Slashdot Mirror
Germanwings Plane Crash Was No Accident
hcs_$reboot writes The Germanwings plane crash takes a scary turn. After a couple of days investigation, it appears that the co-pilot requested control of the aircraft about 20 minutes into the flight. The pilot then left the cockpit, leaving the co-pilot in full control of the plane. Then, the co-pilot manually and "intentionally" set the plane on the descent that drove it into the mountainside in the southern French Alps. Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, a 28-year-old German national, could be heard breathing throughout the plane's descent and was alive at the point of impact, according to the prosecutor.
While the new info about the cockpit door mechanism seems compelling, it may be worthwhile to take a look at the tragic catastrophe of Germanwings in the light of a crude calculation that illustrates just how staggering is the number of hours flown per year.
Let's assume that on average a person faints only once in a lifetime, and that on average we spend 5 minutes a day with seeking out and using the restroom. Then on average we should expect in every 70*365*24*24*60/5 = 177 million hours that a pilot faints while another is using the restroom, assuming that these two events are uniformly distributed and independent. According to IATA the total number of flight hours in 2012 was 45 million. Dividing the two numbers we see that we should expect such a joint occurrence to happen once in every four years. That it does not happen this frequently is essentially due to the retentive heroism of the pilots, that they tend to stay put even when the urge comes until they guide the plane to safety.
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
He refused to allow the pilot back into the cockpit.
http://pilots-airmen.findthedata.com/l/986395/Andreas-Guenter-Lubitz
The command was given by the captain before he left the cockpit (most likely to use the toilet).
...maybe he had a heart-attack?
The reason the pilot couldn't get back in was the steel cockpit door designed to prevent a terrorist from entering the cockpit. It may still make sense to have these doors. Maybe we should reconsider this 'security' measure. Or perhaps some means to allow a pilot back in. You already need a pass code but, apparently, also whoever is in the cockpit also has to authorize. Every flight I've been on, when the pilot or copilot leaves, to renter, first the flight attendants turn off the lights (so nobody can see the PIN entered) and then wait for the copilot to authorize.
Now just wait for the next step up on the harassment of passengers at airport security.
I guess now everyone will have to strip naked and pass an 3-hour interrogation before taking an 1-hour flight.
But hey, the last bugbear, the liquid explosives, is already 10 years old, so they will need a new excuse to screw the honest people.
A _real_ interest in passenger security obviously does not exist.
One pilot feels a bit lightheaded, gets up to use the restroom. The other also starts feeling odd.. realizes the cause and, thinking he has plenty of time, starts a slow descent to a lower altitude.
Pilot passes out, other pilot dies trying to get back into the cockpit.
Possible?
Well, another fine mess you've got us into, anti-bearded-terrorist mass hysteria. Surely no one could have anticipated a suicidal or ill pilot locking the other pilot out of the cockpit. A german pilot, so not a terrorist, of course. Need a beard for that.
Don't bother modding me down, Fox News enthusiasts, I can post again.
So the entire crew disregards European protocol to keep the co-pilot company at all times, and in response the co-pilot locks the door with a 20 minute lock-out code? Did everyone find him just too derpressing to spend time with him?
The saddest part of the story is the publicity will encourage other malcontents to mimicry.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The fact that no attack occured gives the talking heads leeway to claim there was no "terrorist attack." That does not mean the fellow flying the plane at the time didn't have sympathies for terrorists or had been outright radicalized.
They also hate calling something a "terrorist attack" if there isn't a pre-announced political message for the reasons behind the attack.
