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Modern Cockpits: Harder To Invade But Easier To Lock Up
HughPickens.com writes: Jad Mouawad And Christopher Drew write in the NY Times that although airplane cockpits are supposed to be the last line of defense from outside aggressors, airlines have fewer options if the threat comes from within. One of the major safety protocols that actually made planes safer in the past 15 years was that the cockpits were turned into fortresses. Unfortunately, that exact advantage was exploited by the co-pilot of the Germanwings plane on Tuesday to crash it intentionally. "It is shocking to me that there was not a second person present in the cockpit," says Mark Rosenker, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. Access to the cockpit is strictly regulated in the United States. Passengers are not allowed to congregate near the cockpit door, and whenever the door is open, no one is allowed in the forward bathroom and flight attendants usually block aisle access, sometimes using a food cart. The Federal Aviation Administration mandates that a flight attendant must sit in the cockpit when either pilot steps into the passenger area; European regulations do not have a similar two-person rule, but they're now talking about creating one.
The Germanwings accident also points to potential shortcomings in how pilots are screened for mental problems, a recurring concern for an industry that demands focus and discipline in an increasingly technical job, often in stressful situations. In 2012, a well-regarded pilot with JetBlue, one of the airline's earliest employees, was physically restrained by passengers on a flight from New York to Las Vegas after displaying erratic behavior. In that case, the co-pilot locked the pilot out of the cabin and made an emergency landing in Amarillo, Tex. "Aircraft-assisted pilot suicides," as the Federal Aviation Administration calls them, are rare. They include the November 2013 crash of a Mozambique Airlines plane bound for Luanda, Angola, which bears an eerie resemblance to the Germanwings plane's demise. When the flight's co-pilot left to use the lavatory, the captain locked him out of the cockpit and manually steered the aircraft earthward. The crash of Egypt Airlines Flight 990 off Nantucket, Mass., in 1999, which killed all 217 people on board, was also caused by deliberate action, a National Transportation Safety Board investigation concluded. Experts on suicide say that the psychology of those who combine suicide with mass murder may differ in significant ways from those who limit themselves to taking their own lives.
The Germanwings accident also points to potential shortcomings in how pilots are screened for mental problems, a recurring concern for an industry that demands focus and discipline in an increasingly technical job, often in stressful situations. In 2012, a well-regarded pilot with JetBlue, one of the airline's earliest employees, was physically restrained by passengers on a flight from New York to Las Vegas after displaying erratic behavior. In that case, the co-pilot locked the pilot out of the cabin and made an emergency landing in Amarillo, Tex. "Aircraft-assisted pilot suicides," as the Federal Aviation Administration calls them, are rare. They include the November 2013 crash of a Mozambique Airlines plane bound for Luanda, Angola, which bears an eerie resemblance to the Germanwings plane's demise. When the flight's co-pilot left to use the lavatory, the captain locked him out of the cockpit and manually steered the aircraft earthward. The crash of Egypt Airlines Flight 990 off Nantucket, Mass., in 1999, which killed all 217 people on board, was also caused by deliberate action, a National Transportation Safety Board investigation concluded. Experts on suicide say that the psychology of those who combine suicide with mass murder may differ in significant ways from those who limit themselves to taking their own lives.
So, after 9/11 they rushed to put door locks on the damned things.
And, now, to the utter shock and amazement of everybody ... someone in the cockpit can lock people out of it. Exactly as they designed it.
I'm stunned, I tell 'ya.
Of course, now when the pilot has to take a leak there is one less cabin crew, which I'm sure you can construct a scenario in which that's not a good idea.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Unfortunately, if one of the pilots wants to take the aircraft somewhere (be it into the side of a mountain, or to Cuba, or wherever) there's little the engineers, airlines or ATC can do about it. Any security measure will have a gap.
And also, the pilots must have control of the aircraft. It's far more likely that an exception to protocol or security will be required to save lives than to endanger them.
I can see the fnords!
That co-pilot was a crazy as a March hare. Very sad for the people on board.
