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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.
http://pilots-airmen.findthedata.com/l/986395/Andreas-Guenter-Lubitz
Except that the co-pilot "manipulated the flight monitoring system" to allow the plane to descend at 1000 meters/minute.
Jeebus, that's terrible!
Very unlikely. It's been explained that the door lock has 3 positions: Not locked, Normal, Locked. The door is always in the "Normal" position: the normal position allows another pilot, outside the cockpit, to unlock and enter the door after entering a digital code. The "Locked" position is used only in extreme cases, and nobody but the people inside the cockpit may unlock the door. The door has been switched to "Locked".
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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.
And the co-pilot had to have blocked the door so that the pilot could not re-enter. From the article, there is a code that allows crew members to open the cabin door from the outside, but the pilot inside the cabin has the ultimate power to block access. So it seems the co-pilot deliberately overrode the ability of the pilot to access the cabin again.
"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
It's a single switch. Dont make it sound like he pushed a dresser in front of the door.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Ot that they haven't slept. I know several airline pilots, they are told to fly even when they are very tired or when sick.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
... 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.
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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...
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...
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Here is the pic of the switch in question:
http://oi58.tinypic.com/qyhc0p...
In "normal" mode its set to allow the door to unlock when the external code is entered.
In "unlocked" mode, the door is completely unlocked.
In "locked" mode, the door is completely locked, the external code will not unlock it.
The action to move between the three states is a very deliberate one - you need to lift the switch up and move it, there is an infinitesimally small chance that it was engaged by accident.
Just $300 million? So, he handled restocking the Pentagon with toilet paper or something?
...its rare that a person feints while in a seated position,...
That's not true at all. For example, often times when I am relegated to the middle seat on an airplane I'll get all fidgety and unbuckle my belt. The aisle seat passenger will assume I need to get up and start to get his/her stuff in order so that I may be let out. Then I just settle back in to my chair and keep watching my movie.
I think you meant, "faint".
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
its rare that a person feints while in a seated position, its far more common while standing.
Only because it's hard to advance or retreat from a seated position. I bet there's an example in a Three Musketeers movie though. Allez!
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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If something like that happened, you would expect the copilot to say something about it. Instead, all they hear is the captain banging on the door, and only continued breathing from the copilot.
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.
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.
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
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?
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If having another person in the cockpit reduces the risk of suicidal success by "only" 50%, I take it anyway.
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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.
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.
Producing the alarm sound when the autopilot is turned off, which would have been heard on the recording.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Unfortunately, not having a "Locked" position would be the same amount of idiotic.
But also failing to give one pilot the means to lock out the other pilot would be too great a danger.
Both scenarios presume one pilot who intends to destroy the aircraft and one pilot who intends to save it. That's the presumption either way, and however you approach the problem it's going to come down to whether the bad guy is locked into, or locked out of, the cockpit.
It's a coin toss, not 9/11-triggered-stupidity corruption.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I'm pretty sure that the autoland feature refuses to cooperate in the middle of the Alps.
But there are more would-be terrorists in the world than severely depressed pilots.
It is not that rare:
Mozambique Airlines flight 470 - 29 November 2013
Egypt Air flight 990 - 31 Oktober 1999
Silk Air flight 185 - 19 December 1997
Royal Air Maroc flight 630 - 21 Augustus 1994
Japan Airlines flight 350 - 9 Februari 1982
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.
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).
So beware of all Frenchmen.
Regarding overriding the autopilot system, not it is not - you do not "remove" the autopilot from "normal law", as that is the normal operating law and you cannot intentionally degrade to alternate law.
Flight laws have nothing to do with autopilot states or limits. They are flight system protections and limits.
The 15 degrees value you use is the protection that normal law gives the pilot when the pilot is in charge, it is not a limit on what inputs you can command using the side stick while the autopilot is on. 15 degrees is quite a steep nose down angle.
Lets not forget here that we are talking about the aircraft descending, which does not necessarily require it to have a nose down position. There are several ways in which to achieve a descent, most of them in a normal situation does not require side stick interaction.
'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.
Indeed. Here's a 5 minute Airbus-produced video showing how the reinforced door interlock system works, including the exact same switch you describe:
Airbus Reinforced Cockpit Door Description and Procedure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
I can believe this. But what if, instead of falling against the switch, the copilot, recognizing that he was about to pass out (e.g. recognizing symptoms of an impending stroke), intentionally attempted to move the switch to the "unlocked" postion (to make it easier for the captain to get into the cockpit quickly)? Due to a combination of confusion, physical incapacitation, and infamiliarity with a probably rarely-used control, he could conceivably have turned the switch to the wrong position even while he was attempting to do what he thought would be the best possible action.
The switch is designed such that the middle ("norm") position is the only one that's stable and will be retained without the user pushing the switch. I.e. the switch will always move back to "normal" when not actively pushed to either "lock" or "unlock". And with the switch in stable position, the door can always be unlocked from the outside -- with a short delay that gives the person inside the cockpit time to actively suppress the unlock using the switch. If the person in the cockpit does nothing, the door unlocks. So without deliberate and repeated activity from the person inside the cockpit, there is no scenario that would indefinitely prevent people outside the cockpit from entering.