Flight Deck Door
Since 9/11 the FD Doors are now reinforced.
(this is in the public domain)
There are 3 means to open the door.
1. From inside –turn the handle
2. From inside – activate the switch. Door must be pushed.
3. From outside – use the emergency code – takes about 30s for the door to open.
The FD crew or persons in the flight deck can override all the opening methods.
As a backup the Door can be mechanically locked from the inside. The Door can now only be opened from the inside. There is now no magic key or secret code that will open the door. It is dead bolted.
The terrorist or killer as in this case, is free to do whatever he likes.
The only way to open the door would be to use the catering cart as a battering ram, may take about 10 mins to bust the door open. Hopefully if it was a terrorist attack then the pax may have something to say and intervene.
The emergency opening code should be printed on the outside of the door. This will allow anyone to open the door. It can be overridden from the inside. In the Helios incident the purser forgot the code and by the time he entered the cockpit after some 2 hours, the plane ran out of fuel. There is NO security risk. All on board died.
One solution would be to remove the mechanical locks and have a real secret code that will bypass any attempt by persons inside the cockpit to keep the door locked.
Question then is who will have the code. Can the code be compromised?
Solution would be to have this code programmed on every flight. We would now have 3 codes.
1. Door entry code – buzzer inside the cockpit, flt crew open door.
2. Emergency code – door opens in approx. 30 secs – can be overridden.
3. Secret code - disables ALL electronic locks. Door opens. Programmed by Capt on every flight.
It is all very well having a CC member sit in the flt deck but would not take much persuasion for them to leave to get something or other.
Another solution is to remove ALL reinforced doors and have them as they were. They only keep the good guys out anyway.
Basically at the end of the day you have to trust the Driver.