Having a flight-attendant sit in for a two-person rule may not have saved the plane, but at least the co-pilot would have to work harder for it.
Feel free to put on the Tin Foil Hat, but something has been bugging me about this whole thing.
It seems to me that one of the many primary directives of a flight control system would be prevent controlled flight into terrain. Knowing where you are, where you are pointed and what's in front of you terrain wise is pretty stand stuff. Airbus planes already actively prevent pilots from doing stupid stuff that could overstress the aircraft. So how was this guy able to "program" a decent into a fucking mountain range? Makes no sense. Either something is off, or someone needs to file one hell of bug report or enhancement request.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
How about a urinal inside the cockpit? ...It's a cockpit, right?
Fatly underlines? I guess you mean underlined with a wide-tip marker?
I'm not talking just the auto pilot function, but the ability to autonomously react to a variety of conditions much in the same way that the self driving cars do. Though I realize that driving and flying are completely different and getting the FAA to actually approve something like that may take decades, but something like this should at least raise autonomous plans as a viable option for the future.
Take this sig and smoke it.
I agree that the 'two people in cockpit at all times' rule that already exists in the US is a good idea and I'm sure this will now be introduced in Europe. Some airlines in Europe, Canada and elsewhere are already introducing it, as we speak.
As for the argument that the tougher cockpit doors and lockout mechanisms are to blame for this incident ... that could be argued, but those changes have probably saved more lives over the last 14 years than were lost in this tragic incident, so rolling them back would be unwise. Admittedly this is somewhat like Lisa's tiger rock - we don't ~know~ how many potential hijackings or cockpit intrusions haven't occurred simply because would-be hijackers know that taking that approach is useless now. But looking at the number of hijackings per decade pre-9/11 and comparing to now, I think it's safe to say the strengthened doors and new cockpit access protocols were a net improvement.
But all the security protocols in the world can't completely prevent incidents like this. Two people in the cockpit may make it slightly more difficult, but it just means the suicidal pilot needs to incapacitate the other person in there first. That adds an additional mental barrier (it is psychologically 'easier' to simply turn a dial and set an altitude below the terrain level, than it is to kill someone or knock them out first), so will prevent at least some of these incidents that may have otherwise occurred. But there is no complete solution because at the end of the day, those in the cockpit are in control of the machine and can do what they want with it. We put our trust in them, and in the airlines' ability to ensure their medical and psychological health.
Oh yeah, that didn't take long. Blame it on the whore. Right.
What about a limitation on the locking mechanism that causes the door to unlock during significant course corrections and descents at low altitude? (If you really want to cover contingencies there could also be a date-based override code for keeping the cabin locked which the pilots would have to radio for.) That leaves the pilots free to secure themselves in case of an internal upset during a normal flight, but the passengers would be able to mob the cabin in most of these scenarios. You could also add, e.g., buttons in the back of the plane which have to be pressed to unlock the cabin. Not terribly difficult to do if all the passengers see the point of getting in, but might make the logistics of a hijacking significantly more complicated (and impossible for a lone actor).
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
While this air crash was undeniably tragic, the focus on the lockability of cockpit doors seems to be ignoring a fairly basic consideration: Who do you trust more: the people you hired to fly the plane or everybody who purchased a ticket to ride it?
That doesn't rule out the possibility of problematic pilots; but it seems very, very, likely indeed that you are better off with a system where you can robustly lock the door, rather than one where blocking access is difficult. There may be room for other improvements, in hiring, training, navigation system safety overrides, etc. but this one just doesn't seem very hard.
Looks like someone has an axe to grind with a woman.
There are thousands (and many more) pilots of outstanding skill, character, values, etc. that dream of being an airline pilot. No shortage of pilots, and yet here we have someone that has done something horrible and thrown that opportunity away. Ok so we all have problems, even pilots dealing with many airlines skimping on pay and benefits (that's another story). It reminds me of the unabomber who had top career choice of a math professor at Berkeley but threw away that job to move into the backcountry to build mail bombs.
mfwright@batnet.com
airlines have fewer options if the threat comes from within.
