imparting life lessons. >> our thanks to that cnn hero. i'm poppy harlow. thanks for being with me. see you at 7:00. right now time for smerconish. i'm michael smerconish. welcome to the program. by now you've heard all about the tragedy of germanwing flight 9525. i've been watching the coverage on cnn all week, and i have some particular questions that haven't been answered. so today i've invited several experts to get those answers that i think we're all looking for. among the things i want to know was this crime premeditated? in other words, how could andreas lubitz have known that the captain would have to go and use the bathroom giving him time to change the flight course? did he make his terrible decision in the spur of the moment? another question -- even though this airplane was, in the words of investigators, shredded like confetti is there a way to retrieve the texts, the e-mails, the videos that passengers

likely took and wrote in those last terrible minutes? one more -- what's the duty of a mental health professional to report on a troubled pilot? our experts are here to break it all down. but first to the very latest of what's happening right now on the ground. cnn's frederik pleitgen is in germany with more. fred i know "the build" newspaper has spoke on the a former girlfriend. what is she saying? >> reporter: mm-hmm. well she's saying that she was together with andreas lubitz for about five months last year. she described him as a very sensitive man, someone who needed a lot of care, a lot of attention, someone who could also be quite flattering. she was an airline stewardess herself on germanwing ass a well but she said he was someone who had a very dark side who at night would wake um because he was having bad dreams someone who would go into rages when they had fights who apparently locked himself into the bathroom once for an extended period of time. she says ultimately the reason

why thai split up was because she was starting to become afraid of him and she said it was clear to her he had some sort of psychological problems but it was certainly something she said he was trying to hide because of course he'd always had this big dream of being a pilot and he didn't want it to be destroyed by the fact that he had these health issues michael. >> a gliding kwaps saysacquaintance says lubitz was familiar with the area around the crash site. what are you hearing about that? >> reporter: yeah. well it's interesting because he was part of an aeronautics and hang-gliding club in this town and strangely enough that gliding club apparently quite frequently went to excursions down to southern france to the foothills of the alps. so apparently lubitz was also very familiar with the terrain there. this acquaintance of his says the aeroclub was there about ten times and he recalls one time lubitz was there as well. another media report says that

lubitz was obsessed by the alps, loved the mountains there, and certainly would have known the terrain he crashed. also the acquaintance also said that he was very familiar actually with the crash site itself with that area around there. he says he's flown over that many many times. >> frederick, finally, today's "new york times" says that those physician notes that were found in his apartment were from different doctors suggesting perhaps that he went for a second opinion as to his fitness, his relative fitness. do you know anything about that? >> reporter: well yeah. "the new york times" is saying he went and tried to get a second opinion. we've reached out to the university medical center in dusseldorf which is a town that he lived in. they've confirmed to us that he was there for diagnostics twice this year. they said that it wasn't for depression. they didn't say, however, whether it might have been for some other sort of mental problem, but certainly the doctors' notes that were found inside his apartment, there seemed to be several of them.

and of course the state prosecutor of dusseldorf said they had been destroyed obviously in an attempt to try to hide from his employer that he had some sort of illness that he was dealing with dealing with by the way, for an extemded period of time the medical records showed. we're still trying to find out what exactly he was suffering from. many media outlets report it was some sort of depression-related thing but what exactly it feels we don't know just yet. >> frederik pleitgen thank you very much. let's dive into all of this now. joining me is psychiatrist dr. gail salks and david soucy. i'd like to try and koovr lotcover a lot of ground. david, is this the way a pilot seeking to crash an airplane would go about it by manually switch switching the autopilot from 36,000 feet to 96,000 feet? isn't there a faster way? >> historically it has been done this way. egypt air, silk air, a violent movement.

this is different but it is also a different aircraft because this aircraft is designed to protect itself from that kind of thing. to put it forward, it wouldn't let you just go to an un uncontrolled descent. >> this was probably sick to even ask but probably the most expeditious way for him to go about it. >> that's correct. >> why doesn't a guy like this kill himself outside that aircraft instead of killing 149 innocents with him? >> the question was motivation. most suicides the vast majority are just killing yourself if you are depressed and that's your intent. only 2.5% are really killing somebody else and usually it's killing one other person, a person you're angry at. so this is vanishingly rare. and this is a mass murder, which makes you think about things like sociopathy rage desire for infamy those kinds of things would be motivators. >> i've heard many draw conclusions about his breathing, how he was able to maintain some

