Berlin, March 30 (RHC)-- A report says the German national airliner Lufthansa does not have enough medical personnel to render necessary assistance to its entire pilot staff, including workers for its low-cost subsidiary Germanwings.
The report published on Sunday by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag said the German flag carrier’s shortage of medical workers might have been the root cause of the recent Germanwings plane crash, which killed all 150 people on board. An unnamed source familiar with the issue told the German paper that the health care job positions at Lufthansa “remain vacant for a long time,” adding that the lack of sufficient medical services makes it impossible to detect emerging psychological conditions among the carrier’s 5,400 pilots.
According to the report, Lufthansa employs 20 doctors, who work at its medical centers in the German cities of Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich, with five additional doctors available to its pilots at the Frankfurt airport medical facility. The newspaper stressed that the number of medical staff is insufficient to provide adequate assistance to the pilots.
The revelation comes a day after separate reports stated that Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of the Germanwings A320 jet that crashed in the French Alps, had sought medical treatment for vision problems and depression shortly before the fatal incident.