This shouldn't be a surprise. It's the same thing with networked systems. It's not outside threats which pose the problem, it's the people on the inside who either inadvertently or deliberately cause the problems.
Once you've granted someone access to your data, no amount of firewalls, air gaps or anything else can prevent that person from doing damage in some form, even if only taking that data and giving it someone else on the outside.
In this case, since the co-pilot was on the inside and had the ability to override the security code to open the door, the damage was done long before he crashed the plane.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
1. doctors and psychologists who do reviews for organizations that have employees with major responsibilities: the military, nuclear plants, airlines, etc, they should be required to inform employers
2. then, employers who have employees they know have mental problems *have* to remove them from job positions where loss of life is easily caused. if that means removing them from the only field they are trained to work in, so be it. time to get a new career in a new field
it's not discrimination. it's safety. there was apparently warnings that mental health evaluators and employers knew that this guy had serious depression. he should simply never have been allowed to continue to be a pilot
is that fair? is it fair 150 people are dead? if you have mental problem, i sympathize. but you should not be trusted with my life
you don't hire asthmatics to do heavy lifting in dusty places, you don't hire albinos to work in the sun, you don't hire amputees for typing jobs. and you don't hire people with mental disorders to fly airplanes
some people have medical conditions which preclude them from certain lines of work. if you have major depression, you should not be allowed to have any job where you can easily cause loss of life. you should not be a commercial pilot. period
it's rather shameful german law does not reflect this, or any other country for that matter. i hope these familes sue. the german government, the airline industry, and Germanwings screwed up, and they need to receive a heavy reprimand on the only terms they understand: financial ones
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
A door lock override from the ground if the flight crew calls from the main cabin with an appropriate code?
If the pilot had a gun then this wouldn't have happened.
Or if the flight attendants had a gun, or any / all of the passengers. if all people were allowed NEY required! to carry guns on a flight this type of thing could never happen.
So, if a pilot decides to crash a plane into a mountain, do they think the flight attendant will be able to overpower the pilot and bring the plane back up to a safe cruising altititude on their own? Crashing a plane is a lot easier than flying one safely.
This is a good example of why we need to end the stigma on suicide and offer people ways to exit the mortal realm in a safe, private, and comfortable manner.
Suicide prevention is a wash and only tortures people who no longer have any wish to continue living. It's virtually forced captivity like an animal at the zoo.
And then they end up blowing up and killing themselves anyway in a very public manner taking hundreds of people with them.
But what do women pilots use? What if the call is for Bodily Function #2? Even with an all-male crew, do you really want to expose yourself this way to your colleague? There is this protocol with the urinals in the Men's Room of not looking over at other dudes -- at the controls of the plane, should the other pilot have to limit their gaze of the instruments and controls?
Seems like the easiest thing in this situation is to have the ability for someone on the ground (flight control, the airline, etc.) to be able to override any locks on the cockpit and open the door. Just put some sort of satellite communication device outside, near the door of the cabin.
This would be available in a situation like the Germanwings flight, or if the pilot became legitimately incapacitated.
If an owner whose car is fitted with the On-Star system can call them up to unlock his door should he lock himself out, why not put similar system in big planes?
I believe it was mentioned that it was a Good Thing when a co-pilot locked out a captain who was freaking out, allowing the co-pilot to make and emergency landing and save the passengers.
It's not about misogyny and blaming women, it's about ethics in aircraft journalism. #GERMANWINGSGATE
Actually helping people with mental health issues. Feel despair? Anger? Frustration? If you're the wrong person,or express it the wrong way, then the wheels of the system will crush you.
And no, we're not getting better at treating it properly. Pharmaceutical companies love the idea that their pills can help people. Lots of money in that.
And serious danger for the unsuspecting public. You want to screw up your mind? Take the wrong antidepressant, and no, the doctor doesn't really have a way to tell you what that is.
Yet life is full of people who suffer stress, unease, and even simple nutritional deficiencies. They do need help. But will we deal with the flaws of the treatment?
Maybe we'll claim to do so, just like the abuses of mental hospitals were dealt with. By shutting them down and pretending other solutions were effectively implemented.
It's OK though, as long as it isn't happening to you. You can ignore it. The people suffering under the existing system are probably at fault anyway, they're crazy, emotionally disturbed or just faking it anyway. Toughen up and deal with life.
Right?
And yes, this situation can be extended to cover victims police brutality, banking scams and the fellow who bought a house and wasn't able to get broadband service.
The Shoe Bomber Richard Reid got stomped by the other passengers, and the Underwear Bomber Abdul-Mutalub was fought and stopped by a fellow passenger.
On the other hand, if someone really wants to crash the plane, can the other pilot or the pilot with volunteer passenger "muscle" stop this. The passenger on that one plane in 9-11 broke open the cockpit door -- they were able to thwart a fourth attack on a building, but they were unable to prevent a crash. It seems they knew there chances of living were slim and they gave their lives to prevent loss-of-life on the ground.
Would you rather that depressed people seek treatment from professionals or avoid treatment like the plague for fear of the loss of their livelihood?
Personally, I'd rather that depressed people, even if they hold the lives of others in their hands, be free to seek treatment with no fear that they'll lose their livelihoods or otherwise be stigmatized. I'd draw the line at ACTUALLY SUICIDAL. A possible compromise is a TEMPORARY leave WITH PAY until they've got their issues sorted out.
Because the fact is that ANY human is potentially mentally unreliable. All it takes is one little burst blood vessel in the wrong place and the person who was very sane literally one second ago can do insane things the next second.
--PM
As for the argument that the tougher cockpit doors and lockout mechanisms are to blame for this incident ... that could be argued, but those changes have probably saved more lives over the last 14 years than were lost in this tragic incident
That's a pretty dubious assertion and you certainly have no evidence that it has saved any amount of lives. The main thing protecting the cockpit these days is the realization by most passengers that their safety is in their own hands. Anyone threatens to hijack a plane today and the passengers are very unlikely to sit quietly like they would have pre-9/11. The cockpit door lock is something that sounds sensible but which has unclear protective value and obviously introduces a new failure mode.
(I am copying a prior post of mine, but I think it bears repeating)
A flight officer should be able to engage a "defer to ground" mode from anywhere on the plane, at any time. Once "defer to ground" mode is engaged the autopilot cannot be disabled without the approval of an air traffic controller, or the consent of more than one (or more than two) flight officer(s). The air traffic controllers can then issue instructions to the autopilot or remotely control the plane or disable the "defer to ground" autopilot.
If the plane is out of range of air traffic control, the autopilot would (in addition to attempting to stabilize any descent) change trajectory to either a.) the closest known safe ground relay or b.) the closest known safe landing site.
In the ordinary course the pilots are in control, with "defer to ground" off by default, and can only be enabled by flight officers on the plane, so the plane cannot be compromised by malicious ATC.
It does seem that the most likely explanation is a suicide/homicide by the co-pilot, though the published evidence to date is also consistent with a terrorist act by any of these methods. Perhaps these are better regarded as exploits which the airlines do not protect against, entertainment for conspiracy theorists, or potential plot lines for a film:
1. Impostor hijacking: Terrorists kill the real co-pilot and steal his credentials before he reaches the airport. An impostor then passes security checks using the stolen credentials. Once past the security checkpoints the imposter switches to a second set of forged credentials from the stolen credentials. This works because the security guards who check the credentials are unlikely to know the pilot but are likely to detect forged credentials. The other airline employees are likely to know the real pilot and thus detect an impostor, but would be unable to detect forged credentials of someone posing as new airline pilot.
2. Greater Threat Scenario: Terrorist operatives disguised as government officials approach the co-pilot and inform him that the plane which he will l fly that day is rigged with a thermonuclear weapon triggered to explode either when it reaches its destination, if it deviates at all from its scheduled route, or if anyone attempts to diffuse it. He is told that the only way to prevent the loss of millions of lives is to fly the plane on its scheduled route and to crash it in a remote region. He is also told that he can not trust the pilot.