rate of normal breathing for that final nine minutes. it strikes me as a layperson that you're only able to evaluate the breathing in the context of other factors that we now know like changing the flight altitude. the breathing alone, he could have had a heart attack and maintained breathing. >> you can. you could lose consciousness and maintain breathing. it must have been a combination of those two things that made him think he was awake the whole time. >> let's talk about the toggling of that lock switch. if the co-pilot toggled the door control to lock and thereby disabled emergency access for five minutes, is there anything that the pilot, who's trapped in the cabin, could do to gain access? >> nothing at all. nothing at all. >> as long as he keeps his finger on that button in a locked position. >> past five minutes as well. he could just continue to hold it down. >> because there have been reports that after five minutes there's a burst of 30 seconds of opportunity that would allow the pilot to come back in. well after the five -- only after the five minutes can you enter the code which then

triggers the 30 seconds period to notify the captain if the captain does not respond by opening the door or by locking the door the door actually opens for five seconds by itself. >> doctor he would have had to maintain an amazing level of constitution to hear the pilot outside banging on the door trying to break down the door and then in the end people screaming for as long as nine minutes, maintain that breathing and continue to do that which he was doing. >> i think there are two possibilities that that suggests. someone that, you know this was premeditated this is a person who's thought a lot about this and does not have, you know the empathy to be concerned about that in other words, we're talking about sociopathy someone who would plan that and this was what they wanted to do so it's not going to upset them. the other possibility is that, you know they have suffered so much themselves that the relative suffering of others is not that concerning to them. >> somehow he's able to put on blinders meaning --

>> right. >> diminishing-- for hearing purposes and block it all out. >> it doesn't mean it was blocked out. this is completely conjecture you have to realize, i don't know what was in his mind but when people internally suffer terrible depression or psychosis, i mean it is utter torment. and that kind of torment might really surpass the idea that other people would be screaming or frightened. >> david, the faa two person in the cockpit rule was designed to address incapacitation on the part of a pilot. is it appropriate in a circumstance like this will it thwart a pilot himself who's turned bad? >> actually we should clarify a little bit why that rule is in place. the only reason that rule is in place and originally is the fact there were no cameras to identify someone trying to get in. so they had to have a second person there because just looking through a peephole to identify who that person is. so that was the original. but the second part of your question i'm sorry, i kind of

got sidetracked. >> will this new methodology of requiring two individuals in the cockpit, will that necessarily prevent a cockpit -- a pilot who turns bad? >> it certainly will because since that's been implemented and the airlines it's been implemented in there's been no attempts -- not even attempts at suicide or any kind of disruption in the cockpit. >> i would also add to that it's very different to have people behind you that are anonymous in a plane that you're killing and somebody you actually take on in a cockpit. >> a deterrent rather than prevention. this is not going to stop an attack that's already started. it will prevent one from start starting in the first place. >> can a pilot who's being treated for health issues maintain his or her career or is this a professional death sentence? >> absolutely they can. the issue is the beginning of treatment. you want to stop them from being responsible for other people when they're in the depths of the illness. and when they're beginning medication, which has some risks associated with it. we know that it may increase

agitation or some suicide risk at the beginning of medication and that's why pilots aren't supposed to fly then. but if it is depression it is a treatable illness and once it is treated somebody is like anybody else. one out of every ten people get depression. are we going to say that those people should never be responsible for anyone else, then one out of ten people should never drive, you know -- it doesn't make sense. when depression is resolved you are back to functional. >> one of the few cases i remember from law school that i can cite by name is the tara soft case. you know of what i'm speaking. >> correct. >> what is the duty of a mental health practitioner dealing with someone like him, again, presuming, but presuming that he is unfit, is there a duty to rrt him to the employer? >> so the duty to warn for a psychiatrist or a mental health care worker is basically if the patient has in any way let you know that they're a risk to themselves or to other people. so had he said anything about,

you know i have a plan or i want to do this or even i want to kill myself that psychiatrist would have a duty to warn law enforcement or whoever is deemed at risk. so if he says something about taking down a plane, of course that would be the employer or, you know whoever he mentioned, if he said i want to get my girlfriend then you would have a duty to warn the girlfriend. but this is a person who everybody is saying was very secretive and psychiatrists aren't mind readers, so if he mentioned nothing of any of this then actual through psychiatrist has a duty to keep confidentiality. and i know that people have said hey -- >> but can you go too far in that regard? >> so the question is this -- this man probably would never have come into treatment at all if -- and that's the issue really right? if you think you have no confidentiality, if you come in and say i have depression and now i'm going to report it to your employer you're never going to come in the first place. >> to a layperson it sounds frightening. i've seen the list of medications that according to

