I concur, I found the deviation from the topic rather annoying tbh but he wanted to question my background so had to answer.

Now 2 posts ago I said I asked this as a genuine question, regarding the 2 person flight deck rule, are there protections against this happening or ?

Yea it's called professionalism.

That is the ENTIRE point - there is NO protection if a pilot has ill intent. Period...end of story!

You can sit a person behind a pilot while the other is out of the flight deck and they will have no ability to stop anything. The pilot, with the flick of his wrist can have the aircraft inverted before anyone can interfere. Hell, you could have a gun pointed at his head and there would still be enough time to get the aircraft upside down.

By adding cabin crew, who have no training and very likely less security vetting, you in fact increase the threat. The entire policy was nothing more than optics to keep the public happy. If it was truly a serious concern then ALL cockpits would become 3 pilot workplaces. But that's expensive and there is no will to spend that kind of money. Even then it would be no guarantee.

As we saw with a Japan Airlines DC-8 many many years ago! But the youngsters won't know about that one I imagine!

... and / or with what happened aboard FedEx 705

No guarantee - even with three against one - the FX705 crew never flew commercially again.

Officer Kite was still in his pampers then.

What Trader said...
If the pilot flying is intent on crashing and isn't a total idiot, it's pretty close to impossible to stop it. They simply need to pick a time and place when there simply isn't enough time to intervene prior to impact. There are at least two of those times every flight...

As you said, SS, rumor of course and many stories flying around - no pun intended. However, I have a hard time believing this angle - how is a seizure considered "inappropriate behavior by one of cabin crew?" These were the words of our esteemed SVP. If someone had a seizure, I'm thinking they'd be convulsing on the ground, semi-unconscious or whatnot... not behaving inappropriately. If anyone could chime in and enlighten me, then I stand corrected.

Like you said, we'll have to wait and see but I doubt we'll know the real details from the company.

Two angles here.

Firstly, German Wings example where depression/mental illness is the causal factor in crashing. In this case, having another person on the flight deck is prudent and our policy works. Very few people take their own lives with others around. An act often done in private although there are exceptions such as those that throw themselves in front of trains or off bridges onto cars. The second example being alluded to is the terrorist. As already stated, nobody, even a qualified pilot, would be in a position to intervene if the timing was correct. Even a four man ULR crew could do little.

This is probably why authorities are taking differing views, given the differing threats faced by individual airlines. As a high profile brand and prolific sponsor of Western sports, EK is hardly the model Muslim airline. Combine our location in the highly volatile ME region with our propensity to employer a large percentage of Arabic males, and it's clear that the policy we have is probably not the best.

Harry

Rather disrespectful of some posters to hijack this thread and become keyboard warriors off the topic. Put simply, there are Pilots here of all ages, skill and knowledge levels including high professional standards. With regard to ones CRM training; Courtesy, Respect and Manners (high standards), please stay on topic because absolutely no one else cares about your personal cases or adolescent bickering.

Regarding the thread issue, if you are in the company then you are in the "know" or you just aren't asking the right people. Most flights will offer crew with at least 80% of the right answers as to what happened.

Happy Eid All

J

Just a thought - what about automated flight systems that take over if a deviation from normal/safe is detected e.g. pointing the aircraft at a mountain range with seconds to spare ?

HAL reinvented ....! Give me a break.

If you want to mitigate the risk of deliberate suicide in a cockpit, you should limit the number of people in it and definitely not add less vetted individuals to reduce the supposed risk coming from much more controlled ones.

It has been said before, the only logical reason to have two inside, would be to lessen the risk of a possible incapacitation, but with the entry logic of today's locked cockpits, even this eventuality is covered by 30 seconds.

The policy today has simply increased the risk of an incident!

But it covers some deplorable armchair managers who only care about their backside and not about safety.

[QUOTE=Trader;9877033]That is the ENTIRE point - there is NO protection if a pilot has ill intent. Period...end of story!

What a nasty combination. Pilot with ill intent & a period.
End of story is the only outcome!

Why would he do it in cruise?

Can't we go back to a couple of wannabe pilots arguing over which one's been rejected from more flight training programs? Hilarious! And far more entertaining.


http://www.reshareit.com/wp-content/...ou-wear-it.gif


If you watch the new EasyJet infomercial, it would seem the only requirement to become a pilot in the UK now is to get your mum to take a second mortgage to come up with £120,000...so how does one get rejected, anyway?

Do I remember correctly that the crew of the Fedex flight that was attacked by the dead-heading pilot put the plane upside down in an attempt to get the crazy/suicidal guy off of them?

Yes you do....