3. Drugged Pilots: Terrorists attempt to drug both the pilot and co-pilot with a custom time-released hallucinogen mixture which induces paranoid delusions and homicidal behavior. They fail to drug the pilot though because he skips his breakfast.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
This would look like a guy with low self-esteem which are also easy victims of depression. However, beside what you might have heard on Fox or CNN or read in NYT, that news phase is a guess and a fairy tale. Please wait until the authorities have collected the information and rules out all bla bla which came from the mother of a friend of hers.
Beside that. This looks like you had a similar relationship. In that case, you should go and talk about it professionally. It helps and prevents further situations following the same pattern.
How about a panic button outside the cockpit with the same code as the entry door that only the pilots know? If a pilot gets locked out and fears for the safety of the plane, he enters his panic button code and it locks out the cockpit controls and tells the autopilot to land at the nearest auto-land capable airport. The only way to disengage would be for both pilots to enter their own secret code. For bonus points, make it able to be remotely activated so when ATC finds that the plane is unresponsible and obviously off course, they can turn it on (or call the airline to turn it on).
Autoland may not be perfect, but it's probably safer than a suicidal pilot.
This accident fatly underlines the point....
I, for one, welcome the new word "fatly" into the world of English discourse...
The word appears to follow the rules of English word-making. It is also highly visual and conveys its imagery in a succinct yet easily digested way to probably all speakers of English, no matter how weak their grasp of the language might be.
Shakespeare would have been proud of this word. This is one he could have easily used, had he but thought of it first.
Will
That something was desperately wrong was known *before* the crash; too bad control of the plane could not be taken from the ground. Of course that would make the plane susceptible to hacking... or how about the remote capacity just to blow the door that in this case isolated the lunatic at the controls?
Pilot driven crashes are not rarities; it's just Germanwings and 9/11.
The mere act of setting the altimeter to 95 feet above sea level for a plane flying in mountains ought to have set off an alarm somewhere...
Urinals in cockpits. ASAP.
It already is 99% probably 99.99999 %.
Count up all the flights since a pilot last intentionally crashed an airliner.
Divide 1 by that number. Now you have your percentage effectiveness.
Hell - even a provable pilot error, rather than intentional crash, is probably at 99.99999 % or better.
Why does everyone know where I am with my phone but no one can find the black boxes? No GPS? No cell?
Why not collect voice and data in both black boxes for redundancy?
Why not have a recorder for the passenger cabin?
Why not have the ability to communicate with the ground in the passenger cabin?
Why not have the ground with an override for at least the cockpit door if not the controls?
I'd restate as "harder to invade but easier to lock valid personnel out", which seems a classic problem with any secure location. As such, there has to be existing solutions. Having two crew in the cockpit at all times is a good start but not a complete solution. (You could probably think of at least three ways around this.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Shit happens, people die. Welcome to the real world.
This incident, and many others similar to it, will NOT change my flying habits. I simply have better things to worry about than whether or not my pilot is going to go nuts and crash the plane. I have zero control over it, and the probabilities of it happening to me are incredibly low. I have a better chance of being hit by a bus, car, or even lightning than I do from dying in a plane crash, regardless of cause.
I have the same exact attitude toward most unlikely incidents (including all terrorist related incidents). The security theatre we've enacted after 9/11 appals me. Yes, 4 planes were taken over by complete mad men and crashed into buildings, killing about 3000 odd people. That sickens and saddens me, but I see absolutely NO reason why I should now be forced into rectal exams JUST to get on a plane. I have more important things to worry about (like whether I'll make my next appointment, or land that next juicy contract).
If the probability of a suicidal crew member is one in a million, then the probably of two is one in a trillion.
Don't forget the caveats of statistics. Independent events, all other things being equal, etc. With a common employer, the possibility of intimate relationships, etc the probability of two is not that simple. Plus homicide of the other is a relevant scenario not just a suicide pact.
