I would advocate removing the flightdeck door.
2 reasons:
1) The First Officer terrorist
2) Passenger/Cabin Crew intervention
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1 - Bin Laden spent hundreds of thousands of pounds training a dozen odd men to learn to fly. That took a couple of years to do.
It is perfectly feasible to select half a dozen young men dedicated to the cause and put them through a full ATPL and type course in that time and for similar money.
A frozen ATPL would cost around £60,000. A Boeing 737 type rating around £15,000. It could all be done inside 18 months. There are several airlines in Europe currently looking for type rated 737 First Officers. Many of those positions are for London bases.
It would be perfectly possible for an organisation with Bin Ladens resources to forge/create an impressive CV for their agent. He could be provided with plausible documents backing up a CV listing a decent degree in AeroEng plus other 'tasty' qualifications. If need be I am sure they could supply the funds for him/her to acquire some turbine hours or similar.
In essence they could create a terrorist with a B737 type rating and a good CV for around £100,000 and 2 years of effort.
He or she would then stand a good chance of being recruited into a - say - British airline looking for 737 rated FO's. Lets give a budget of a £1,000,000 and create 10 agents. Lets say half of them are successful and gain jobs flying out of Stansted, Luton and Gatwick.
They wait for a day when they are all rostered to be flying at about the same time. Hey presto, Sept 11th II.
These agents under a locked door policy will be immune from interference from the Cabin Crew after they have decapitated the Skipper with the fire hatchet. They can reasure the Cabin Crew on the interphone that all is well. Similarly ATC would not get a squawk and would hear the same familiar practiced voice...
If the door were re-inforced the terrorist agent is even safer from Cabin Crew or Pax intervention.
Were there to be NO flightdeck door then both Pax and Cabin Crew would have a chance of detecting the Skippers decapitation. Similarly they would have a chance to intervene.
2) Lets say the First Officer is not a terrorist and that instead the scenario is a stormed flightdeck.
We all know that a well briefed terrorist can effect entry to the flightdeck on most B737's by waiting for a cabin crew entry/exit or a pilot needing a pee. With an armoured door this would still work. At the moment of course he/she could simply kick down the door. Five well built fit young men would easily be able to kill
the Cabin Crew and effect entry to the flightdeck.
So an armed door just means they have to pick their timing. After entry is effected they can hide behind the armoured door.
With the current doors they can simply kick them down at any time.
Lets take the door away and put an able bodied pax on the jumpseat instead on our mythical B737. Here the terrorists would have to get through the jumpseat pax causing a rumpus that would alert the crew and pax to a hi-jack situation.
This alertness might lead to crew/pax intervention ulitmately saving the flightdeck before it is stormed. If the flightdeck IS stormed by terrorists then at least everybody can see it AND there is no armoured door stopping them for attempting to re-take the aircraft. Albeit succeeding in crashing the aircraft into the sea/open land rather than Canary Wharf.
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The pax asked to sit on the jumpseat could act very much like the established principle of the Able Bodied Passenger currently tasked with sitting near emergency exits.
The crew could select someone to ask to sit on the jumpseat prior to departure. For long haul flights you might need a couple of pax but as the pax are more numerous this should be just as easy.
They could select someone who is an airport official, an airline employee, a man travelling with a young family, an off duty police officer or member of the military. Basically anyone who is able bodied, willing and quite frankly (using common sense) highly unlikely to be a terrorist themselves.
Most such pax would jump at the chance of spending the flight, or some portion, in the cockpit. As an established aviation routine I am sure most flights would have several volunteers at check in each sector.
Their only obligation would be that if a bunch of terrorists try to storm over their seat would they kindly make a lot of noise and try to repel them with this fire hatchet. You needn't cover the bit about squealing if one pilot decapitates another!
The jumpseat pax acts as a first line defence, a trip wire alerting the crew and an insurance against the flightcrew as terrorist scenario.
There are numerous other benefits including defence of the flightdeck when one pilot leaves for a pee plus
much improved crew communication during non-terrorist ops (99.999% of the time).
Its an out of the box idea. Feel free to shoot it down.
Ben.
Just had another thought. Most Boeing types I have operated have had remarkably similar flight deck door keys...
Is it the case that each key is unique to each aircraft or are they standard issue items... If so the virtue of a locked flightdeck door is further degraded to pure nonsense.
I find it quite distracting at work to receive and deal with Cabin Secure messages from down the back when on the Approach. I have recently filed an ASR as this distraction occurred at a critical time when an error was occuring with a freq change from App to Twr...
I urge us all to do the same.
Ben.