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.
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).
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.
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 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
And lock the door just before?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
It's impossible to crash this type of Airbus plane by accidentally leaning on the controls after a heart attack. Also, they could hear normal breathing until the last moment, and they know that the door must have been locked from the inside.
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
No, nobody has noticed that:
http://www.smh.com.au/business...
They're just imaginging things. The data says it's bullshit.
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.
So you are saying: 28 year olds were perfectly fit to pursue risky adventures. Am I missing something from your argument?
Have you ever looked at the average age of air force fighter pilots? People in their mid-twenties get to fly planes packed full of munitions that can ruin your day.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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.
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.
20 years ago, a hijacker would change the route to a different country. Now, he'd change it to the side of a building.
Circumcision is child abuse.
What about a stroke while still breathing, locking accidentally the door to "locked from inside", triggering accidentally the descent mechanism, accidentally not answering the door?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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
And you think someone on a suicide death dive with 200 people into a mountain is going to sit there quietly, breathing *normally*? Unless they are a complete and utter psychopath they will surely be in a heightened emotional state, crying, screaming, blaming anyone and everyone, not casually watching the altimeter spin down.
And what about the locked door? May be the action of a semi-conscious man, but... too many coincidences.
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?
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.
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..."
Unless they are a complete and utter psychopath...
How would to call somebody who decides to crash into a mountain with 149 innocent passengers/crew ?
And you think someone on a suicide death dive with 200 people into a mountain is going to sit there quietly, breathing *normally*? Unless they are a complete and utter psychopath they will surely be in a heightened emotional state, crying, screaming, blaming anyone and everyone, not casually watching the altimeter spin down.
This is the main reason I have my doubts about this theory. The world is a large and strange enough place that it can happen, but it doesn't seem plausible on the face of it.
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...
There are no self-drving cars as yet. There are prototypes. And they do fail.
I think you might be dismissing that possibility prematurely. We shouldn't rule anything out at the moment IMHO.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
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.
Yeah, the deniers' drivel gets old after a while. But I don't think that's what you meant.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
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.
It's more likely that somebody will be breathing normally during a suicide mission than that they'll be breathing normally during a severe medical emergency, or during a mechanical malfunction, struggling to keep control of the plane.
Also, a medical condition wouldn't explain why the plane entered a descent (it takes a bunch of coordinated actions to do that), or why the captain couldn't open the door.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
A pilot hired and selected by an airline company. You have your answer.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
OK. I was joking. I really blame Obama.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
To be a completeness nazi: Silk Air. Into the Indonesian mountains.
I have a friend who is a recently retired captain at one of the major carriers in the U.S., who used to fly the Airbus A320. In reply to my question about this incident, he told me that his company's policy was to never leave one crew member in the cockpit. Upon exiting the cockpit, another flight crew member would enter the cockpit.
Most airplane accidents requires a lot of smaller errors to happen, often a combination of human error and mechanical error.
Except for the loud banging of the door, which was actively locked from the outside, preventing the screaming crew and passengers access to the cockpit.
And you think someone on a suicide death dive with 200 people into a mountain is going to sit there quietly, breathing *normally*? Unless they are a complete and utter psychopath they will surely be in a heightened emotional state, crying, screaming, blaming anyone and everyone, not casually watching the altimeter spin down.
Guy could have had an absent seizure, he would still be breathing but not necessarily conscious of the world around him, what's more it could cause him to exhibit automatism
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
(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
Well this one is unfortunately easy to refute with data.
From the linked article: "Al-Batouti was married and had five children".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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!
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.
What about a stroke while still breathing, locking accidentally the door to "locked from inside", triggering accidentally the descent mechanism, accidentally not answering the door?
That is of course a possibility. But how often has it happened that someone had a stroke while still breathing, triggering the descent mechanism by accident and _not_ locking the door from the inside? It seems that it is hard to lock the door by accident, so not locking it is 100 times more likely than locking it. Do we have any reported case of that? Where the pilot went into the cockpit just in time to save the airplane? I don't think so.
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...
Ackkkk! You don't know your theology, Allah is so other that he never communicates directly with man, he sends an angel. Even Muhammad was communicated to by an angel...oh piss, he was communicated to because the idiot part of his brain was speaking voices to the other idiot part of his brain and he took it to be Gabriel. Being someone afflicted with grandiosity (among his other mental ailments), he went on to conquer a good part of Saudi Arabia, blame the Jews for his problems, and declare himself Prophet Forever, i.e., there'll be no other such deluded soul to follow him...typical scam produced by a mental illness. Putin isn't quite as far gone but I deem he'll get there in the end...maybe that wax Lenin will start talking to him.
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...
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
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.
There's another one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
A cargo plane, and the crew were able to overcome the suicidal maniac.
Don't think about the pink elephants on your lawn.
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.
Absence seizures don't really work like that, and they don't really show up as a new diagnosis in someone that age. A prior diagnosis would have disqualified him from getting a commercial (and probably a private) pilot's license. And automatisms won't don't that. My wife is an epileptologist, I know far more than I want to about these things.
Absence seizures don't really work like that, and they don't really show up as a new diagnosis in someone that age. A prior diagnosis would have disqualified him from getting a commercial (and probably a private) pilot's license. And automatisms won't don't that. My wife is an epileptologist, I know far more than I want to about these things.
They might not work like that when the condition causing them is Epilepsy, which I agree isn't really a thing that just randomly happens.
That said, there still could be some kind of neurological condition behind this, I am not a doctor so I am not going to argue the specific diagnosis, I'm sure your wife is right.
The thing that makes me think there was something physically wrong (be it drugs or pathology), is the fact he is reported as "breathing normally" during the whole thing, even if he was a terrorist or suicidal, he would still have the fight or flight reaction, and there is no way rapidly approaching a cliff wall and knowing you are going to die and kill 200 (or however many) people in the process would not trigger the fight or fight response, and one of the main symptoms of a big adrenaline surge is an increase in breathing and heart rate.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
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.
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.
Yes. Especially if they both had the fish.
I can see the fnords!
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!
no. on egypt 990 the pilot was right there next to the copilot the whole time
The flight recorder recorded the pilot getting up and going to the toilet. While he was gone, the co-pilot put the plane into a steep descent. The pilot returned, and clearly realized something was wrong, but didn't seem to be aware that the co-pilot was intentionally causing the rapid descent. He tried to pull up, but the co-pilot was continuing to push the nose down. Time quickly ran out.
But the pilot was never locked out of the cockpit. I was wrong about that.
That's not how it works. Not at all. I'm an anesthesiologist, and my job basically consists of being cool when the world goes crazy. Just like a pilot. Unlike him, I haven't decided that the world needs to go down with me.
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.