So then the next thing you'd say is priests and lawyers should also not have confidentiality, because that would be inconvenient.
Lawyers and doctors have a relationship worthy of protection for very clear reasons. Same with spouses. But priests/clergy? Not really agreeing with that one. Why should a relationship between a priest and anyone else be a legally protected one relationship? What benefit to society is provided by protecting that relationship? I cannot think of a single benefit to society by protecting that relationship as something special when investigating a crime or inquiring about mental stability.
"The Germanwings accident..."
If we've established that it was intentional, as stated earlier in TFS ("exploited by the co-pilot of the Germanwings plane on Tuesday to crash it intentionally"), why on earth would anyone call this an "accident"? Call it a disaster, a tragedy, a terrorist attack, a murder-suicide; if you must cling to euphemisms call it an incident... but accident is the one thing we know for sure it was not.
Yes. They're called men.
That is the impression the word leaves, yes. No regular underscore for you. You get RED SHARPIE!
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
No shit, Sherlock.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Pilots dont take craps?
Actually, they don't. The military provides special "low residue meals" prior to long missions. :-)
Two persons in the cockpit won't help a thing.
First-off, a flight attendant ain't going to be able to counter a pilot's suicidal actions. So that's just theatre as usual.
Second, even another pilot ain't going to start by assuming that his co-pilot is suicidal. The pilot is going to assume that something is wrong with the plane. Any co-pilot worth his salt would easily be able to crash the plane while the pilot is trying to diagnose the problem.
The only problem here is that a trusted authority (i.e. a pilot in control of a plane) isn't trust-worthy. That problem isn't solved in the air -- because it's not a plane problem and it's not a cockpit problem. It's a trust problem. So it's solved at the point where the co-pilot became trusted. Maybe that was a year ago, maybe it was that morning. But it wasn't in the air. That's already too late for any documentable procedure.
"You pull the stick, houses become smaller.
You push the stick, houses get bigger."
All them anti-terror laws. The millions they took their deo's and Leathermans. They amount to nothing. These regulations are made by ignorant management and politicians covering their asses. Anyone working in the industry knows how to fool the scans and other counter assault measures.
The consensus back in the day when then the post-9/11 security regulations were instituted, amongst flight personnel, was that it would take a couple years extra for terrorists to get a front seat nstead of breaking down the cockpit door mid flight.
These regulations are a means to ease the customer, your fat mom *wants* to get her deo taken, then she knows you punk ass will not get on board with your inflammables. And she will continue to buy tickets. No regulations and markets will crash.
So dear government, what draconian law will you impose to prevent fuel truck drivers from driving into a school or school bus drivers from steering their vehicles into the Hudson river?
I can only feel relief that this fucked up co-pilot was only suicidal, not an Islamic terrorist or gang member.
Just imagine stuff like this became routines for retarderated extremists from long-term subversive cults.
And like any system needs a Snowden to add users to ACL's, there will be people steering your bus and flying your plane.
So what's next? Will the FAA proceed and require ground-based overrides to flightdeck misbehaviour? If so, possibly anyone working for the airliner or ATC within radio reach will be enabled to take command. I hope from the bottom of my soul that they will not enable remote overrides in aviation.
Flatly, as opposed to that wavy underline that word processors and web browsers use when you've mispelt a word or committed a grammatical sin.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S-Cggs1jOo
you maybe able to unlock the door from there.
No airline takeover/sabotage attempt that passengers could reach has succeeded since 911 (the most recent just a week or two ago when some idiot ran down the isles towards the cockpit door screaming - was tackled and pressed).
Stop locking the door altogether. If there's a problem, you'll have a line of people waiting to destroy whoever tries to take over a cockpit now. Threaten to hurt someone with a box cutter? Whatever damage you can do to one person is outweighed by every other person on that plane wanting to live.
Locking the cockpit doors has, to date, only brought disaster. You have to think that had the airplane that vanished had open cockpit access passengers could have got in there over the many hours the thing was off course (there are a lot of people that monitor aircraft position during flight).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Look, requiring two on duty actually increases risk factors.
