JAA thwarting strengthened cockpit doors?
Cunning Artificer
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: The spiritual home of DeHavilland
Age: 76
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Roadtrip,
What rights? Run through the following and see if you can spot any. I'm sure that the 'spook' community could add a few steps into the plan but you can get the general idea.
In a future secure world, security begins as soon as you make your reservation. Your personal details are taken and your identity documents checked. With or without your knowledge, the details are run through computer screening to see if you are perhaps using false I.D. Automatic software checks your travel itinary and any trips you have made recently using the same I.D. The software is looking for specific patterns. Working back from your I.D., more software investigates your banking record and checks your recent transactions for specific patterns.
You arrive at the airport for your flight and are seperated from any relatives before being admitted to the check-in area. Your baggage is opened and inspected thoroughly. You join the check-in queue and are subjected to close questioning by a trained interrogator using a specially designed process. When you check in you are carefully matched with your I.D. and booking information and may be questioned further if necessary.
After getting your boarding card you are admitted to the departure area. This is carefully arranged to seperate incoming from outgoing passengers. You are checked for weapons by first passing through a magnetic screen and then ALL passengers are subjected to a "pat-down" check by a security person of the same sex. Any hand carried items are opened for thorough physical check in addition to x-ray examination. The same process is repeated at the gate immediately prior to boarding.
Meanwhile, airport workers entering the airport are subjected to the same rigorous checks. The checks are repeated upon passing from zone to zone so as to tighten security the closer staff get to the aircraft. After aircraft servicing is complete, security staff run a sweep of the aircraft using sniffer dogs as necessary. Once security clear the aircraft for boarding, the crew carry out a deep search of the cabin for concealed items. This search is to a pre-planned procedure, taught in training and regularly re-checked.
The whole process is monitored closely by CCTV with operators trained to look for abnormal or unusual behaviour patterns. People who are identified as suspicious, or who are uncooperative at any stage of the security checks, are removed - forcibly if necessary - to secure interrogation areas for futher questioning and/or examination.
If the above scenario were enforced, as it could be using existing equipment, and provided properly motivated and trained security staff are employed, then there would be no need for armour plated cockpit doors. Since an armed man could not get aboard there would be no terrorists to hijack the aircraft. A normal cockpit door with a slightly modified lock would suffice for flight deck security. If absolutely necessary armed "sky-marshals" could be carried but this leaves the danger that if a group of previously unarmed potential terrorists maange to overpower the sky marshals then they become real terrorists. Nevertheless, if they are needed, then by all means we'll keep the sky-marshals.
Now I am personally prepared, in the interests of security, to submit to all of the above. As I enter the airport everyday, my sandwiches are already regularly x-rayed and my bag searched. But I suspect that if such a regime were imposed universally there would be plenty of complaints about human rights violations.
As to practicality, much of what I outline above IS (or was anyway) used by the Royal Air Force on certain communication flights from one particular station without causing any disruption to services. Certainly, such measures would provide real security instead of the illusion of security arising from bullet proof cockpit doors, arming the crew with stun-guns and training the cabin crew in tae kwan do. (ala SFAR 92-1)
Perhaps if I put the design drawings and instructions on 'how to remove the cockpit door using non-magnetic tools that don't trigger the alarm at security points' up on a web site that might put an end to the door nonsense?
**********************************
Through difficulties to the cinema
What rights? Run through the following and see if you can spot any. I'm sure that the 'spook' community could add a few steps into the plan but you can get the general idea.
In a future secure world, security begins as soon as you make your reservation. Your personal details are taken and your identity documents checked. With or without your knowledge, the details are run through computer screening to see if you are perhaps using false I.D. Automatic software checks your travel itinary and any trips you have made recently using the same I.D. The software is looking for specific patterns. Working back from your I.D., more software investigates your banking record and checks your recent transactions for specific patterns.
You arrive at the airport for your flight and are seperated from any relatives before being admitted to the check-in area. Your baggage is opened and inspected thoroughly. You join the check-in queue and are subjected to close questioning by a trained interrogator using a specially designed process. When you check in you are carefully matched with your I.D. and booking information and may be questioned further if necessary.
After getting your boarding card you are admitted to the departure area. This is carefully arranged to seperate incoming from outgoing passengers. You are checked for weapons by first passing through a magnetic screen and then ALL passengers are subjected to a "pat-down" check by a security person of the same sex. Any hand carried items are opened for thorough physical check in addition to x-ray examination. The same process is repeated at the gate immediately prior to boarding.
