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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.
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.
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.
Apparently this is not the case in Europe. Perhaps it will be now.
How unfortunate this happened.
"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
... 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.
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.
The thing is, this really is a freak occurance. So many flights, every single day, over every single city. People need to piss and shit, its simple biology. Every time someone goes for a piss break, someone else needs to be called in? That is just silly and insulting to the people involved.
In the grand scheme of things to worry about, this isn't really one of them. Its ridiculous to feel we need new regulations every time something happens...the next tragedy will always happen. It is inevitable.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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.
Well won't that would be fun when the hackers focus their attention on their new remote-control planes.
Airplanes are all about redundancy, especially commercial air travel. It applies to the actual plane, and I see no reason not to apply it to pilots. Why do you think there are two pilots to begin with? Airlines want to save money. They would drop the second pilot if it weren't for safety regulations in the first place.
You screw up a car? You can coast to a stop most of the time and call it a fun adventure. You screw up and airplane and you will most likely DIE. So yes, I prefer to be silly and insulting to the people involved since it means air travel will be safer.
Regardless, was 16 schoolkids (amongst others) on that flight. You wanna hari kari? Go ahead, but keep it on your own dime.
Invoking "Think of the children" is just as bad here as anywhere else. None of the people on that plane deserved what happened to them*
* with perhaps the exception of the co-pilot
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Tell that to the family of the people that crashed. Sorry, I will take a little inconvenience of the flight crew, versus allowing a single person in the cockpit able to do what happened here.
Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Convention
Every time someone goes for a piss break, someone else needs to be called in?
When you are actively responsible for the lives of 150 people, then yes, absolutely, without any doubt whatsoever, this should happen.
Its ridiculous to feel we need new regulations every time something happens...the next tragedy will always happen. It is inevitable.
Good regulations can help people and in this case may have saved lives. What I find abhorrent is your attitude that over a hundred human lives aren't worth a very slight inconvenience.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
If having another person in the cockpit reduces the risk of suicidal success by "only" 50%, I take it anyway.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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.
I wouldn't say "nothing". It's hard to concentrate on suicide if you're busy trying to murder someone.
Zero. The 9-11 attacks worked because no one expected the hijackers were intending to suicide all along. We now know it, and they cannot hijack planes and succeed anymore, as no one will cooperate.The entire plane would swarm them, and rightly so. So they don't hijack. Zero hijackings prevented, not because of protocols, but because it's damned impossible to succeed, even without steel doors. We've overreacted, and now we've lost an actual plane because of the totally safe terrorism doors that even the commander can't open. Sigh.
According to a CBS article, the US has a policy that no one single person can be in the cockpit alone during a flight.
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.
Well supposing that it was in fact a deliberate act:
1) the pilot in question waited for the other pilot to leave the cabin, so I'd say he was expecting that the plan would not work otherwise.
2) it's pretty hard to kill an actively resisting person while in cramped space while unarmed
3) the cabin crew replacing the missing pilot would only have to hold off the suicidal one long enough for the missing one to override the cabin lock (remember: he can do it as long as each override attempt is not voided from inside the cabin)
'Invoking "Think of the children" is just as bad here as anywhere else.'
If you can't see the obvious tragic death of a child (with their future robbed from them) having a heavier weight than an 80 y/o great grandmother who's had a wonderful life then I can't help you.
Yes, NOBODY deserved what happened to them -- but as someone who's experienced the death of elder loved ones and children, I can tell you the conversations about loss are quite different at their respective wakes.
'This "think of X" makes me sick'
Be sick, then.
Attending the funeral of a lost elder: Virtually all the conversations are about OUR loss. "I'll miss him. He was always there for me. He's been in my life since I was born".
Attending the funeral of a lost child: All the conversations are about the child's loss. "He'll never go to college. He'll never have a girl friend. He'll never get married. He'll never be a father".
Think it's sick? Bully for you. You're wrong.
'The bottom line is you are justifying it by casting another person as "lower" or "less""'
Ship goes down, save the children first. Sick? Or common sense? One life isn't worth more or less than any other -- on that we agree. But when talking about loss, we are have very different conversations.
Fast forward a few years. Cabin attendant takes the crash axe from behind the copilot's seat and kills him with it. (One of the fire extinguishers will do fine to knock him out, too).
Really, there's only so much you can do to prevent this kind of thing. Once flying personnel can't be trusted anymore, all bets are off.