This is unbearable

So the immediate and largely unspoken suspicions were correct – that this was a case of pilot suicide.

Except that in this particular case, it looks more like a case of mass murder/suicide – the equivalent of those young men who grab an assault rifle, walk into a crowded public place, kill as many people as they can before the police arrive, and then turn the gun on themselves or walk into a spray of police bullets.

The co-pilot was not a middle-aged man going through a ‘meaning of life’ crisis but a 28-year-old.

He was an ordinary German brought up in an ordinary town, a young man who had been keen on flying his whole life and had no visible signs of depression or psychological problems.

The commander (lead pilot) left the cockpit, presumably to go to the lavatory, and the co-pilot locked him out, taking the plane deliberately into a steep descent and straight into the mountains.

He killed all those people. And the truly unbearable bit is that the black box recorder gives the sound of wild pounding on the outside of the cockpit door and of passengers screaming as they realise that the plane is heading straight into the mountains. Meanwhile, in the cockpit, the co-pilot says nothing.