the way cockpits are secured, and demands for new protocols to prevent this sort of thing. Of course, the reason the cockpits are so secure in the first place is to keep terrorists from getting access to them. It seems to me there's no perfect solution. As we've long observed, there's really no way to stop a lone-wolf terrorist who's determined to carry out an act of mass murder. One this guy was in control of the plane and the pilot was locked out of the cockpit, what could anyone do? I have no idea if this will end up being connected to Islam. It's certainly possible, but it's probably a good idea to remember that there are other sources of evil in this world, and other motives that drive people to commit unspeakable acts of evil. Whichever one was at play here, there was probably no stopping it.