Myself, I have a feeling they're going to learn a few things about him during the investigation that they'd rather were not true.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"USA overreaction to 9/11 means locked doors!"
but pilot suicide/ homicide is just as much a bizarre outlier as murderous hijacking
plus, they thought about this problem when designing the system. the door system means someone can enter a PIN on a keypad outside and override the lock (in case of pilot incapacitation). to override the override, the person inside the cockpit has to actively deny the outside override attempt. which in this case the copilot apparently did
so this copilot is a complete scumbag. depression and suicide is nowhere remotely an excuse or even a valid explanation for selfishly mass murdering 150 innocent people. this is assuming we are talking depression and suicide, and not more nefarious intent
what are we left with? keep the door open and we have murderous hijacking? keep the door locked and we have murderous pilots? yeah both are extremely rare outliers, but it's fucking scary either way
air travel is so much safer than driving statistically. but at least when you die in a car, it's for mundane, hum drum reasons usually. when something goes wrong in the air, it's cinematic drama, emotional and blood curdling. disgusting
and those poor people
there's screams on the recording on the end
we would have hoped they had no idea what was coming, but they knew full well what was happening.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No person should be allowed to fly a 100+-passenger plane, unless they have children that they care for. 28-year old boys are simply psychologically not fit to accept the resposibility.
conspiracy theorist here. i've got nothing.
...that one flight data recorder was badly damaged, the other was no longer in its housing and was missing its memory, and the evidence that they were able to piece together was the kind that is easiest to fabricate? Yeah, nothing suspicious in that at all.
... of having a flight attendant stay in the cockpit when one of the pilots goes to the bathroom.
I would have previously said that was too paranoid but apparently not.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Or they will find some way the guy is linked to islamic terrorists. Or maybe he had stated an unpopular political view.
Or perhaps he just snapped. Often people with suicidal depression is really good at hiding it so other people don't realize it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Here you go: The American on board worked for a major intelligence contractor and was administering a mysterious $300 million contract for the Pentagon at the time of the crash.
You're welcome.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
A former professor of mine (a VERY prominent name in the field of linguistics/cognitive science) served as an advisor into the investigation of the EgyptAit 990 crash. Off the record, he told me that he was convinced that that crash too was a suicide, as the formant analysis he did on the pilot's voice for the voice recorder suggested absolutely no variation in the pilot's mood or panic as he continued transmissions while calmly flying the plane straight into the ocean.
I think we'll see renewed calls for a remote override capability built into airliners, so the ground can take over the plane when pilots become non-responsive or the plane begins to rapidly descend.
Bush did it! Just like 9/11!
The inanity of these comments rival a Global Warming discussion.
We have a first generation of self driving cars. How close are we to self flying commercial airlines? Discuss.
So according to that news piece, standard, relaxed breathing is perfectly normal for suicidal young mass-murderers, seconds before crashing in a mountain at several hundred miles per hour, while their supervisor is banging with fists and feet against the cockpit door.
I want to smoke what he did.
Designing security systems is very hard, and this crash seems to be a classic example of why it is so hard.
The reinforced cockpit door, and the access control system, was introduced after 9/11. Before that the cockpit door was typically a flimsy thing you could break down with a few good kicks. The reinforced door is designed to prevent passengers from obtaining access to the cockpit. The threat model includes attempts at brute force (the door has to withstand roughly an hour of abuse with anything that can be found in the cabin) and tries to coerce the cabin crew for keys or codes (as the pilots control entry). Airbus (and also Boeing, I am pretty sure) also has an emergency procedure which lets you enter the cockpit should the pilots be incapacitated, but the pilots can disable this. There is a nice video here which illustrates hos the access control system airbus uses works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If media is correct one of the pilots wanted to crash the plane, and used the cockpit security system to prevent the other crew from interfering. This was not part of the threat model, and that made the current security system work in favor of the attacker instead of the rest of the crew. Not good. It cost 150 lives.
There are ways to get around this. Some airlines require two people to be present in the cockpit at all times, in an effort to prevent this kind of attack. It makes it a lot harder, but not impossible. It could also be possible to allow people on the ground to override the lock on the cockpit door. But in both cases you need to actually design your security system to deal with the threat, which I am sure people are rushing to do now...
Christians: shariah muslim terrorists are responsible and this proves muslim islam is evil and wants to destroy the world.
Muslims: Islam is a religion of peace, the jews did this because they are evil and wish to destroy muslims on this flight.
