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Why the Final Moments Inside a Cockpit Are Heard But Not Seen
jones_supa writes: There's no video footage from inside the cockpit of the Germanwings flight that left 150 people dead — nor is such footage recorded from any other commercial airline crash in recent years. Unlike many other vehicles operating with heightened safety concerns, airline cockpits don't come with video surveillance. The reason, in part, is that airline pilots and their unions have argued vigorously against what they see as an invasion of privacy that would not improve aviation safety. The long debate on whether airplane cockpits in the U.S. should be equipped with cameras dates back at least 15 years, when the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) first pushed regulators to require video monitoring following what the agency called "several accidents involving a lack of information regarding crewmember actions and the flight deck environment." The latest NTSB recommendation for a cockpit image system (PDF) came in January 2015. Should video streams captured inside the plane become a standard part of aviation safety measures?
A compromise could be the use of still photographs. Even with one photo per 10 seconds, it would give you a lot of extra information. As far as privacy, I would feel that the audio capture is a bigger invasion of privacy than a bunch of photographs.
Someone like Andreas Lubitz could have just reached up and stuck something over the camera lens. That's if he even cared about being filmed, which is doubtful. From what we're hearing about his desire for notoriety, he'd have probably loved to have those last moments caught on camera and broadcast around the world.
We're probably going to see a lot of TV news shows and newspapers calling for cameras in cockpits, but it won't be anything to do with safety, it will be because the footage has commercial value to news organisations.
@"it might have been even enough to deter him from doing it"
... The fact is, at the point they are about to kill themselves, even the thought of their own death isn't enough to deter them! ... When someone has lost even the fear of their own death, there's really not much that’s going to stop them. If they are only going to kill themselves, you can try to talk them out of killing themselves, showing them there's reasons to keep on living and things really can get better for them in the future. But then most suicidal people are only a danger to themselves, and they need help and need to seek help and be made aware there are people in this world who can really help them.
Sorry, but you haven't understood at all how a suicidal person thinks (and they are not "wackos"). When someone has decided to kill themselves, they are not going to be deterred by the thought they could get in trouble
But there's another kind of suicidal person, the person who is angry at suffering harm from either the abuse or the ignorance of others. They are much harder to reason with. This kind of suicidal person is angry at other people and wants to punish them back (even indirectly by harming e.g. their businesses etc.. or even harm the wider society around them). (You see this for example with Spree Killers). If they want to kill themselves, but are also intent on harming or even killing others as well, then they are also showing great anger at others and so if you can't talk them out of it, they have to be physically stopped to save others, but there are even times that being stopped is what the suicidal person wants. Its what cops call, "Suicide by cop" or "death my cop".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
This is when the suicidal person wants the cops to kill them to end what they feel is their suffering. They need help but its hard to help someone so angry at others. This guy sounds very much like this angry at others latter kind but was determined not to let others stop him.
Wow. A team of investigators have had full access to the black box since it was retrieved. This is standard protocol in Europe, where they have mandatory flight safety programs in place for all commercial aviation and very clear protocols in the case of a catastrophic incident (yes, that's an actual class of incident, not emotive language).
The prosecutor is parroting back what has been written in reports and given to him. He won't even have access to the original recording without supervision.
Your grounds for being skeptical should come from the fact that the investigation is ongoing, not this kind of straw man.
Apparently the pilot is a master at voices.
Even if that half-assed attempt was true, it doesn't improve the safety - they'd still all be dead. It just gives us the ability to ogle and lay blame.
Root cause analysis is not just about laying blame, it's about finding out where the processes/procedures broke down and how they can be improved to prevent a similar incident in the future.
I understand that people who know nothing about flying think video is some miracle or something, but the data recorder shows exactly what the controls are set at. Quick: look at the thrust lever. What percentage of max thrust is it set at? You have to guess with video. The data recorder will tell you exactly.
Why exactly are data recorders antiquated? I mean the concept, not a specific device. This notion that everything should be recorded all the time is idiotic.
