article_snippet: (CNN)As relatives and friends mourn the loss of friends loved ones aboard Germanwings Flight 9525, the world community is stunned by the sequence of events that led to co-pilot Andreas Lubitz purposely crashing the plane into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board.
article_snippet: I happen to have several personal connections to this tragedy: a recent graduate of Drexel University -- where I teach -- and her mother were on the ill-fated flight, I lived in Germany for 18 years and I am a psychologist who has researched the psychology of terrorism and developed psychiatric tests that are used to determine pilot flight fitness.
article_snippet: While the engineering of the Airbus aircraft is fascinating and the world of air traffic control absorbing, what is even more complex and challenging to understand is the human mind of the co-pilot investigators say is responsible for the crash -- the machine that flies the machine.
article_snippet: While it is not surprising that when it comes to aviation accidents, the first line of inquiry is into what went wrong with the plane.
article_snippet: However, very often, as apparently is the case here, something went wrong with the human flying the plane.
article_snippet: When examining Germanwings Flight 9525 from the "cockpit of the human mind," one must ask this question: How can we ever predict or prevent tragedies like these when we can never truly know what lurks in the mind of another human being?
article_snippet: But, just as the overwhelming majority of automobile accidents are caused by driver error, with a human mind at the helm of an aircraft, there will always be an element of unpredictability present.
article_snippet: And, unless we had a "flight recorder" for the human brain, we will never really know what took place inside the mind of co-pilot Andreas Lubitz.
article_snippet: One thing is for sure: the tragic events of Flight 9525 will surely renew conversation about what happened to Flight MH370 -- the biggest aviation mystery since Amelia Earhart vanished in 1937 -- and the role that human factors may have played in Flight MH370 disappearance.
highlights_snippet: It's hard to predict or prevent tragedies like the Germanwings crash .
  