the faa standard that one can be on and still be working. >> yes. >> you want to dissuade me from my discomfort? >> yes, i do because i think that you have to look at what are the specific side effects of those medications. so if we're talking about medical problems i mean, if the only person who could fly is somebody who is on zero medications, has zero medical problems then we're probably taking out anyone who has experience. the very person that we'd want to be flying for us. so i think that when what people have to understand is psychiatric illnesses can impair you in the short term but once treated not in the long term -- now if you have a psychotic disorder like schizophrenia, that's a different story. >> it troubles me the idea that again, let's make a presumption and let the audience know this is based on conjecture and reporting, it troubles me to think that a mental health professional would have deemed him unfit, for what not to be a cnn host. they knew he was a pilot. unfit to take command of a 149-passenger plane.

>> we don't know if that's true. we knew somebody wrote a note that said you may not work this day. now, i don't know if that was permission not to work if that was by that doctor for another medical illness. >> "the times" is reporting multiple physicians, two or more. that would suggest he went for a second opinion. >> did they know he was a pilot? did they know he was a pilot? that would be my question. >> i'm assuming they do. >> there's no way to know. unless you're a medical examiner designated by the european association, you wouldn't know. if he doesn't tell you i'm a pilot, how would you know? >> but i would say this -- if it was a mental health professional who said you're too depressed to be flying in my opinion, then yes, i would say that would be a duty to warn. >> is this finally the instance that brings about realtime transmission of cockpit data? >> i can hope so. but here's something really historical with this event.

there's already been action taken. there's already been safety measures taken. not only the airlines have taken measures to say we do need two people in that cockpit now as a mitigation but the regulatory authority themselves they totally skipped right over this part of figuring out what happened and then applying the regulation which is incredibly time consuming. flight 447, we're still waiting on things to respond to that accident. but this is different. this is very different. i think there's a shift in the culture. i think partly it's because of all the exposure the airlines and the industry have got. >> the pilot union has stood in opposition to realtime transmission of data. how in the face of this and all the questions that remain can can they remain against it? >> what they have been against, which i don't think is the case now, is the transmission of realtime video data. the transmission of actual day antarctica it happens all the time from the aircraft. audio and video is what they're

objecting to. >> my god, if i work at a 7-eleven there's video being recorded of what i do for a living. as a layperson, can i make another suggestion? shouldn't there be some means from the cabin of alerting forces on the ground that, hey, there's something going on in the cockpit? >> there are in new aircraft. there is a way to do that. it's not mandatory, not regulated, but it's part of a maintenance thing. it sends information about maintenance. the seat back on seat 5d doesn't work. they type it in it goes straight to maintenance so, by the time that aircraft lands, the part are there, they're ready to fix it. >> off the ground they could unlock the door i'm saying, if they knew there was a problem going on and there was a way to unlock the door then something like this -- >> now we're talking act remote control and that's a big subject. >> final issue. a pilot who's a friend of mine an aviation attorney at home in philadelphia he said to me don't underestimate that my annual review which is a medical review of those who maintain their license to fly,

that the interaction with the faa airmen there is a degree of mental health review that takes place in that process. either want to respond to that? >> very, very small. i think insufficient. i think a biannual review much more could be in place that would be both a psychological and mental review i think. >> there's not a litmus test. you can't say this guy's okay and this guy's not. what happens with the faa, we encourage them to say get a relationship with this person try to get in their head but it's not like -- >> it's not a trained professional. right. >> they don't know how to do that. >> there are rudimentary minimalistic reviews that any primary care physician can do that would at least be somewhat of a checklist to flag. >> dare i say it seems to me that the system that we have generally works. in this case, this guy, if in fact he was washed out of training for a time period because of mental health issues he should have been gone. that's the answer.