Scientists: Humans are an unreliable, inefficient, and unpredictable element. we should do more science to remove them from commanding 400,000 pound flying machines.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Well, another fine mess you've got us into, anti-bearded-terrorist mass hysteria. Surely no one could have anticipated a suicidal or ill pilot locking the other pilot out of the cockpit. A german pilot, so not a terrorist, of course. Need a beard for that.
Don't bother modding me down, Fox News enthusiasts, I can post again, and yet again.
There have been several passenger planes brought down by pilot suicides. For some it is simply depression but for others it is the old terrorism - religion game. You know how it is. Some nut rolls around in his bed having supposed revelations and messages from Allah and the next thing you know he's flying 200 passengers into the side of a mountain. There are times when a persons belief system is in itself a complete mental illness all wrapped up and ready to go boom.
Russians!
Just $300 million? So, he handled restocking the Pentagon with toilet paper or something?
She. She was a she.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
In an accident, the airline's liability is capped.
Similar for act of god , war, etc.
In this case, an agent of the airline caused a CFIT.
Sometimes, a company is responsible for the actions of it's employees.
Especially if he is doing what they gave him authority to do.
(IE fly the plane)
This situation may remove the liability caps?
(Perhaps it should if it makes airlines more careful about keeping two, trusted folks in the cockpit at all times.)
On other airlines, there are always two people in the cockpit: if the pilot leaves, a flight attendant takes stays there until the pilot returns so that the co-pilot isn't there alone. Similarly if the co-pilot leaves ... The cockpit should always be manned by two people.
If Germanwings didn't have a policy for this then there could be a very interesting court case that determines Germanwings liability.
Right. A pilot trying to kill himself and everyone else on the plane by flying it into the ground will absolutely not kill the other person in the cockpit that may be trying to stop him.
Sorry, but having two people in the cockpit is a safety measure, not a security measure. It helps if one pilot has a heart attack, but it does pretty much nothing if one pilot is a suicidal, murderous maniac.
Surprised USA has a policy of not allowing the cockpit to be occupied by a lone occupant. Given the staffing cuts and the callousness of the airline management surprised they did not mount a lobbying effort "against the onerous and burdensome regulations by Washington bureaucrats that is strangling the industry and killing jobs" to remove that requirement.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Thanks, but where is the source link?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
We (almost) have self-driving cars. Aircraft generally self-drive themselves almost all time now. Why not have self-driving aircraft?
Seems a lot safer for now. Pilot can enter anytime if an emergency of non-standard situation is declared (and verified).
What a selfish prick. I haven't got a problem with suicide. If you want out, you should be allowed to open the door. However to take 140 odd other people with you is just so awful that I can't express enough hatred of the guy.
Geeze, why is this so hard! This was a clear crash over mainland Europe. We could quickly locate the destroyed plane and acquire the flight recorders, the whole show. Why is it still so clunky to piece together what actually happened? Shouldn't we have more data captured, for example video streams from the cabin and cockpit? It's so annoying when it's 2015 and Facebook knows what kind of socks you will be wearing today, but we have to play Sherlock Holmes with a commercial airliner crash.
From the news it sounds like they could hear the co-pilot breathing normally and calmly during the whole descent - in the face of murdering 150 people and killing yourself plus the actual pilot hammering against the door trying to get in, this suggests at least diminished empathy and remorse a.k.a. psychopathic tendencies.
