A-320 Aircraft crash in the Alps....

[U4EA]

Along with all the obvious, my thoughts and prayers lie with those that listened to the CVR playback. My imagination doesn't run near that far in the direction of empathy in that regard.

But one thing I'm most certain of, that is something they will never 'unhear'!

[StargazerWoods]

Yes, depression is a probably a big factor for this incident, but is not the root cause of it. I have experienced depression to the point of becoming self-destructive, but then (and still now) the idea of dragging other people down with me is repulsive to the extreme.

Different people react differently to it, but you have to have some severe detachment from logic, sense and decency to take 150 people with you to your death. A detachment that goes waaaay beyond just being depressed. He would 'have' to have had some severe underlying personality disorder to have been exacurbated by the depression.

The way I see it, this bloke is no different to someone who shoots up a school and then turns the gun on themself at the end of it. There's some inexplicably bad wiring in those heads and sometimes it all just overloads. Things may cntribute to it, the depression might make it harder for the destructive and violent urges to be supressed, but ultimately the person is a broken and dangerous individual who's very clever at hiding their pain from others, painting over their misery with a flimsy facade of artificial cheer so that nobody will have a chance to suspect or interrupt their plans. All that frustration and anger, bottled up to dangerous levels which eventually boils over and erupts into their final blaze of glory.

[expat]

U4EA said it. The US carriers have a 'two in the cockpit at all times' rule. Today the Canadian minister of transport has imposed that rule on Canadian passenger carriers. This would have given the pilot a much better chance of getting of getting back into the cockpit. Not to mention, as rumors have it, this copilot has been treated for depression in the past.

Whilst I understand the sentiment of the idea, some US carriers allow pilots to be armed..........bang and you have complete control. In every cockpit you will find a fire axe and a couple of meaty fire extinguishers and the paperless cockpit laptops are armoured (not your average high street product) and could do some serious damage with one swing. Plenty of opportunity to strangle someone with a headset cable maybe. Where there is a will, there is almost always a way.............The question is, where do we draw the line.

Matt

[Steve M]

U4EA said it. The US carriers have a 'two in the cockpit at all times' rule. Today the Canadian minister of transport has imposed that rule on Canadian passenger carriers. This would have given the pilot a much better chance of getting of getting back into the cockpit. Not to mention, as rumors have it, this copilot has been treated for depression in the past.

Whilst I understand the sentiment of the idea, some US carriers allow pilots to be armed..........bang and you have complete control. In every cockpit you will find a fire axe and a couple of meaty fire extinguishers and the paperless cockpit laptops are armoured (not your average high street product) and could do some serious damage with one swing. Plenty of opportunity to strangle someone with a headset cable maybe. Where there is a will, there is almost always a way.............The question is, where do we draw the line.

Matt

Good point Matt, I think the second person, in some way increases the difficulty factor. Might help and might not, but it's just a matter of getting to a toggle switch. No one though has explained to me, (yet), how difficult it is to open the cockpit door from the inside. I would have thought, (A problem I often have), that you just turn the door latch from the inside with out any codes or barriers. I'm typically wrong about nearly every thing, so could you tell me if getting out is as hard as getting in? Since you work on aircraft I thought you might know.
This is however an example of security measures working against us. If the flight attendant just stood or sat near the door latch?

[Fozzer]

Good point Matt, I think the second person, in some way increases the difficulty factor. Might help and might not, but it's just a matter of getting to a toggle switch. No one though has explained to me, (yet), how difficult it is to open the cockpit door from the inside. I would have thought, (A problem I often have), that you just turn the door latch from the inside with out any codes or barriers. I'm typically wrong about nearly every thing, so could you tell me if getting out is as hard as getting in? Since you work on aircraft I thought you might know.
This is however an example of security measures working against us.

Good idea, Steve.....

"Aircraft Cockpit Doors For Dummies".... ...!

Paul.... ...!

[Modlerbob]

The extra security in the cockpit is a direct knee jerk reaction to 9/11 and other terrorist hijackings. It presumed that the flight crew would always do everything within their power to bring an airliner and it's passengers safely to it's destination. There was never any consideration given to the possibility that one member of the crew would intentionally crash the plane. It has happened only four times in the history of airline flight. There are approximately 30,000 flights per day, so since 1960 the chances of this happening are one in 150 million. Just happening once is truly tragic, but statistically insignificant. The only 100% effective ways to prevent another such occurrence are to abandon passenger aviation or remove the human element from the cockpit. Computers don't get depressed but unfortunately they do get hacked, so there we have a whole new set of problems.

[expat]

U4EA said it. The US carriers have a 'two in the cockpit at all times' rule. Today the Canadian minister of transport has imposed that rule on Canadian passenger carriers. This would have given the pilot a much better chance of getting of getting back into the cockpit. Not to mention, as rumors have it, this copilot has been treated for depression in the past.