>> if he was brought back he should have at least -- there should be reviews like six-month review because we know someone with a history of depression can have it again. >> thank you. we got through three-quarters of my list. the rest of the program i'm getting to everything else. thank you very much. more to get to on this. up next what if during those last few minutes passengers were able to reach out to loved ones with e-mails, text videos? there could be evidence out there. the plane may be completely destroyed but we'll find out if it's technically possible to retrieve those final moments. ners. but when my back hurt, cooking all day... forget about it. tylenol was ok, but it was 6 pills a day. but aleve is just 2 pills all day. and now, i'm back! aleve. you can call me shallow... but, i have a wandering eye. i mean, come on. national gives me the control to choose any car in the aisle i want. i could choose you...

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welcome back. investigators are facing the daunting task of combing through the french mountainside to clues of what may have led the co-pilot to deliberately crash the plane. a significant piece to the puzzle would be whether passengers on board left any kind of evidence that showed exactly what was going on as the plane went down despite the fact that the airplane is completely destroyed.

could investigators find any form of electronic data like e-mails, texts or cell phone video? let's get a little bit more on this from cnn technology correspondent samuel burke. i flew on an a320 yesterday. i had wi-fi. i was sending e-mails. i could have watched a movie had i chose on the do so. presumably by now we'd know if anyone had been able to send successfully send a text an e-mail video of what was frans spire transpiring. that hasn't taken place. does that mean all is lost? >> absolutely not. there is still a chance there is some type of information, photo, videos on a cell phone that maybe wasn't sent to somebody but could be backed up in the cloud. i think it may sound ridiculous to some people that people would have a phone out in this type of situation, but the truth is michael, this is exactly what people do nowadays. we have so many instances -- just go on you tooub and type in air turbulence. you'll see when people think the plane is about to crash, this is exactly what they do. that is video of a flight that

was going from south korea to dallas and you hear people on there saying good-bye to their wives, to their children praying, and this is literally -- and people think could be the last moments of their lives, this is what the new generation does. takes out a cell phone. >> am i understanding you to say you wouldn't necessarily have had to transmit it? if i had my iphone on that flight and taken video but i didn't even try to send it or i tried to but i didn't have service so i couldn't it might nevertheless be in the cloud? >> absolutely. for instance i use flickr and it automatically updates all my photos and videos to the flickr website. many do the same with icloud so even if you didn't send it to your wife or whomever it's still backed up on a server. >> even without cell service? >> here's the thing, germanwings does not have wi-fi. but you have to remember they were getting closer and closer to the ground. so there's a much greater likelihood at that point that you're starting to get cell

service, starting to get 3g maybe 4g so even without sending the picture, your internet is picking up, even though it's a brief amount of time it only takes a few seconds for a photo to start syncing and go into the cloud. >> next question. assume that is the case which would be wonderful from evidentiary standpoint who gets access? >> you would assume the authorities would but the answer to that is no. the authorities wouldn't get access at least not immediately because things are so well encrypted now, many of these tech companies after the snowden revelations have moved to encrypt things so tightly that not even the tech companies can get in this if they want. authorities might be able to go to the tech companies. the tech companies say, sorry, there's nothing we can do because they literally don't have the keys. what it would take is somebody going into their loved ones -- >> family member. >> exactly, into their icloud account or some other type of service where it's backed un finding the photo, videos, e-mails, whatever content might have been saved on that phone and giving it to the

authorities. >> not making light of this but i presume then the family members would be putting in all the family pet names and the usual suspects for the pass codes. you'd need the pass code. >> many of the loved ones know the pass codes of their wives and husbands but you're right this is the situation not just people who have died in a plane crash, the situation a lot of family members find themselves in when a loved one has died. they want access to their phone, gmail accounts so they go in and start guessing the password hints. many times loved ones know those hint, where did you grow up what was your maiden name? loved ones knows those answers. >> i assume the law is still unresolved in this area. if you lose a loved one, their personal effects, letters, paper, they become whoever is the beneficiary of the estate. is the law yet settled in terms of the social media? you lose a loved one and have their phone, their computer their laptop. can you necessarily get access? >> technology has moved much faster than our legislation so,

in many places this is a very gray area. going into somebody's account if you know their pass word you know their pass word. but trying to essentially hack your way in it is illegal in some places but, again, does anybody know that you're doing it? you could say that you got the e-mails and they were delivered to you. it's a very gray zone. we're seeing technology companies now trying to put measures in place so i can give you access to my account if i die. it's a digital will if you will. we're starting to see companies like facebook and google put measures into place but it's moving slowly. >> bottom line you presume at this moment 149 grieving family families are trying to get access to whatever the technology, the cyberevidence might be of their loved ones. >> absolutely. if i were in this horrible situation that many of these families find themselves in i would absolutely be trying to get into the flickr account if i had the pas word and see if there's any evidence i could provide to the authorities. >> excellent report.

thank you. coming up officials say the captain of germanwings flight 9525 tried for nearly ten minutes to break into the cockpit but was unsuccessful. could post-9/11 security measures have played a role in the deadly crash? plus technology is out there that would let authorities in a crisis take complete remote control of the plane from the ground. we teal you more about that. imagine if razors could move up and down, and all around. hugging tight, swirling left and turning right. behold, new venus swirl. the only razor with five contour blades and a flexiball. to contour to your tricky places, bends and all. going this way and that. bumps and grooves, curvy and flat. for skin as flawless as can be. new venus swirl. and try new venus with a touch of olay with five times more moisturizers

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i don't think there's any place i really would rather be. welcome back. the terror attacks on 9/11 sparked increased security measures on airplanes to keep the bad guys out of the cockpit and ironically those same protections made it possible for the co-pilot of the germanwings flight to go on a deadly path of destruction. the co-pilot deliberate licaried out the disaster after locking the steel reinforced door to the cockpit. joining me now is cnn national security analyst and former assistant secretary for homeland

security. juliette, can we blame this on bin laden? >> oh well that's probably sort of a -- too easy but let's just say it is clear that cockpit -- changes to the cockpit door made after 9/11 which were absolutely necessary and i have to say absolutely successful if you're looking at the threat of passengers coming into the cockpit, that that had this just tragic irony of the kind of disaster we saw this week. so like everything else, times change risks change and security has to adapt to a threat which is rare but nonetheless we've seen which is a pilot or co-pilot bringing an airplane down. >> so the faa of course has a two-person rule in the cockpit. we've all learned that. and now other airlines including germanwings are falling in line in that standard. given your expertise in a national security area are you confident that that's sufficient

to ward off this type of a threat going forward, meaning from a pilot? well look no security measure is perfect, and so the way we think about it now in terms of -- especially in terms of systems like a global transportation system is that you have layered defenses. so you look at the pilot, the passengers the luggage, what's going on at the airport, and you put in so many different kinds of security defenses so that it makes anything that anyone wants to do a little bit harder. nothing's going to be perfect. our global transportation system is only as strong as its weakest link so, even if lufthansa puts the two-pilot rule in look you need universal rules. so that's a way to think about security. it's not like oh we're going to do this and it's going to fix everything and there will never be a risk again. it's just you want to put enough things in that minimize the risk for passengers or whoever else. so that's why i'm for, you know, videos in the cockpit. it doesn't make sense to me from a security perspective. it may not stop a pilot from

doing something but it will certainly help investigators and certainly the family members after the fact. >> how worried are you that the islamic state, al qaeda, isil isis radical islam, whatever word choice you think appropriate, are paying close attention and adding now to their playbook? >> so they -- they -- you know, they're not idiots in the sense they are looking at the news they see all sorts of vulnerabilities in our airport system and everywhere else in terms of soft targets. i tend to take the emotionality out of these things so, you know the politics the psychology the ideology matter less to me than can we put in systems that will protect us from either the sort of random co-pilot who may have a psychological problems to an international terrorist organization that wants to bring down a plane. for security purposes the intent matters less than can you put a system in place that makes it harder for anyone regardless

of their ideology of harming a large number of people. >> i worry that sometimes we overreact and that we've overreacted in a number of instances post september 11th. it seems to me given what we know and there are unanswered questions, but it seems there was a system in place here and it's not the door that remitted the failure, presumably the failure was on the part of the lufthansa subsidiary that had a guy working for them that there were plenty of red flags that showed up in the course of his training and still with 600 hours under his belt and a mental health issue, he was permitted to fly. >> right. i think that's absolutely right. instead of looking only at the cockpit door issue, which i do think is an important thing to assess it's almost 15 years after september 11th security should not always remain the same we have to be, you know sort of mobile and fluid and how we think about security obviously there's an issue regarding the psychology of pilots. the military has dealt with this

issue. large institutions always have to deal with this issue and get better at it. so we don't want to look one way and say we solved it. there's obviously a number of reasons for why this happened and why we didn't have defenses in place to avert it from happening, and we have to learn from both of them. we don't want to just go in with blinders about oh it's the cockpit door. there are a variety of factor some of which we may never know but some that can help avoid the next incident. and that's just the way we have to look at it. it's no consolation to the family members, but if we can learn how to do this better to avoid or at least minimize the likelihood that this happens again, then we've learned something from this tragedy. >> absolutely. juliette kayyem thank you. >> thank you. coming up much more of our continuing coverage of the crash of germanwings flight 9525. what's next for the grieving families of the passengers on that doomed jet? an attorney who remitted families from another high-profile plane crash joins

