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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.
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 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.
That is not entirely true; the procedure takes the following steps - The door is normally pre-locked and can only be opened from inside - Crew trying to enter from outside have first to contact the cockpit via intercom and then press a code on a pad. The cockpit gets a visual and aural signal and has a time period to confirm the entry. - When the crew finds that the cockpit is not responding to a request they (mostly the Purser) can enter a security code on the pad which will unlock the door after a time period - but the cockpit can still override the opening request within 20 seconds. So whenever a pilot or crew is not able to enter a cockpit for an extended period, then somebody in the cockpit is denying them the entry by an action (flipping a switch). That is why some airlines allow a cockpit member to leave the cockpit only while two crew members are in the cockpit for that time (4 eyes principle).
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.
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...
Just $300 million? So, he handled restocking the Pentagon with toilet paper or something?
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
Regulations suck, but they're often effective:
http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/articles/20140315_gdc500_0.png
'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.
So beware of all Frenchmen.
'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.