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." - Mark Twain
The evidence does seem to be getting stronger, but I'm not quite ready to conclude that this was intentional. The fact that the co-pilot was breathing does not necessarily indicate that he was conscious. If he became unconscious, he could easily have fallen into a position where his body was pushing forward on the control stick. This would override the autopilot and cause the plane to descend under "manual" control. As far as I know, they still haven't found the FDR, so there's really no way to tell whether or not the "manual" control inputs were intentional (i.e. varying inputs with relatively light pressure would probably indicate intentional control; relatively continuous inputs at an extreme input position would probably indicate unintentional input). The locked cockpit door is harder, but not impossible, to explain: I'm not familiar with the design of the switch, but it's conceivable that he could have fallen against it and knocked into the locked position; perhaps more plausibly, he may have recognized that he was about to pass out (I have personally fainted due to low blood sugar a few times, and it generally doesn't happen without at least a few seconds of advanced warning) and, attempting to turn the switch to the "unlocked" position in order to simplify a hasty ingress of the captain, may have inadvertently turned the switch in the wrong direction. Before we vilify this guy posthumously, let's make sure we have precluded all other options.
It's my understanding that the flight deck by international regulation is a "no alone" zone, meaning that when the pilot left, a flight attendant should have entered the flight deck so that the copilot was not alone. This rule is why it made sense to have a "Locked" position on the door.
The real question, to me, is, why was the flight attendant not on the flight deck while the pilot was away?
You can't keep blaming Bush. This is all Obama's fault.
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2015/03/breaking-news-pentagon-contractor-daughter-among-french-alps-plane-crash-victims-112593.html
exactly
there's people in this thread who seem to want to throw his actions into the realm of "caused by depression"
nope
depression explains self-harm
but harming others requires an additional psychological realm, not explained by depression
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
https://www.infowars.com/news....
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
They will never solve the problem, because they will always be one step behind. Every safeguard is a vector for abuse, and every limitation can be circumvented if there are humans involved at any point. And humans are designing and operating the system.
It's already the safest (per passenger or traveller mile) way to travel in the world.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I hate to throw conspiracy theory out there, but if the Pilot had made intentions to do dastardly deeds with the plane, perhaps this was a co-pilot trying to save lives at the sacrifice of 150. While I know this is unlikely, but there is the potential for this to be a thing.
Still, the Co-pilot would have probably said something on the flight recorder, so who really knows. Odds are in the favor that the co-pilot was an undiscovered nutter.
Place something witty here
It's a well thought out system. The if the person at the controls was simply unconscious, the other pilot would be able to gain entry to the cockpit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This incident looks deliberate.
So now one plane has been destroyed as the direct result of anti-terrorism measures; in this case, the relatively uncontroversial hardening of the cockpit doors.
People that pass out still breath, could it not be the case?
"Was" a she? So the person was trans-gender and trying to fake their death to live as the opposite sex. It's all becoming so clear now. Ladies, beware of effeminate short French men with a funny accent.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
slashdotted :-(
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The thing that is always shocking about these incidents is how ultimately they are normally down to the action of one individual and the others who paid the ultimate price for being unfortunate enough to be trapped by their actions. I'm not 100% sure how complex the computer systems on modern aircraft are, but it presents an interesting thought - why do we still let people fly planes at all? Or even down to the case of, if something is wrong (and in this case ATC knew something was wrong before the plane went down) why isn't there a system in place to remove control of the plane from the pilots and somehow fly it from the ground? In my opinion, we put to much faith in people we don't know anything about to get us around and there is nothing we can do about it. That is the scary part.
A bunch of shit nerds furiously masturbating while spouting off inane theories based on third-hand information and speculation. You're not forensic scientists, you're not experts, you're not engineers: you're a sorry lot of acne-ridden scrawny fugly kids with self-diagnosed "mild assburgers" whose misery is absolutely deserved. Now go drown yourselves in some urinal.
Maybe a new second master override code can be provided to the flight attendants during an incident (via air-phone with ground control) that completely override the pilots lock would cover this issue. There would have to be a risk-assessment on the ground in order to provide this code. Although I'm not sure if there is enough time to do this (8 minutes?).
