The ban on flight deck visits is one of the most retrograde steps this industry (or the numpties in government) have ever made.
It prevents all interested/nervous pax from seeing and hearing how things actually happen. Now due to the blanket ban on visits the nervous (who we regularly re-assured) and the kids who would eventually have become our colleagues are excluded. So what progress for the future of happier pax or the enthusiasm of new recruits to the industry?
Answer; None.
And for why? Frankly, for no reason at all.
Except to preserve the egos and pensions of the oxygen thieves in government/the CAA that make up (invent) fatuous rules just for the sake of it.
OK, they say locked doors and no pax visits prevents hijacks. I say bollocks. Utter bollocks.
When the cabin crew want to come in they merely ask on the intercom (often at a very inconvenient, sometimes hazardous time) if we can unlock the door. Where is the security in that, you security boffins? F*****g nowhere, thats where. No way of telling if the poor girl had a knife to her throat, no checks at all. Utterly pointless. All of it. Just what is the point of making rules that cannot, that are unable to, resolve the problem they are intended to solve? People who impose such pointless regulations do not deserve to draw their pensions. If we in the sharp end of the indusrty made such fatuous decisions we'd either kill hundreds of people at a time or be (rightly) sacked before we got the chance.
The butchers on Sept 11 did not even ask to visit the flight deck, did they? The loony who attacked the crew on the BA flight to Nairobi waited until one of the flight deck went to the toilet. So on what basis does the lockng of the door make life safer?
It does not.
It cannot.
It is utterly pointless in terms of security and counterproductive in terms of customer relations.
I suggest it's only raison d'etre is to justify the existance of a bunch of non-productive civil servants and to ensure the continuation of their vastly expensive pensions when in reality the whole system would run as safe and far cheaper without them.