PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Skywest pilot allegedly commits suicide inside airplane
Old 19th Jul 2012, 10:10
  #38 (permalink)  
chuks
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Germany
Age: 76
Posts: 1,561
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Oh, God...

There you are at 30 thousand feet with nothing on the clock but the maker's name and your fellow crewmember out cold, when you very badly want to operate a pair of switches placed six feet apart in a four-foot wide cockpit... so, 'What now, Genius?'

I am sure we shall see some of our elected representatives all over this one, telling their voters that they shall be demanding action from the TSA to prevent such a thing ever happening again. 'How to do that?' well, never mind, it's just something that needs to be done.

Just remember that a fool can ask a question that a thousand wisemen couldn't answer. 'How can you absolutely protect me from myself?' for instance. Heck, we even had an Air Force pilot go off on his own with an A-10 Warthog with bombs hanging off its wings, although perhaps they were not fuzed. Think about that one if you want to worry about a regional airliner in the hands of a criminal.

I think the TSA will just have to tell everyone that, hey, 'The system worked as designed,' followed by 'Next question, please?' There's no way we are going to see keyed switches in airliner cockpits; the complications and risks, not to mention the expense, are too high. You simply end up at some point with someone alone in a cockpit, when you can only hope that he or she is thinking straight; that is a given in aviation. That last incident, when the Captain lost it... it was only luck that saw the FO locked in and the Captain locked out. It could very easily have gone the other way.
chuks is offline