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welcome back. while the crash of germanwings flight 9525 is highly uncommon, it's not unheard of. tragedies like this have occurred in the past and in some cases air crash investigators found that the pilots had expressed their intentions before hand. that takes me to my next question. would the legal liability of germanwings be capped if the co-pilot deliberately crashed the plane? joining me now to discuss this is mitch bouwmeester, an aviation attorney who represented several victim families after the crash of egyptair flight 990. mitch, that flight egyptair 990, would seem analogous to

what we're dealing with here. remind us of what the facts were. >> well egyptair 990, michael, we had a relief co-pilot an individual who was not going to be promoted to captain. there were a bunch of personal issues surrounding his conduct in the united states and in egypt, and he took off, was a flight from l.a. they remanled overnight at jfk, then there was a jfk to egypt flight. when they took off somewhere around nantucket, he as a relief pilot went in and took the controls. the captain left the flight cockpit, left. he then took control of the plane, said i put myself in god's hands, whatever will happen will happen and he literally drove plane into the ocean. the captain returned and got into the cockpit and actually said to this relief pilot, pull with me do something, shut the power, help me. he continued to push the plane into the ocean chanting in

arabic that i'm in god's hands, god will take care of me and essentially committed his own suicide, as the ntsb said the cause of the crash due to his direct pilot inputs. and as a result of that he committed mass murder as well as his own suicide. >> i remember that the ntsb came to that conclusion. as is my memory accurate in saying that egyptair through the end refused to acknowledge that that's what the cause was? >> absolutely. and, you know, having done this for 40 years and been involved in every major crash, whenever we have foreign carriers and foreign governments -- because many of the governments own the airlines -- we run into resistance for the professionalism of the ntsb and they never wanted to acknowledge that their pilot had done this. they wanted to blame it on some kind of mechanical error. so you're 100% right, michael. your memory is spot on. that's what happened. now, in 40 years, i want you to understand and having been involved in the lockerbie

disaster and remitting the fellow -- the people todd beamer and jeremy glick who stormed the cockpit in you nighted 93 during 9/11 this is such a rare occurrence. and as a pilot for over 40 years, this is such a rare occurrence. this is really the only time i've ever seen it. egyptair 990, although recently they reported it may have happened in mozambique and of course now if the facts as stated are proven it will have happened here sadly and tragically in germanwings. >> will there be a cap on damages? >> there will not, michael, and that's the second most important point. that's really one of the main reasons i'm here today. i want people to understand there's a lot of misinformation out there. and i'm glad you asked me to come only. unlike a domestic crash, namely a flight wholly within the united states or a domestic country, this tragedy is governed by the montreal convention. and in the montreal convention regardless of the pilot's actions, even -- and as a former

prosecutor who tried murder cases, even though this is a deliberate act, descending from altitude flying it into the mountain this will not -- not only cap the damages, which are unlimited to the extent they are provable it will hold the airline responsible under article 21 of the montreal convention. and just quickly, article 21 says the carrier will pay above approximately $150,000 automatic damages paid to the families. the carrier will be responsible for full unlimited damages above that $150,000 unless it can prove that the crash was not due to the wrongful act of its agent in the course and scope of his or her employment. and we know that's in fact what happened here. or such crash was caused solely by the act of a third party. for example, they were flying over the ocean and some foreign

terrorist, some foreign ship shot them down. neither one of these facts obtained. there will be litigation under the montreal convention. and there will be no cap or limit on the damages. >> mitch bouwmeester, thank you so much. >> okay michael. thank you. coming up we'll headout live to germany for the latest on the crash investigation. plus ground personnel flying a jetliner by remote control. it's almost a reality but is it a good idea? it's happening. today, more and more people with type 2 diabetes are learning about long-acting levemir® an injectable insulin that can give you blood sugar control for up to 24 hours. and levemir® helps lower your a1c. levemir® comes in flextouch® the only prefilled insulin pen with no push-button extension. levemir® lasts 42 days without refrigeration. that's 50% longer than lantus® which lasts 28 days. today i'm asking about levemir® flextouch®. levemir® is a long-acting insulin