Whilst I understand the sentiment of the idea, some US carriers allow pilots to be armed..........bang and you have complete control. In every cockpit you will find a fire axe and a couple of meaty fire extinguishers and the paperless cockpit laptops are armoured (not your average high street product) and could do some serious damage with one swing. Plenty of opportunity to strangle someone with a headset cable maybe. Where there is a will, there is almost always a way.............The question is, where do we draw the line.

Matt

Good point Matt, I think the second person, in some way increases the difficulty factor. Might help and might not, but it's just a matter of getting to a toggle switch. No one though has explained to me, (yet), how difficult it is to open the cockpit door from the inside. I would have thought, (A problem I often have), that you just turn the door latch from the inside with out any codes or barriers. I'm typically wrong about nearly every thing, so could you tell me if getting out is as hard as getting in? Since you work on aircraft I thought you might know.
This is however an example of security measures working against us. If the flight attendant just stood or sat near the door latch?

The way doors work is the following:

They are magnetically latched closed and they close in the direction of the cockpit typically, that being you have to pull them to open, the A320 open inward though. When magnetically latched closed, they can be opened by the cockpit crew (a flick of a switch) to allow cabin crew to enter. Or the cabin crew can enter by using the key pad. You enter the code, a timer and a chime are activated. The crew can hear the chime and can either ignore and let the process run or override the access code and refuse entry. This first chime/timer is about 15 seconds. Then a second chime/timer phase starts. The chimes speed is doubled to tell the crew that in about 10 seconds the door will be opened. Again the crew have the choice to allow access or refuse. In the Airbus, the refuse is a solenoid lock, in the 737 it is manual dead bolts. During all of this, the crews can also view everything on three camera's. It exit from the inside, on pilot has to activate the door open stitch/toggle for the other to leave...........I have previously declined to answer this question, but it is now open in the press..............

Matt

[Modlerbob]

Maybe the system could be modified to allow only the captain an override code to open the door from the outside. This, of course, presumes the captain would never deliberately crash his plane.

[expat]

Maybe the system could be modified to allow only the captain an override code to open the door from the outside. This, of course, presumes the captain would never deliberately crash his plane.

Exactly, how many levels of security do we need.........?

Matt

[C]

Maybe the system could be modified to allow only the captain an override code to open the door from the outside. This, of course, presumes the captain would never deliberately crash his plane.

Which has happened in the recent past - in fact, some evidence would say more so. There's also the argument to say that the sort of issues that can cause these sorts of psychological issues are actually more likely in the age brackets in which most captains will fall - family problems and break ups (ie divorces where kids are involved), financial issues/mortages, stress, "mid life crises" etc etc.

As for the cockpit, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. You can't protect against everything.

As an aside, I once had a drinks bottle - containing water - confiscated at a large civilian airport as it contained more than 500ml. I hadn't the heart to tell them that if I'd wanted to do any damage I wouldn't need a bottle as I had a set of controls in front of me... Sums up the intelligence of some who work in security.

[expat]

Maybe the system could be modified to allow only the captain an override code to open the door from the outside. This, of course, presumes the captain would never deliberately crash his plane.

Which has happened in the recent past - in fact, some evidence would say more so. There's also the argument to say that the sort of issues that can cause these sorts of psychological issues are actually more likely in the age brackets in which most captains will fall - family problems and break ups (ie divorces where kids are involved), financial issues/mortages, stress, "mid life crises" etc etc.

As for the cockpit, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. You can't protect against everything.

As an aside, I once had a drinks bottle - containing water - confiscated at a large civilian airport as it contained more than 500ml. I hadn't the heart to tell them that if I'd wanted to do any damage I wouldn't need a bottle as I had a set of controls in front of me... Sums up the intelligence of some who work in security.

I have a leatherman on my work belt. Security always wet themselves over it. As a technician all I need is..................sellotape.......

Matt

[Steve M]

Thanks for answering my door question Matt. I had some reservations about asking. Any one in the cockpit already knows these things anyway, presumably.

[expat]

Thanks for answering my door question Matt. I had some reservations about asking. Any one in the cockpit already knows these things anyway, presumably.

The question had come up on the forums once or twice before, but I had always kept my mouth closed. Since this accident (I use the word very loosely) it has been discussed in the press, TV and published in the papers in detail, so it is pretty much open information now.

Matt

[C]

I have a leatherman on my work belt. Security always wet themselves over it. As a technician all I need is..................sellotape.......

I once had my Gerber confiscated at a middle eastern airport. There however, there were simple techniques to get it back and, as mentioned, when you are at the controls it would not difficult to engineer a situation (if that's your selfish way of doing things).

[Modlerbob]

I guess it is a sign of the times that all of the airline crashes that were the result of either the pilot or copilot committing suicide have happened within the last ten years or so.