Quoting Lufthansa CEO here. "In a joint press conference on Mar 26th 2015 Germanwings and Lufthansa stated they are shocked having to accept that according to cockpit voice recorder the first officer locked the captain out of the cockpit and deliberately steered the aircraft into terrain. Pilots undergo detailed assessment and psychological tests. The first officer started training in 2008, worked as a flight attendant, continued training after undergoing another assessment, passed all tests and started his pilot career as first officer on the A320 in 2013. The CEO of Lufthansa explained, that if after the extended code to enter the cockpit has been entered, the pilot in the cockpit receives a signal and has the ability to open the door or lock the door. If the pilot in the cockpit does not react at all, the cockpit door opens upon entering the extended code after some time. If the pilot in the cockpit selects to lock the door, the door remains locked for 5 minutes. Within the entire Lufthansa group there is no standard operating procedure requiring another member of the (cabin) crew to enter the cockpit if one of the pilots leaves the cockpit. The captain was permitted to leave the cockpit in cruise flight, e.g. for a toilet break."
Fucking a fat girl is like riding a scooter... it's fun 'til someone sees you.
Really?
I would have thought the description of how the copilot behaved would have brought out some MKUltra speculation by now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
End of story.
OK. I was joking. I really blame Obama.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Regardless of who is to blame we all know what comes next: some third-world country gets bombed back to the stone ages and the TSA gets to start sticking bigger sharper things into our swimsuit zones.
(photo cutline) "MUST BE TWO: Until now one pilot could sit alone in the cockpit Norwegian flights if the co-pilot has left. It will now end." PHOTO JOHAN NILSSON / TT / NTB Scanpix
See full story at nrk.no
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
People need to stop losing their minds every time we have a tragedy. People are going to die in plane crashes from time to time. Sometimes it will be an accident, sometimes it will be negligence, and sometimes it will be terrorism. No one lives forever. Deal with it.
Put things into perspective
There were 3.4 trillion passenger miles flown worldwide in 2012, and 475 aviation deaths.
There were 3.0 trillion passenger miles driven in the US in 2012, and 33,561 traffic deaths.
Maybe it makes sense to add another pilot to flights, but lets not let the amount of press coverage a single incident gets determine policy changes.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
http://www.nrk.no/norge/endrer-rutinene-etter-flystyrt-1.12282226
NorwegianAir today requires 2 crew at all times in cockpit, just as we have in the US. We can only hope Lufthansa can follow sooner than later. Also, it's about time cockpit streaming cameras are required on all large passenger jets, demystifying most accident investigations. The worldwide passenger demand certainly trumps any pilot privacy.
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
Per French prosecutor, Co-pilot set controls to descend for deliberate crash. The course was a steady 26 degrees indicating he didn't faint and fall on the control stick and still maintain 26 degree course. Further, you must not just touch the control but hold it down for a time before the course is maintained. Breathing was normal.
The solution, already standard in the US (and today by NorewgianAir) is to require 2-crew in the cockpit at all times (one may be a stewardess). Further, aviation experts seem now convinced to require streaming cockpit cameras aboard all large passenger planes. This demystifies all the time spent on accident investigators & news media speculators. The worldwide passenger needs trump and pilot privacy.
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
and make planes self-flying, or flown remotely. The technology is there, has been for years. Now, if anyone cites the movie War Games as a cautionary tale, then I'm stumped.
Yes that's right, THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING. Why you might ask? Well it's simple!
Your brain usually takes care of breathing FOR you, but whenever you remember this, YOU MUST MANUALLY BREATH! If you don't you will DIE.
There are also MANY variations of this. For example, think about:
In conclusion, the THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING troll is simply unbeatable. These 4 words can be thrown randomly into article text trolls, into sigs, into anything, and once seen, WILL FORCE THE VICTIM TO TAKE CARE OF HIS BREATHING MANUALLY! This goes far beyond the simple annoying or insulting trolls of yesteryear.
In fact, by EVEN RESPONDING to this troll, you are proving that IT HAS CLAIMED ANOTHER VICTIM -- YOU!
So beware of all Frenchmen.
It will have a computer, a pilot and a dog: - The computer is there to fly the plane; - The pilot is there in case anything goes wrong; and - The dog is there to bite the pilot's hand if he tried to touch anything.
As terrible as this is, it has all the ingredients of a James Bond or Mission Impossible movie set up.
Who or what was on board that some nefarious power wanted eliminated? What leverage did that nefarious power have on the co-pilot to make him do this?
The simple explanation of "the guy wanted to commit suicide & take everyone with him" seems rather unconvincing. If that were so, why not crash into a populated area to maximize the damage? If it were an act of jihad, where is the call of glory to Allah & death to the infidels? (He knows the voice recorder is going, surely he would send a message of victory.)
I would expect/hope that people who fly airplanes go through some sort of psyche profile & background check. Hopefully something as common as losing a wife/girlfriend or being outed as homosexual or experiencing financial hardship would not be enough to push someone cleared to fly to mass murder-suicide.
We may never know.
Nah they just use the pile of veto-ed VN resolutions against Israel for that.
to crash. Air Traffic Control pinged the plane's transponder which, when prompted, relayed auto-pilot control settings. The co-pilot set the altitude target at 100 feet: http://forum.flightradar24.com...
Given the recent reports of lost airliners and locked cabin doors, why not install Onstar on all aircraft? Their web site says they can unlock your doors and use GPS to pinpoint your vehicle's location...
Well, he was gay so you can bet your last t-shirt that the media will drop the story pretty soon. (Can't say anything bad about them, even though both murder and suicide are pretty common in that community. It would lead to "prejudice", you know...)
See, you can have a media cover-up without a conspiracy, just wait a few days after the news-cycle has turned.
In the Lutthansa newsconference this morning, the same question was asked.
Altho 2-crew are required by US airlines, it is NOT an International requirement,
and Lufthansa doesn't have such a rule. The Lufthansa CEO "indicated" they
are not alone by being "lax", as the same applies with most airlines.
Airline experts say it won't be long til most airlines follow the US and Norwegian
lead as adopting the 2-crew cockpit rule.
I wonder if an ability to remotely override a pilot...oh, wait a minute, that doesn't sound so good either!
Greenwald is right. Had even one of his parents been of Middle Eastern origin, the state organs of security and the corporate media would be shouting "Terrorist!!". But since he's German (read: White), the 'T' word isn't even uttered, just mental illness.
Right. Being a pilot requires excellent executive functions.
Someone who can't get the tasks "lock door", "incapacitate other person in cockpit" and "fly plane into ground" in the correct order has no business at the controls of a plane!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
Air marshal in the jump seat at all times.
Could a flight attendant provide deterrence to a kamikaze bastard? No guns on flight deck so get creative with countermeasure proposals...
If i see a terrorist taking a pilot hostage, fuck it, I rush him, even if I get gunned down. And far more if they have only plastic or ceramic knife. You would have to have far more bullet than 100+ passenger to be able nowadays to do that, or a bunch of terrorist with weapons. Is the high security door *that* necessary anymore ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
pilot could have intentionally locked the door to do drugs or something then passed out and triggered the button to descend.
And how many of them are Germans working in the Eurozone? Just because Corporate America willingly puts profits ahead of people's lives, doesn't mean it's universal behavior.
His breathing would have been changed and he wouldn't be blocking the emergency access code. When the pilot enters the cockpit emergency access code, the cockpit has 30 seconds to block it before it unlocks the door. The "fainted" co-pilot blocked it, denying access to the captain and reprogrammed the course of the flight, speed and altitude. Hard to do all those things while being in a comatose state.
Why was he in San Francisco?
What was his religious affiliation?
Was he trying to disrupt CERN Hadron Collider?
Is the location of the crash significant?
Was he familiar with any passenger?
Was he intimately involved with another crew member?
. . . and not screaming in terror like the passengers on the plane he was piloting.
Too soon?
What could or should Andreas Lubitz have done to make this whole thing more mysterious and weird? Breathing into the mic while saying nothing is boring. At the very least he should have blathered something about a UFO. But I expect Slashdot readers can come up with some better ideas...