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welcome back. rescue crews are battling treacherous conditions to find bodies and that one missing black box, debris from flight 9525 scattered across rugged me re mote terrain in the french alps. let's get right to cnn's frederik pleitgen live in dusseldorf with the latest. fred it seems to me that investigators would most want to

speak to a former girlfriend to find out his mental state. >> reporter: well probably her and i'm guessing that his family as well. however, "the builds" newspaper, which is the biggest tabloid here in germany, has managed to speak to one of the ex-girlfriends and she said that andreas lubitz was a man who needed a lot of attention, a man who could be sensitive, very flattering at times as well but also someone who apparently had a dark side to him. also she said he became erratic at times, became very angry, especially when he was talk about his employer. he felt that germanwings wasn't treating him well. this is according to the "the build" newspaper so we're only getting this from a third source but it certainly is of course a major point to these investigators to speak to anyone who had direct contact with andreas lubitz especially of course someone like a girlfriend someone like his parents, like his brother whom he was living with as well michael. >> do we know anything about the investigation relative to medications he was on at the time of the crash or medications

he had stopped taking just before the crash? >> reporter: very little about medications. all that we have is from the prosecutor's office and they're saying that he was being treated for some sort of illness and that he'd been treated for it for a very long time and he was seeing a doctor and also of course he had those sick notes that he tore up. unclear what sort of medications he might have been on but that's certainly something investigators will be looking at as well. >> frederik pleitgen thank you very much for your report. coming up the possibility of pilotless aircraft is already being explored. we'll take a look at a nukew technology that could save plane from being hijacked.

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welcome back. the crash of the germanwings flight has re-ignited the debate about control. there's been technology developed that would let authorities on the ground intervene the there was a crisis in the air. boeing has a patent and google has conducted a test flight. why isn't it being used? tom foreman has the answer. >> reporter: boeing has a patent google has a test flight of one of these planes big tech names all over the world are looking at this idea of airplanes that can be flown remotely from the ground in the belief that this might make them impervious from terrorist attack, from criminal acts and from any other sort of assault. watch closely. this plane over england has a crew at the controls passengers in the back but something extraordinary is about to

happen. a pilot on the ground is taking over. >> ready to take control. >> proceed. >> i have control. >> you have control. >> reporter: this is the $94 million project by the british aerospace company bae, one of several efforts around the world to develop planes that can be flown remotely. >> what you can hear at the moment is the discussion with air traffic that's exactly the same as what the pilots would be having if they were in charge of the steering of the aircraft. >> reporter: military success with drones has driven much of the interest and some efforts are focused on airplanes in hazardous conditions such as hurricane rnl and fighting wildlivs. analysts say pilotless planes could be a $400 billion a year global business. so why not passenger flights? first, the airline industry has a remarkable safety record despite high-profile disasters. many believe on board pilots remain the most reliable way to

handle problems and retrofitting planes would cost billions of dollars. and second passengers may not be ready. robert guyier is with "flying" magazine. >> i ask myself that question how would i feel getting into an airline that didn't have airline pilots up front and i wouldn't do it. >> reporter: there are a lot of unanswered questions still. for example, what happens if one of these planes gets free from its electronic tether and what if terrorists take over a ground-control station and in that fashion start controlling the plane? one possible answer would be to add more than one station at a time so that any plane must be controlled from multiple points. but even then what if somebody hacks into the data stream and they take over the plane that way? all of these questions are going to have to be answered because even though our planes are becoming more and more automated and some take off and land pretty much on their own, this idea of controlling one from the ground has to be worked out in much more detail before it becomes a reality.

michael? >> thank you, tom. i'm reminded of the fact that elevators used to have operators as well. thanks for joining me. you can flow me on twitter if you can spell smerconish. see you next week. you're in the "cnn newsroom." i'm poppy harlow joining you from new york. i want to welcome our viewers both here in the united states and around the world. we begin with our top story, the tragic plane crash of flight 9525. and today we have heard from the father of the man officials believe deliberately killed himself along with 149 other people. the co-pilot of germanwings flight 9525 that crashed into the french alps. the family of andreas lubitz traveling to the crash site me