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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.
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.
Or you could change the way the cockpit door lock works.
If what I've read is right, anyone in the cockpit can lock the door such that it cannot be opened from the outside even if they have the code, but only for a five minute stretch. If a two-person rule is put into place, also put into place two switches further apart than arm's reach that have to be pressed in-sync or in very close succession. If the flight attendant occupying the second position disagrees then the door does not prohibit a code from opening it. This way, even if one person in the cockpit kills the other, the door cannot be code-blocked to the cabin.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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
Sure, you can't remove all risk. But it's at least possible that the guy in this case did not have the kind of crazy required to be physically attacking people, or looking them in the eye while killing them. He did after all wait for the opportunity to make sure he had the cockpit to himself, and he didn't make threats, or indeed say anything to anyone during the incident, so it doesn't seem to me like he was up for any kind of face-to-face confrontation. Maybe just the fact of having someone else there would have been enough.
Oh no... it's the future.
Know many pilots?
The difference between "depressed narcissistic arsehole" and "perfectly normal narcissistic arsehole" isn't as far as you'd think.
Airline pilots are largely convinced of their own superiority to begin with.
Hell, I suspect the C-level of executives in most large corporations gets you your "narcissistic areshole" out of the gate. All the ones I've ever met certainly are.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
Essentially, you are saying "it should be illegal to have secrets from the state".
No, he's saying it should be illegal to keep things like mental instability and dangerous suicidal mindsets secret from the state when the state is what licenses you to be entrusted, day-in, day-out, with the lives of hundreds of people. If you've got mental problems, don't look for a job where that is by definition a disqualifier. It appears this German guy knew that, and was hiding his problems from his employer and the regulatory agencies that license his operation of giant passenger aircraft.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Much less likely, I'd be more worried about the "depressed narcissistic arsehole" overpowering the stewardess and crashing the plane anyway. I suspect (ok, assume) this is what happened to that Air Malaysia plane just over a year ago, the one which vanished without trace.
Well since we're throwing out conspiracy theories... The very lack of them finding the plane (MH370) at all means that it more than not it did not crash, but was hijacked in some form and taken elsewhere. One credible person that had access to much of the data surmized that they likely took the route north, not south where everyone insists on looking, and were able to land near or in Russian territory at a site that after years of neglect happened to have a lot of activity and rebuilding of a hangar-like building that was big enough to hold the Beoing 777.
Well, I'm not sure if they made it that far. But I said from day one that it the lack of finding the plane or any evidence that it crashed thus far lends more and more to the the flight being hijacked, and we'll likely see it next when whomever decides to crash it into a building somewhere.
Now whether the pilots were in on it, or a passenger was able to access the controls via computer connections and then override the pilots is something entirely different. In either case, if it was hijacked then it's likely backed either by a nation state (e.g Russia) or a sufficiently large well funded terrorist organization (e.g Al Qaida). Which one we'll likely never know.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Actually, 1 in a million might be too high of an estimate. There were 37.4 million flights scheduled worldwide last year (Source). The summary gives 5 examples from 1999 to present. Let's double that number (and exclude 2015 since this year just started) just to be safe. So 10 incidents in 6 years for an average of 1.6 incidents per year. So the risk of any one flight having a suicidal pilot/co-pilot determined on bringing the plane down is 1 in 22.4 million.
You likely have a greater chance of dying on a plane from a heart attack than from the pilot/co-pilot crashing the plane. It's just that "co-pilot locks out pilot and crashes plane" makes for a juicier news story than "pilot and co-pilot fly planned route with no major issues and land safely just like they did a dozen times the previous week."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.