Sadly I think you are right Scroggs. It is a shame, but also very predictable following the US attacks. I don't think however that it will ever be possible to make a flight 100% hi-jack proof. It is possible to make it less likely and that is what any such measures would be aimed at achieving.
Before the attacks I had seen many debates on this website about the rights and wrongs of allowing pax on the flight deck. Even then some UK pilots thought it unwise to invite total strangers into the cockpit, especially for the take-off and landing. However I have been allowed to do this on several occasions, and have
never been asked for any type of ID or flying credentials whatsoever. Pilots know pretty quickly if you know what you are talking about - ie are informed about flying as a wannabe or PPL, and it was nice that this was considered enough to trust me. The people who carried out these attacks had all trained as pilots to some degree, so this will no longer be viewed as enough evidence that you are not a danger to the flight.
I was once (on a foreign airline which I will not name) allowed to sit in the LHS during the cruise - and again the Captain allowed me to do this simply by chatting to me for a few minutes and deciding, rightly, that I was trustworthy.
The problem now after the US attacks is that you will find Captains much less willing to give such trust - assuming that FD visits are not banned altogether.
LGL737 - no as far as I know an a/c has never been hijacked by an invited visitor, but that does not mean it could not happen in the future. The airlines and the government I guess have to ban visits therefore just so that one day someone is not able to say that such an event could have been avoided.
The end of flight deck visits is a great shame for Wannabes - and in my opinion for pilots too who to me have always seemed very willing to allow informed visitors on the flight deck. It can be argued that flight deck visits actually make flights safer especially if the visitor is a pilot or a wannabe as an extra pair of eyes can never do any harm and may make the pilots concentrate more on the task in hand with someone watching.
The saddest irony of this is that the a/c involved in the US attacks were all American where the locked FD door and no pax ever on the FD policy has been in place for years. It has long been argued on this site that such a policy is useless because a determined hijacker will always get on the FD if he wants to. As if to prove this view right, on September 11th did it achieve its intended purpose? Did it f**k.
From my point of view, banning flight deck visits will not make an aircraft hijack proof. The only way to do that is to keep the door locked from the start to the finish of the flight, and how is that ever going to be workable? It may make an aircraft less likely to be hijacked but I doubt it. So it's not going to significantly increase air safety, but it's going to happen anyway. Bye-bye jumpseat rides