Pilots hate this idea because it will show they are human. They make jokes, complain about work, talk about their weekends, etc. Have an incident and armchair idiots will be putting over every last everything trying to find something to blame it on. Oh, the captain discussed his favorite beer, he must have a drinking problem! Quick: let's go through his entire background until we find someone who one time saw him drunk at a football game and interview that person all week.
This is why pilots hate this. That and what is to stop their employer from listening in on their conversions? They might be taking about pay, or working conditions, and we have to stop that. The reason data and voice recorders only record a certain period of time started as a technological limitation but pilots insist on it staying that way for good reason. A complete flight needs no record like that. Video idiots of course will want the whole flight recorded, and pilots know this do it had to be stopped. If I have to watch everything I say and comment on every second I'm on duty at my own job, I'm going to be nervous and borderline hostile. That is not what I want my pilot to be.
Look, if it actually increased safety, as the data and voice recorders have done, they would be all for it. But it won't. It will only have unintended consequences. How about letting the people who do the job have a big say in this and stop the armchair lunacy.
Re-read your post and notice how you are hostile towards even the idea that others can attempt to help you (which has the unfortunate side effect of preventing you getting help). You think they don't understand and can't understand why you feel so low. At times you can't even explain it to yourself, you just know you wake up some days even struggling to find the will to do anything. On your worst days you can find yourself standing back at a railway station which you then realise is to give yourself long enough to talk yourself out of jumping to end it all. Even on your best days, you can sometimes find yourself wanting to make others laugh to try to cover up how your really feel and even use it to deny to even yourself you are so low and then you feel like you are being crushed by how low you feel inside.
... Its not, you just at the moment denying it to yourself.
You think I can't understand, you're wrong, I'm describing myself. I've lost count of the number of times I've thought about killing myself. Looking back I've now struggled with depression for over 35 years. The difference between us is less than you realise. Perhaps the only real difference that matters is that I've started to notice (and you need to notice) how we can deny it to even ourselves which has stopped us seeking enough help.
You're strong enough without ever realising it to not even really be afriad of even your own death, so is asking for help really beyond you?
The fact is the best psychologists have heard it all so many times before, nothing you say to them can really shock them any more and they can help you. At the very least they can give you an independent viewpoint to help you see and compare your thoughts with and so help you find a better way forward. And anyway, knowledge is power. The more you learn the more it can help you in all sorts of ways. You just have to take the next step to ask for help. The one's who deny its needed, (and will tell others that) are really trying to convince and deny it to themselves that its needed. Its all part of the denial. So many ways to deny it, but once you cut through the denial and realise you already have the strength to find help, it really can help you.
Plus as you say, as you are someone on the autism spectrum, (that's something else we have in common) that means you've got the capacity and interest to study subjects in great detail. That's a strength, not a weakness. Also being different from most (not all) but most other people isn't wrong, even though you're heard it is wrong, so many times you can't even count it how many times you've been put down for standing out from the crowd. We are pack animals, we want to fit in and the one's who want to be the pack leaders, don't like it when we don't follow what they want the pack to do. They also don't like it when we speak about our interests, because then they are not the centre of attention. Like I say, knowledge really is power because the more you learn about psychology the more you'll see all sorts of behaviours from others, some of which from others that have caused you great harm in your life. (For example, the one's who want attention, want to be different, so they can stand out and don't like you naturally standing out from the pack. The irony is they want what you've always had. Remember that the next time some tries to put you down for standing out through no fault of your own). This is just a small glimpse of what psychology can show you and many will try to deny it, because they fear, hide or simply deny it for so many reasons. Learn to see the reasons and its amazing what it'll show you over time. You can get help and it will really help you.
Are you crazy enough to trust your life to a wetware computer we can't even understand with any real confidence? There are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in your body, and if just the wrong one clots up, it's over for you. Many important components have no redundancy. Fatal malfunctions regularly occur with no way to repair them. Worst of all, you don't even have an offsite backup system for your most critical data.
That's basically what your body is. If you're dumb enough to rely on an organic life-support system designed through random trial and error, you deserve to die in a messy pile of organic failure.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.