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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.

15 of 737 comments (clear)

  1. Not always true... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    ...maybe he had a heart-attack?

    1. Re:Not always true... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      So now we want our drone pilots to take over passenger aviation controls the moment it's suspected an aircraft leaves it's projected path.

      Maybe we should, if there is only one person in the cockpit. This is not just a single freak event. The same thing happened on Egypt Air 990. The copilot deliberately locked the pilot out, and then flew the plane into the sea while chanting "I rely on God". And we still don't know what happened to Malaysia Air 370.

      Intentional crashes appear to be about as common as terrorist attacks. So they should be taken seriously.

    2. Re:Not always true... by RabidReindeer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Before we got so efficient, a cockpit would have 3 or 4 personnel. Pilot, co-pilot, engineer, possibly radio officer. If there were always at least 2 people in the cockpit at all times, then it would be much harder for a single berserker to crash.

      Unless of course, you arm the pilots and they shoot everyone else first.

  2. Re:Risk Management by Lumpy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Any method of getting in from the passenger compartment would be vulnerable to coercion."

    not if you have an air marshall with an AA12 shotgun full of beanbag rounds right there. There are very simple answers, the airlines are whiny bitches that claim they cant afford it, and that is the center of the problem.

    3 crew on flight deck for all aircraft, Let the pilots rest and get good sleep, and2 very well armed angry air marshalls on every flight. Solves 100% of all "terrorisim" problems.

    Sadly the people in charge of security that have zero clue as to what to do, and the airlines whiny executives disallow the correct answer.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. Re: Can't wait... by NotDrWho · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  4. Security is hard... by pehrs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

  5. Re:Risk Management by Jeremi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You already need a pass code but, apparently, also whoever is in the cockpit also has to authorize.

    The above is incorrect -- the person in the cockpit doesn't have to authorize, he just has to not actively prevent re-entry. (The PIN system is designed so that if the person in the cockpit passes out, another flight crew member can get into the cockpit. A requirement that the person in the cockpit actively grant access to the cockpit would defeat the purpose)

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  6. Re:Risk Management by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Interesting

    3 crew on flight deck for all aircraft, Let the pilots rest and get good sleep, and2 very well armed angry air marshalls on every flight. Solves 100% of all "terrorisim" problems.

    Well, until the air marshals themselves go rogue. (It seems unlikely, but then again, so is a suicidal copilot.)

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  7. Re: Risk Management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If a pilot can go bad, so can an armed air marshal, alas. The reasoning for three pilots would also require three air marshals.
    Maybe better to just ensure that there is a backup code, maybe half known to one flight attendant and half to another.

  8. Re:people are going to be saying by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2, Interesting

    pilot suicide/ homicide is just as much a bizarre outlier as murderous hijacking

    Oh the irony! The A320 was one of the first planes to have only 2 pilots instead of 2 pilots + 1 engineer (for cost reasons). At the time, 2 persons could always be in the cockpit at anytime.

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  9. Re:it could have been an accident by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No.

    Simply falling on this switch wouldnt cause it to change positions - it requires a deliberate act to do so, the switch requires a certain force to pull up and then move to one position or another, its not like accidentally changing channels on your TV because you sat on the remote.

    Also, there is no button or switch he could have fallen on which would have caused the gradual descent that we know the aircraft took. Changing the auto pilot altimeter requires you to use a dial and then confirm the change in two separate actions. Any interaction with the side stick would require the auto pilot to be off, which would mean we should have seen a lot of other, large movements in the aircrafts path, which are completely missing from the telemetry we have at the moment.

    The few commands that we see in the telemetry (and by telemetry I mean the transponder tracks, which cover speed, height and directional changes) indicate that the aircraft was under either the control of the pilot or the autopilot for the entire duration of the descent.

  10. Re:Risk Management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Even if an FA in the cockpit is not able to stop a rogue pilot, they can at least leave evidence on the CVR.

  11. Re:it could have been an accident by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Interesting

    there's speculation, there's also logical inference. considering the entire universe of possibilities doesn't mean we turn off our brains

    you are correct we should consider all possible situations, no matter how remote, because we're already in far remote territory here with this sequence of events

    but the door being locked (intentionally or otherwise), combined with the pilot banging on the door outside and no answer, leads one to a logical conclusion about copilot intent: he meant to do this

    the door could have malfunctioned AND the copilot didn't care about banging on the door?

    i guess the door could have malfunctioned AND the copilot had a stroke

    but everything in life is a calculated consideration of possibilities, and now we're going from "chance of winning the lottery" to "chance of winning the lottery 100 times in a row"

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  12. Where was the flight attendant? by dtmos · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  13. Re:Be careful of the term "terrorist attack" by Catbeller · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.