As part of his plan to disguise the intended attack as an accident, Calloway attempted to disable the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) by pulling its circuit breaker to interrupt CVR power. During standard pre-flight checks, 39-year old flight engineer Andy Peterson noticed the pulled breaker and reset it before take-off so the CVR was reactivated. However, if Calloway successfully killed the crew members with the CVR still on, he would simply have to fly for 30 minutes to erase any trace of a struggle from the CVR's 30 minute loop.[5] About twenty minutes after takeoff, as the flight crew carried on a casual conversation, Calloway entered the flight deck and commenced his attack with the hammers. Every member of the crew took multiple hammer blows which fractured both Peterson's and 42-year old co-pilot Jim Tucker's skulls, severing Peterson's temporal artery.[3] The blow to Tucker's head initially rendered him unable to move or react but he was still conscious. 49-year old Captain Dave Sanders reported that during the beginning of the attack, he could not discern any emotion from Calloway, just "simply a face in his eyes". When Calloway ceased his attack with hammers, Peterson and Sanders began to get out of their seats to counter-attack. Calloway left the cockpit and retrieved his spear gun. He came back into the cockpit and threatened everyone to sit back down in their seats. Despite loud ringing in his ear and being dazed, Peterson grabbed the gun by the spear between the barbs and the barrel. A lengthy struggle ensued, while Tucker, also an ex-Navy pilot, performed extreme aerial maneuvers with the aircraft.[6]

Tucker pulled the plane into a sudden 15 degree climb, throwing Sanders, Peterson and Calloway out of the cockpit and into the galley. To try to throw Calloway off balance, Tucker then turned the plane into a left roll, almost on its side. This rolled the combatants along the smoke curtain onto the left side of the galley. Eventually, Tucker had rolled the plane nearly upside down at 140 degrees, while attempting to maintain a visual reference of the environment around him through the windows. Peterson, Sanders and Calloway were then pinned to the ceiling of the plane. Calloway managed to reach his hammer hand free and hit Sanders in the head again. Just then, Tucker put the plane into a steep dive.[7] This pushed the combatants back to the seat curtain, but the wings and elevators started to flutter. At this point Tucker could hear the wind rushing against the cockpit windows. At 530 mph (853 km/h), the elevators on the plane became unresponsive due to the disrupted airflow. Tucker realized this was because the throttles were at full power. Releasing his only usable hand to pull back the throttles to idle, he managed to pull the plane out of the dive while it slowed down.[8]

Calloway managed to hit Sanders again while the struggle continued. Sanders was losing strength and Peterson was heavily bleeding from a ruptured artery. Sanders managed to grab the hammer out of Calloway's hand and attacked him with it. When the plane was completely level, Tucker reported to Memphis Center, informed them about the attack and requested a vector back to Memphis.[9] He requested an ambulance and "armed intervention", meaning he wanted SWAT to storm the plane. When Tucker began to hear the fight escalate in the galley, he put the aircraft into a right turn then back to the left.[10]

The flight crew eventually succeeded in restraining Calloway, though only after moments of inverted and near-transonic flight beyond the designed capabilities of a DC-10. Sanders took control and Tucker, who had by then lost use of the right side of his body, went back to assist Peterson in restraining Calloway. Sanders communicated with air traffic control, preparing for an emergency landing back at Memphis International Airport. Meanwhile, after screaming that he could not breathe, Calloway started fighting with the crew again.[11]

Heavily loaded with fuel and cargo, the plane was approaching too fast and too high to land on the scheduled runway 9. Sanders requested by radio to land on the longer runway 36L.[12] Ignoring warning messages from the onboard computer and using a series of sharp turns that tested the DC-10's safety limits, Sanders landed the jet safely on the runway at well over its maximum designed landing weight. By that time, Calloway was once again restrained. Emergency personnel and police gained access to the plane via escape slide and ladder. Inside, they found the cockpit interior covered in blood.[5] Calloway was then arrested and taken off the plane.

This is a very interesting topic actually, we did a university study in this area (it was around the time of the germanwings incident) and the results and conclusions from the study were quite frightening.

That's one way I suppose or perhaps a caring employer could actually take mental health seriously. Say, a protocol that allows easy and discrete access to mental health care for those that might need it. Train managers of critical function employees (eg pilots) to recognise and respond to concerns over a mental health issue. I recall the only response from TCAS to the German Wings suicide/homicide was to inform pilots that antidepressants are now on the list of drugs that will lose you your job...

Can we please have this utter stupid flight deck rule revoked again.

Replacing an extremely remote risk by another higher risk policy never made any sense, other
than selling ticket in a nervous market. However it just must change before anything ugly will happen.

I hope for Ek magement to grow some balls and revoke it.

In my opinion it has seriously affected the daily onboard working environment, in a quite negative way unfortunately. Not that im that naive to think they care.


I think more they would care about the commercial price of the media knowing that an middle east airline is giving none psychometric evaluated male CC by the thousands access to a 500+ passenger jet, left alone with one pilot on a every day basis. Hired with insufficient background check to eliminate the potential risk, and for the majority from the arab region. The lack of apparent risk analyse is insulting.

My next airline will have the old Policy for sure.