First of all, this is a horrible and tragic incident, and I can only imagine what people directly affected are going through.
Unfortunately, this type of incidents is something we as a society can never fully protect against. If you think about it, knowing human nature and the number of people with psychological issues out there, one might think it is a miracle that such dramatic events do not occur more often. Also one can never simultaneously protect everyone and all assets, that is just not feasible - for crazy people or terrorists there will always be soft targets available.
What actually _would_ help is if media could write more responsibly about this type of events, and now I am not just thinking about this particular event but other crazy people acts (which may incentivize other crazy people to want to get attention) and acts of terrorism. If some of the events that haunt our media for weeks were only barely mentioned and sticking to relevant facts rather than always making it about personal stories and tragedies, then terrorist acts or any attention seeking of crazy acts would lose their effect.
I really hope that becoming infamous was not part of the pilot's plan, because if that is so then media must bear a big part of the blame.
...this happens.
Opps.
We have come up with many brilliant things. Surely we can solve this moving forward.
1) make the interior cockpit door flat- no handles or anything that allows barricade (Handle on outside only- maybe its like this already)
2) In the "lock mode"....this should only be feasible through a very simple fingerprint scan by BOTH at the same time. ("together 1,2,3. Lock achieved)
3) if the pilot or co-pilot goes to restroom, they regain access with their code or fingerprint/scan or both from the outside. the door would be in the normal lock position in the cockpit. (you must unlock to leave- together again with scan)
Without the ability to barricade or completely lock the door - this tragedy its preventable.... OR they could just build the door further out so that the pilot never leaves the cockpit. The bathroom is part of the cockpit. Another suggestion is to have a junior co-pilot (third pilot.)
Yeah, actually it is 9/11 stupidity.
Solution would have been armored cockpits rejiggered to include food service, bunks and restroom sufficient for cockpit crew, separate, external door (doesn't open to the passenger section) into the aircraft for the pilots. An expensive 1-time cost. Instead of half-assed conversions and the open-ended expense, inconvenience, and dignity trampling of the TSA and associated rules and strangulations.
The current situation is a band-aid, and a pretty poor one at that. It does no good; it offers great potential for harm. As we have seen here.
And inasmuch as it is extremely unlikely that any load of passengers will ever again let a terrorist take control of an aircraft, knowing that doing so could lead straight to their death without passing go, so action is now always the better choice -- and terrorists know it -- the whole thing is basically wrongheaded from start to finish.
The most serious problem was commercial aircraft being used as guided kinetic weapons. That will likely never happen again unless the aircraft is transporting several terrorists and no one else but a load of first-year brownies. Perhaps not even then.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
no text
You can't keep blaming Obama. He meant Jeb Bush.
I can see the fnords!
A couple of days ago, a Christian musician family in Phoneix (I think) went obviously nuts and engaged in a massive firefight with police in a big box parking lot they were camping in. Their entire repetoir was about Jesus coming and the End Times - and I'm guessing, since they were all armed, they were the US Government-Obama-is-Satan cultists that are extremely pervasive in the Confederacy (the West is just the suburbs of the Confederacy, has been since the end of the civil war). We have a gigantic armed cult of doomsdayer Dominionists dispersed throughout the country, and the FBI taskforce that monitored it was taken down at the insistence of Congressional confederate Republicans. Our loonies wear ties and Glocks and praise Jesus and fear the negro President. Not even a little bit hyperbolic.
'5, Interesting' is a high score for bullshit.
I know you leftists hope and pray that every new mass murder is a right-wing terrorist attack. You must be constantly disappointed that nut jobs with leftist sympathies and Islamists are doing the actual killing.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Astounding that you didn't know about this. If they had been Muslims, it would have been world news.
And, I win.
I correct myself: I am ABSOLUTELY astounded how little coverage this gets. ASTOUNDED. And this is me we're talking about.
http://www.christianpost.com/n...
http://www.azcentral.com/story...
http://boingboing.net/2015/03/...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
http://www.charismanews.com/us...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Well just for you, then, and only for you, the answer is she should remove her clothes and give him a world class beej while distracting him from the switch she's flipping to unlock the door. And then the pilot comes in and makes it a three-way. Because in your world all flight attendants are hot, slutty females.
