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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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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.
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.
... 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.
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.
...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".
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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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.
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.
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.
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
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.