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Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Friday cited Spohr as saying
surprise checks were a possible way to reduce uncertainty over
whether pilots suffer from any mental health issues.
Voice and data recordings from the Germanwings flight on March
24 show co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked the captain out of the
cockpit and set the plane on course to crash into the French
Alps, killing all 150 on board.
Lubitz's motives are still a mystery. But he had told officials
at a Lufthansa training school in 2009 that he had gone through
a period of severe depression, and investigators found he had
hidden doctors' notes signing him off work.
"Insights into the co-pilots motives could come out of a
so-called psychological autopsy that will be done as part of
prosecutors' investigation now," FAZ quoted Spohr as saying.
A spokesman for Lufthansa said Spohr aimed to propose random
health checks to a task force of experts that Germany set up
after the Germanwings crash.
The task force is to examine whether changes need to be made to
medical procedures and the mechanisms allowing cockpit doors to
be locked from the inside.
Spohr said one element of these considerations should also be
whether aviation doctors should be allowed to breach
doctor-patient confidentiality in exceptional cases, according
to FAZ.
Under German law, employers do not have access to employees'
medical records and sick notes excusing a person from work do
not give information on their medical condition.
Some politicians have called for a loosening of these rules in
the wake of the Germanwings disaster.
(Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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