'Soft walls' will keep hijacked planes at bay

[Pax Vobiscum]

I came upon this article in New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993893). It reports a proposal to amend aircraft avionics to prevent aircraft being crashed into populated areas by creating electronic no-fly zones. The article reports that "in general, pilots are openly hostile [to this idea]". I hadn't heard of it before, so apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere - but it was news to me.

As a pax I don't think much of the idea either!

[newarksmells]

A couple of quetions:

First, so if a plane is having a catastrophic failure, will this system prevent it from falling to earth and if so how? i read the article but it never explained that.

Second, what are the lucky neighbourhods that would receive this protection? Houses around the airport, politicians or those who yell the loudest as it usually is?

Newark

[Lance Murdoch]

A similar system was described in either 'The Engineer' or 'Profesional Engineering' (can't remember which one) soon after 9/11. I don' think it would be foolproof and would probably be much too difficult and complex to ever work properly. Also any potential hijacker with sufficient knowledge of elctronics could overide or disable the system.

[PlaneTruth]

Sounds like another half-baked idea from the "Left Coast". Clearly whoever "smoked this idea up" has no expertise in aviation.

I liked the quote, " "Frankly it surprises me, because of all of the options that they (pilots) are facing right now - including being shot at or commandeered from the ground - this is their best one."

Errrrrrr, I think not.

PT (The Banned One)


:ok:

[Aussierotor]

Just a thought---------alcohol induced

Pilots in cockpit flying along happily behind locked doors
Air Sherrif in cabin enjoying the flight.
Hijackers or nutters taking over the plane.
Air Sheriff notifies the cockpit with electrical device(or maybe attendant being threatened at cabin door).
Pilots and sherrif slip on different ozygen masks than those those that fall out the overheads.
Hit the magical red button----poof----out comes a sleeping gas ,and everyone passes out.
Air sherrif sorts out the bad guys,then when everyone comes to,the flight continues as normal.

[Redwings]

Hmmm. It sounds interesting, and I can see the point, but how do you get rid of the gas after it's been used?

[GrantT]

Open a window :ok:

[WideBodiedEng]

Good idea... but
Remember how many died in the Moscow Theatre when gas was used by the Russians?
Whilst that would be preferable to another 9/11 there would still be a lot of deaths.
BTW I dont think there will ever be another 9/11. Why? Not because of the often ridiculous so-called :mad: security but rather that the pax will beat the bejasus out of anyone who gets out of line.

[Postman Plod]

The deaths in the Moscow theatre were not caused so much by the gas, but by the lack of immediate basic first aid being administered on the victims. This was apparent from a recent BBC (I think) documentary on it. The plan was perfect, the execution was perfect, but nobody thought about basic first aid.... Casualties (still alive) were dragged out, and laid face up in the street where they died. Simply putting them in the recovery position would have saved many many lives for example, so that when the vomit due to the effects of the gas, they dont choke on the vomit - that was the biggest tragedy of the whole thing!

However, were you to do the same thing in the air, you would have similar problems. Who is going to administer first aid if only 3 of you are concious, and 2 of you are flying the aircraft?

[RadarContact]

Do you think it possible that such a system would ever be certified with the necessary 10E-9 certainty of not accidently going off or being tampered with?

[Flip Chigly]

In reply to Redwings... tell the Pax the Gas is free and they'll have it for the rest of the flight!!! 360 wheelchair "Charlies" may pose a problem for the Ground staff though...:confused: