Originally Posted by
John Farley
Ian W
I take your point about some risks being unacceptable but in my view it is just not possible mitigate this particular risk.
I think it is impossible to totally mitigate the risk a flight crew member might decide to crash an aircraft. However, there does seem to be a track record of c. 5 'pilots' deciding, when temporarily alone, to crash their aircraft.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to believe that people on their own can come to the conclusion to kill themselves (and act on it) more readily than when in the company of someone else. In a 'always 2 people' environment, to achieve this, the 'pilot' needs to instruct the cabin crew to lock the other pilot out. It seems very unlikely the CC is going to go along with this if 2 minutes earlier they had a friendly wave and chat while the pilot went off to the toilet and then remaining flight deck crew pushes the nose towards the ground while insisting that the other pilot not be let in.
I can see some argument that allowing cabin crew in could allow them to kill the flight deck pilot and then lock out the remaining pilot; However, I think this scenario is vanishingly unlikely as a result of mental health/suicide, etc. However, if you have a terrorist operative in your crew (flight deck or cabin) I am sure you all can think of a number of ways they could bring an aircraft down. This risk doesn't seem to be material increased by a 2 in cockpit rule.