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These types of scenarios are why the U.S. requires a flight attendant to enter the cockpit when a pilot exits. I wouldn't be surprised if the agencies in Europe

by tswartz 12y ago

These types of scenarios are why the U.S. requires a flight attendant to enter the cockpit when a pilot exits. I wouldn't be surprised if the agencies in Europe implement the same policy by the end of the week.

vixen99 12y ago
Let's hope so. Not fool-proof but this is a sound procedure isn't it? So why wasn't it implemented by European Authorities as well? I wonder what their counter-arguments were?
- arrrg 12y ago
  I think the assumption was always that incapacitated pilots (e.g. because of a medical issue) would be the issue that would require someone to enter the locked cockpit. For those cases the procedure works as intended (the door can be opened from the outside if the person on the inside really doesn’t react). I don’t think suicidal pilots were on the forefront of anyone’s mind. In hindsight a policy of always having at least two people does seem preferable. (And, just a little reminder here: Just because someone is willing to fly a plane with 149 other people on board into a mountain doesn’t mean they would be willing to do other awful things, too, like acting violently in person against another person, for example a flight attendant. Preventing this kind of behavior may well be about putting in place many small hurdles.) I think it’s pretty clear that people in the cabin should never be able to access the cockpit against the express will of people inside the cockpit (preventing scenarios in which someone violently forces someone with knowledge of how to access the cockpit – e.g. a pilot coming back from the toilet – to divulge that information and gaining access that way), so realistically you can only throw people at this problem – and throwing people at this problem is thankfully in this case relatively straightforward and shouldn’t really have any other negative consequences. I don’t see a technical solution to this problem, but there might not have to be one.

by tswartz 12y ago

vixen99 12y ago

Let's hope so. Not fool-proof but this is a sound procedure isn't it? So why wasn't it implemented by European Authorities as well? I wonder what their counter-arguments were?

arrrg 12y ago
I think the assumption was always that incapacitated pilots (e.g. because of a medical issue) would be the issue that would require someone to enter the locked cockpit. For those cases the procedure works as intended (the door can be opened from the outside if the person on the inside really doesn’t react). I don’t think suicidal pilots were on the forefront of anyone’s mind. In hindsight a policy of always having at least two people does seem preferable. (And, just a little reminder here: Just because someone is willing to fly a plane with 149 other people on board into a mountain doesn’t mean they would be willing to do other awful things, too, like acting violently in person against another person, for example a flight attendant. Preventing this kind of behavior may well be about putting in place many small hurdles.) I think it’s pretty clear that people in the cabin should never be able to access the cockpit against the express will of people inside the cockpit (preventing scenarios in which someone violently forces someone with knowledge of how to access the cockpit – e.g. a pilot coming back from the toilet – to divulge that information and gaining access that way), so realistically you can only throw people at this problem – and throwing people at this problem is thankfully in this case relatively straightforward and shouldn’t really have any other negative consequences. I don’t see a technical solution to this problem, but there might not have to be one.