A total of 150 people from 17 countries lost their lives in the crash of a Germanwings aircraft, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, in the French Alps on March 24, 2015. Among them was a school class from the small German town of Haltern am See, consisting of 14 female students, two male students, and two teachers.

Ten years later, the then-principal of the school, Ulrich Wessel, says he will never forget the moment he had to break the tragic news to the parents of the children who were returning on the doomed flight 4U9525 from a student exchange program in Barcelona. They had gathered in a classroom at the high school, waiting. Hours earlier, news channels had already begun broadcasting footage of the wreckage of the ill-fated aircraft in the French Alps near Le Vernet. “I will never forget the horror on their faces,” recalls the former school principal.

An Unthinkable Cause of the Crash

The crash of the Germanwings aircraft on March 24, 2015, at 10:41 a.m. remains one of the most devastating disasters in European aviation history. Not only because of the high number of victims but also due to the unthinkable cause of the crash.

For investigators in Germany and France, there is no doubt to this day: the 27-year-old mentally ill co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, deliberately steered the aircraft into the mountains to end his life, taking 149 souls with him. Lubitz ensured he was alone in the cockpit by locking out the captain and manually reducing the altitude from 38,000 feet to a fatal 100 feet. “This act could only have been intentional,” emphasized prosecutor Brice Robin in 2015.

A Memorial for the Victims

At the Joseph-König High School in Haltern am See, a memorial plaque bears the names of the students and teachers lost in the tragedy.

In Lubitz’s Düsseldorf apartment, authorities found overwhelming evidence of his deteriorating mental health. He was labeled as an “unstable personality” and “mentally ill,” according to prosecutor Robin, who stated that Lubitz was “completely unfit to fly an aircraft.”

Who Allowed a Mentally Ill Pilot to Fly?

For many relatives of the victims, several questions remain unanswered even after a decade.

Who allowed the co-pilot to sit in the cockpit despite his mental illness? Why did none of his doctors raise the alarm? Why was nothing revealed in the annual flight fitness tests? How is it possible that no one saw or noticed anything?

As they do every year, many relatives and loved ones of the victims gathered at the crash site in the French Alps this year. In the small town of Haltern in the Ruhr region, family members, teachers, and former students laid white roses at the memorial plaque bearing the victims’ names. At 10:41 a.m., the bells tolled mournfully, as they do every year on March 24.