For weeks now, Andreas Lubitz’s tragic decision to kill himself and dozens of others aboard the Germanwings Airbus 320 he was piloting has dominated international media coverage. Although the official accident investigation will take months to complete, French authorities quickly made it into a criminal investigation and released limited information about what transpired.

We know that after the captain left the flight deck, Lubitz locked him out of the cockpit and redirected the aircraft downward. The captain can be heard asking to be let in, then attempting to bang down the door. Lubitz is silent. Investigators claim Lubitz was still alive until the moment of the crash because he can be heard breathing.

As soon as it became clear that this was not just a tragic accident, but a conscious and successful attempt to destroy the aircraft and its passengers, the plot thickened. Why would a young man like Lubitz do such a thing?