The revelations about the co-pilot of the Germanwings plane, which he deliberately crashed, being treated for suicidal tendencies and other symptoms of mental illness raise all manner of questions about how such a victim of these disorders can be placed in control of a passenger aircraft. It is is easy to blame the management of Lufthansa, who are in the end responsible and accept the fact. But without being given the required information and warnings, it is difficult to see how they could have known. This is going to be an area of scrutiny. It is right that individuals should be protected from the release of personal data, but mental illness in an airline pilot, or some other critical person upon whom the lives of others depend, surely should be the subject of exception.
It is also the case that extreme precautions against hijack appear to have created the very situation in which this deranged young man not only plotted and researched to take his own life, which he could have done easily by taking pills or jumping off a bridge, but for some unfathomable reason to commit mass murder on an historical scale. Whatever is done and however procedures are amended a guiding principle should apply; no precaution should be allowed if it creates a new risk.