Off Topic Airbus A320 Crash In French Alps

Geoffrey Thomas, editor-in-chief and managing director of airlineratings.com, "said the cockpit door has three positions -- locked, normal and unlocked. Locking the door prevents a pilot from using a keypad and emergency code to get in.
He said the odds of this happening accidentally while the other pilot becomes incapacitated and moves a control stick to a dive seems to be "beyond the realms of mathematical possibility."
Nonetheless, a variety of theories remain on what may have caused the crash, which almost certainly killed all 150 people on board.
When next you are travelling by plane before take off start to sing:
"Lord, I'm Coming Home".... You never know if the pilot is a sheep or goat

 

WTF?

 

Is this a joke?

 

There'll be a change in the rules after this, it'll no longer be legal to leave 1 person alone in control of a passenger jet at any time.

 

I agree. I also think they must change other rules

1. Why do pilots not both get given key to cockpit door. yes some nutjob can grab one if they come out and get key but FFS come on. one guy beating on a door while 150 people die.

2. they need to have some rules about tests and regualr inspections. How do you get info about peoples personal circumstances but surely you'd at least make a rule that every week the have to do some test or other.

3. yes it should be illegal but surely to go there has to be some means to technologically prevent someone doing this. How do you stop someone knocking off comms and effecting this? but the last thing you want is some autopilots flys straight and level unitl you run out of fuel either.

 

obviously BOTH pilots should have to effect this unlockable door stuff.

 

This is utterly horrific if correct. Those poor, poor people

 

1. They have a code that allows entry and there's also an overide code should the pilot not respond having left the door switch in the locked position due to being unconscious. By the sounds of this the co-pilot and pilot struggled over the door.

2. Not leaving 1 person in control aleviates the opportunity for this kind of madness, depression isn't always obvious and can come on suddenly driven by circumstances so routine mental health checks seeking to uncover suicidal pilots would be fairly futile imo

3. A pilot is ulitmately no different to a bus or car driver, they are in control of a vehicle, and you can have all the safety systems in the World but you will always need a manual overide.

 

1) Tobes is correct, there is a code to get into the door, the pilot can however override this for a period of time on the airbus. This makes it almost impossible for a hijacker to get into the flight deck provided the crew follow correct procedures whenever the flight deck door is open. So if the pilot just goes rogue unfortunately it's very difficult to get in to him if he takes the plane down.

2) in the US it is already law to have two people in the flight deck at all times. In Europe it isn't law but it is policy at several airlines. I'd imagine this will lead to it becoming law in Europe.

3) agree a pilot is like any other human and you unfortunately can't prepare for all human actions.

 

Suicide mission

Then there's speculation that one of the pilots wanted to crash the plane.

"It's not unheard of that pilots occasionally do irrational things," CNN aviation analyst Peter Goelz said.

Investigators "will check and see if they had any financial difficulties, any psychological challenges that had revealed themselves prior to the accident," he said. "They're going to look at every option."

Why it's possible: No one from the plane made a distress call, even though the plane dropped from 38,000 feet to 6,000 feet in eight minutes.

"If it's a nefarious option, then it really is a case of whoever's inside pushes it (the side stick) forward or turns the autopilot into a gradual descent and just sits back," Quest said.

Why it might be unlikely: Earlier in the flight, the pilots were talking in a "very smooth, very cool" conversation, the official told The Times.

And authorities have given no indication that either of the pilots wanted to harm himself.

Terrorism or criminal act

Why it's possible: While there's no evidence that the crash was related to terrorism, authorities said they can't discount the notion yet.

And not all of the details from the cockpit voice recorder have been released.

Why it might be unlikely: French government officials have said terrorism is not likely, and the White House said it didn't see any connection to terrorism. And that can be telling.

Since 9/11, intelligence services have "worked hard to develop the communication systems around the world on terrorists, the chatter that's picked up, and also to be very quick to share that among agencies so they can pick up anything," said Mary Schiavo, former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

"And so what that is telling us is they don't have chatter from their intelligence sources that an attack was coming on that airline."

CNN's Laura Smith-Spark contributed to this report.

 

Having two doors to access the cockpit is a viable solution, a primary bombproof door that acts like the security door that has blocked the pilot from entry in this case, then a small atrium with a pilot's bathroom, area to sleep and anything else they need, and then a secondary door into the cockpit which can be locked but both pilots have keycards or a code to so it can always be opened and can't be deliberately locked to keep people out.

 

Room for them to sleep and there own bathroom etc? On an A320? No chance. There isn't the space without cutting down passenger numbers to an unviable economic level for the fuel efficiency of the aircraft. No way that's a solution the airlines would support.

They will just make the law the same in the EU as in the US to always have two people in the flight deck throughout flight. And they will probably increase the frequency of mental health checks.

 

Tragic

They're on about leaving a senior cabin crew member in the cockpit now. Wont work imo as 95% are female and a male can always overcome a female if he wants, mostly

My ex was a trolley dolly and whenever they had to restrain (a couple of times) it took around 4 girls usually with help from a male passenger etc

I think an air marshall is needed. One to police in the cabin and then when needed go into cockpit. They can sit with the cabin crew.


Obv airlines wont want to employ 1 more than they have too so to have a senior cabin crew sit with a pilot might be what they all do but if he really wanted he could beat her up or headtbutt her or somethinng and still do what he wants anyway

 

Then there is the old argument about what happens if the Air Marshall is overpowered? It's not easy, is it? As a side (snide?) point, shouldn't they arm all the passengers in US airspace and trust that the good guys will always win? Well that is the basic principle of gun laws...

 

They need to start a special training programme that combines learning to fly commercial airliners with combat/air marshal training. This special group of pilots then becomes the third person in the cockpit. Of course the issue might be that you're training some other psycho who wants to crash another plane with the added bonus of combat skills to fend off people trying to stop him. The problem is you need someone who can take down the twat if it gets violent but also someone who can fly a plane. Air marshals and cabin crew can't fly commercial airliners. But the airlines will do whatever is cheapest.

 

I dont think they need to be armed mate, a bloke who is a master in self defence would do it (without trying to sound to filmish)

 

This isnt the first case. An Egyptian airline pilot went rogue and flew a plane into the ocean iirc when the captain left the cabin to take a nap. It was such a steep descent that the cabin was virtually zero gravity and the captain struggled to get back in but by that time it was too late.

Btw as far as I'm concerned, anyone who deliberately sabotages a flight and kills 150 innocent people IS a terrorist. Even if he's a pilot.

 

I can't see this becoming the greatest of discussions, but how so? Surely a terrorist has to have a greater reasoning behind it, if nothing else, to cause terror. So far, there's no evidence of that afaik.

Murderer would seem a more appropriate phase.

 

Yeh i dont want that to be a topic of discussion either. But I really dont see the difference. Terrorism is murder. And during those 8 minutes the passengers felt terror. He knew what he was doing and whatever his motives he was a lunatic.

 

Fair enough, agree to disagree for now.

One point though - from what the authorities are saying officially, it sounds like they were only really aware what was happening towards the end and not the whole eight minutes. Although you would have thought the pilot trying to get through the door would have caught the attention.