But, keep living in your paranoid 'safety' world, it won't work anyway.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Welcome to Slashdot. People arguing over topics for which they have no practical experience.
Have gnu, will travel.
I saw this coming the day they announced the door redesign after 9/11. Unfortunately, there is not a perfect system. Control tower overrides could probably be hacked, giving air marshals an override code just adds more humans to the equation. Perhaps a computer that takes over if pilot gives plane instructions outside of safe parameters, but that type of system would be difficult to perfect and may create additional unforeseen problems. If anyone has a better system please post, but first research how the current systems work so you know what you are talking about. Some of the news media have done a good job of explaining how the timed lockout system works.
And Shakespeare came so very close to doing so:
As a matter of fact, the Oxford English Dictionary says that Barclay wins the honor for using fatly first.
Magnificent thing, the English language, so fatly adorned with so many words.
There is no protection against a sufficiently crazy pilot determined to crash an airplane. To be quite blunt about it, here is how it might go. Pilot brings hammer or other heavy blunt object into some bag he has in the cockpit. He pretends he is about to visit the bathroom. The other pilot has no idea anything is wrong, and after one whack with the hammer there is only one functional person in the cockpit.
Really, there is no defense. Ok, so in the above scenario, there is a sort of filtering of crazy people that only the ones who are willing to go Dexter on someone else and go through that experience, in addition to the more abstract idea of suicide-murdering a plane full of people without having to observe the result, will be able to go through with it. But this is just one random idea, and there must be lots of other ways. E.g. use chloroform, and put the other pilot to sleep.
There is no point trying to invent defenses against indefensible scenarios. All we can do is decide whether having planes flown by people is an acceptable risk. This week's happening was a tragic event, but one that historically happens extremely rarely - it is the first time I hear of anything like that happening on such a scale - in a span of decades.
If you have to choose between secure or insecure cockpit, I would prefer the locked cockpit - as it seems the frequency of pilots causing such incidents is a lot smaller than the chances that someone - i.e. anyone in the world who is not on a flight ban list - will board a plane with bad intentions.
fatly is not a new word: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fatly
Is it time to retrofit all airliners with the kind of remote control used so successfully in drones, ready for the next nutter who wants his own Wikipedia page?
According to this, the doors are supposed to have an override which is easily accessed. I have not investigated the source enough to trust their opinion fully, and think it more likely that the override code is not being properly shared with the crew. Still, I don't think this is an event that needs something "new" outside of procedural. Unless of course the documentation on the Jet is wrong and no override panel exists. I'm not a pilot and don't fly enough to check so perhaps someone working in the industry can validate the claim.
Further, we don't have proof that this was a suicide with lots of additional casualties. The original claim was that the pilot may had some type of medical issue causing the plane to crash and I still believe this over a suicide. The overwhelming majority of suicides are done in isolation without taking other people with you. The obvious exception are Religious suicides, where the people pray while performing their act. Nothing is heard on the recording to indicate this was a religious suicide, in fact the co-pilot is only heard to be breathing (not an indication of consciousness).
Lots of things in this story simply don't add up. Jumping to a suicide claim without definitive proof is unhealthy for everyone.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
EVERYONE has mental health issues. It is only a matter of degree.
There is no black and white line that you can draw between someone who is SAFE and UNSAFE. And someone who is SAFE is not necessarily always going to be so, and neither, necessarily, is someone who is UNSAFE now.
And the simple fact of the matter is, ANYONE who isn't locked up is trusted with other human lives, in proportion to the power they can command.
It's always going to come down to the opinion of the person himself, and hopefully competent medical professionals in the case of airplane pilots, that a person is going to be capable of responsibly handling power until his next examination.
In particular, it's perfectly possible for someone to recover from major depression and be capable of doing as good a job as anyone as a pilot.
