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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.
Apparently this is not the case in Europe. Perhaps it will be now.
How unfortunate this happened.
... 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.
Giving one pilot (in the cockpit) the means to basically lock himself in with no ability for the other pilot to enter is too great a danger.
Except when there is a terrorist threatening the pilot outside, asking him to enter the code...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
No. You are trying to explain a mechanical failure of a door right at the moment when the aircraft suddenly starts descending into mountains all the while during which the copilot also does nothing to try to correct this unscheduled descent and also ignores air traffic control. Seriously if it has wings and floats on the water and looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. Your version requires many, many things to go wrong at once. The simple answer is, of course, only one thing went wrong - the co-pilot locked the door and set the plane to descend. Occam's razor, and all that.
Adding fuel to this theory is that the co-pilot was detatched and monosyllabic when receiving the briefing about landing in Dusseldorf - he had already made up his mind that he wasn't going to reach Dusseldorf. If the pilot wasn't going to go to the bathroom he probably was planning on killing the pilot anyway.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Once someone is willing to die to accomplish their goal, I maintain that there is no 100% foolproof method for preventing an attack (either on themselves or others).
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.