Ignorant ass.
I can see the fnords!
What if this is identity theft? Is it possible a terrorist could have taken the "real" co-pilot hostage and stolen all of his ID, etc? It seems like something out of a movie but it could be a possibility.
Add a toilet in the cockpit and a dumb waiter for food from the galley and lock the pilots in the cockpit for the duration of the flight. For longer flights, enlarge the cockpit to include beds for the extra crew that will take shifts.
This will also prevent the race condition where a hijacker just waits by the door until one of the cockpit crew needs to go out for a few minutes (after slicing the flight attendants with broken glass - with or without drinking the content of their duty-free or on-board bought glass bottle).
[In other news, I may get a visit from the spooks in the following days, asking me about that broken glass bottle, and how I came to think of it, if I plan to enact such a scenario, or if I know of anybody else wishing to do so - forgetting that the crazies don't usually publicise their strategies beforehand unless their also stupid]
Arm all pilots with a gun for 'suicide at home use'. Or give them a bottle of pills to do the same. Couple it with insurance policies that pay out on suicide but not on the intentional crash of the plane. Just a thought. Decriminalize, destigmatize their suicide and take methods that aid them or the process itself.
It may not be the factor here, just a thought.
Kind of like that one Elite Banker who got suicided by shooting himself EIGHT FUCKEN TIMES with a NAILGUN!
Yup, and also there are going to be multiple illiterate geniuses coming on here to say such a thing is perfectly sensible.
I think Finnair started doing that at the same time as the post-9/11 reinforced doors were introduced. Already in 2003 or so I saw their procedure for how one of the pilots could visit the lavatory. It was explained to me because I sat in the first row and couldn't help staring at the flight attendant when she exited the cockpit as the other pilot returned. The crew flirted with each other and said something in Finnish and my mind was "WTF? Did they just have a quickie in the cockpit whilst the co-pilot was gone?" She said that they must keep the door locked all the time but as a precaution nobody is left alone in there. Of course, it still doesn't rule out a quickie now that I think about it...
There you go again confusing your hubris with knowledge. You have a lot to learn about mental illness.
This disaster seems related to the missing Malaysian flight in that it appears a suicidal pilot commandeered the aircraft in both cases. In this day of mobile networks, there shouldn't be a second where flight video and data isn't being uploaded to a server in real-time.
Who says it has to add weight? Use modern materials for the partition; carbon fiber structures can be ultra tough and very light weight, for example. And probably not used in any near-current design as aircraft take a very long time from paperwork to production. A door in the fuselage weighs about the same as the fuselage; thicker in the middle, thinner at the edges. It might even reduce weight by creating more open space in the cockpit. You can argue that it would reduce passenger capacity, but inasmuch as US passenger aircraft are typically not fully loaded, it doesn't add cost in most cases either. No matter what, it wouldn't cost as much as the TSA does, between the actual money spent and the huge amount of people's time they subtract from pursuits that would actually benefit the economy. Not to mention the level of irritation and the follow-on effects on productivity and civility...
Always wondered why they didn't design the passenger seating to be removable and collapsible and just pull all the empty seats out as a pre-takeoff action after the aircraft is fully loaded. Be a heck of a weight savings. Plus they could probably leverage it to reduce the anti-passenger effect of the seat designs created by the one-armed, one-legged engineer that all the airlines seem to hire.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Or maybe the story has something in common with this
www.nation.co.ke/News/Ministers+Saitoti+Ojode+killed+in+chopper+crash/-/1056/1424382/-/ehbfn9/-/index.html
The problem (the armored cockpit door) is what they call security theater. The plane is full of your most valuable asset - all the passengers. They vastly out number the bad guys. We need to take aircraft design away from the politicians and let engineers do it.