--PM
Yeah, but wasn't there a push to arm pilots awhile back? You know, to fight off the terrorists that were in the process of breaking down the cockpit door.....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If it had been required that there be 2 crew members in the cockpit at all times the latest kamikaze crash could have been prevented. Better yet would be to remove the human element from the cockpit altogether. Planes could be flown by onboard computers and assisted when necessary on takeoff or landing by remote control from the tower where there would be several people in charge to make sure that no deranged individuals could take control of planes. The planes could also have sufficient onboard AI to allow them to disregard any commands from the ground or elsewhere that didn't make sense.
I know it's popular to say problems can't/won't be solved, but I really think that's just because it feels nice to think our lives aren't so easily controlled. Sure, it might take a little effort but it's not that hard. We have self driving cars, it wouldn't be hard to make planes with computers that loon balls can't crash. We just haven't bothered yet.
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Apparently the problems always seem to arise when one of the cockpit crew steps out to use the restroom.
What if they never had to do that again?
Add another lavatory accessible only from inside the cockpit. Fit it with a negative pressure design so air continually flows into it, never out, and there won't be an odor problem.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
So far, I've not read an official statement that said he wouldn't have been grounded.
As such, in his own very twisted logic, he was right.
I was wondering, though, if pilots don't get to use the loo on the ground?
I usually try everything I can not to use to loo on the plane - especially if the flight is only two hours like this Germanwings flight.
I'm not sure if it's a good reaction to go crazy with new regulations for the pilots. They've already got to go through the same security checks as passengers (which is insane, as this sad case proves) and now they're supposed to distrust each other?
Next thing you know is that each keypress has to be acknowledged by the 2nd guy or it will be automatically voided.
At some point you've got to trust these guys up there in the pilot seat to do the right thing.
And, as voiced in previous posts already, instead of trying to find more reasons to ground pilots, we should find ways these people who are dedicated to their job can continue to do what they love to do, after they've dealt with their problems.
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Someone on the radio yesterday suggested having three people in the cockpit at all times.
That's not going to work in all situations, but what could work is drawing three people from a pool of available onboard staff (taken from pilots, air marshals when they exist, and flight attendants).
In a situation such as the tragedy that happened to Germanwings, any two of the three would be able to override the door lock, and hopefully regain control of the plane before things became dire.
Pilots and air marshals (when available) would always be part of the pool. Flight attendants would be picked randomly per flight, if necessary (due to current level of airline/government paranoia) being informed of their additional "duty" from the tower just before takeoff.
The problem (the armored cockpit door) is what they call security theater. The plane is full of your most valuable asset - all the passengers. They vastly out number the bad guys. We need to take aircraft design away from the politicians and let engineers do it.
European regulations do not have a similar two-person rule, but they're now talking about creating one.
Both major Irish airlines, Aer Lingus and Ryanair, have had two-person cockpit rules for several years.
Then let the passenger deal with it. They will.
After 2 minutes of the announcement, pop the door.
9-11 happened because, previously, Passengers were trained to leave air security to "The professional authorities". Stewardess assaults were on the rise and the most that passengers could be expected to do, in the case of a crew assault, was start a pool on how many visible bruises she would have at the end of the assault.
Post 9-11 someone who assaults a stewardess has a small (but non-zero) probability of being thrown out of the plane mid-flight. Passengers know that we are the last line of defence for our aircraft. Arnie isn't gonna climb into the wheel-well from the wings of a fighter, and those F-18s on "security escort" have terms of engagement that include Shoot-down Authorizations.
Since 9-11, passenger actions have probably saved more lives (and aircraft) than just about any security theatre that the FAA has done to inconvenience passengers...
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Put a bathroom in the cockpit, and neither pilot nor co-pilot are allowed to leave cabin while in flight. Seems pretty obvious to me.
One of course could murder the other I suppose, but then I guess you at least get a fighting chance... (presuming both have same restrictions of no weapons etc...)
Lonny keeps lecturing physicists about physics, and has another forensic wet dream:
Lonny keeps digging:
Lonny Eachus keeps digging:
Lonny Eachus keeps digging:
Lonny Eachus keeps digging:
If Lonny's rant keeps going after this article is locked, they'll be copied here.