Meanwhile, airport workers entering the airport are subjected to the same rigorous checks. The checks are repeated upon passing from zone to zone so as to tighten security the closer staff get to the aircraft. After aircraft servicing is complete, security staff run a sweep of the aircraft using sniffer dogs as necessary. Once security clear the aircraft for boarding, the crew carry out a deep search of the cabin for concealed items. This search is to a pre-planned procedure, taught in training and regularly re-checked.
The whole process is monitored closely by CCTV with operators trained to look for abnormal or unusual behaviour patterns. People who are identified as suspicious, or who are uncooperative at any stage of the security checks, are removed - forcibly if necessary - to secure interrogation areas for futher questioning and/or examination.
If the above scenario were enforced, as it could be using existing equipment, and provided properly motivated and trained security staff are employed, then there would be no need for armour plated cockpit doors. Since an armed man could not get aboard there would be no terrorists to hijack the aircraft. A normal cockpit door with a slightly modified lock would suffice for flight deck security. If absolutely necessary armed "sky-marshals" could be carried but this leaves the danger that if a group of previously unarmed potential terrorists maange to overpower the sky marshals then they become real terrorists. Nevertheless, if they are needed, then by all means we'll keep the sky-marshals.
Now I am personally prepared, in the interests of security, to submit to all of the above. As I enter the airport everyday, my sandwiches are already regularly x-rayed and my bag searched. But I suspect that if such a regime were imposed universally there would be plenty of complaints about human rights violations.
As to practicality, much of what I outline above IS (or was anyway) used by the Royal Air Force on certain communication flights from one particular station without causing any disruption to services. Certainly, such measures would provide real security instead of the illusion of security arising from bullet proof cockpit doors, arming the crew with stun-guns and training the cabin crew in tae kwan do. (ala SFAR 92-1)
Perhaps if I put the design drawings and instructions on 'how to remove the cockpit door using non-magnetic tools that don't trigger the alarm at security points' up on a web site that might put an end to the door nonsense?
**********************************
Through difficulties to the cinema
Join Date: May 2000
Location: New York
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onewayvalve -
I don't think you understand the function and structure of standard cockpit doors and locks.
Doors modified with lock bars are very strong and would take a long time to breach. I am very satisfied with the lock bars on our aircraft as a short term risk mitigation. The proper engineered solution is a door with more functionality, remote locking, or perhaps double doors like El Al. This combined with armed flightdeck crew makes commandeering an aircraft, not impossible, but almost so. There is no perfect solution, just a series of imperfect ones that combine to make the probability as small as practical.
Defense is best when it's layered. Screening will eventually fail. Now it's down to air marshals, a breach resistant cockpit door, and finally the last ditch defense, armed pilots. Besides, how are you better off without breach resistant doors and a defensible cockpit? Rapid D's are not a problem.
Iron Clog-
Jumpseat imposters are something that the pilots' unions have been fighting for a long time. ALPA has been pushing our sloth-like FAA for an electronically verifiable system of ID since the late 80s. Action from the FAA? NADA. Just like everything else.
Blacksheep -
I don't see any "rights" being trampled there. I see your procedures as a "condition of carraige." If you don't want to comply, then you don't ride. Nobody has a "right" to fly on an airliner. I think the depth and scope of you ideas might be impractical both in terms of do-ability and cost. At some point the market dries up and flying becomes only for the very wealthy. All are risk-reward tradeoffs. At what point on that scale we place ourselves is the debate.
With so many different countries with so many varying degrees of corruption, data access, automation, and ID integrity, it'd be hard to trust, unless say you'd be willing to exclude virtually all Africans, Pakistanis, Indians, etc, etc.
I don't think you understand the function and structure of standard cockpit doors and locks.
Doors modified with lock bars are very strong and would take a long time to breach. I am very satisfied with the lock bars on our aircraft as a short term risk mitigation. The proper engineered solution is a door with more functionality, remote locking, or perhaps double doors like El Al. This combined with armed flightdeck crew makes commandeering an aircraft, not impossible, but almost so. There is no perfect solution, just a series of imperfect ones that combine to make the probability as small as practical.
Defense is best when it's layered. Screening will eventually fail. Now it's down to air marshals, a breach resistant cockpit door, and finally the last ditch defense, armed pilots. Besides, how are you better off without breach resistant doors and a defensible cockpit? Rapid D's are not a problem.
Iron Clog-
Jumpseat imposters are something that the pilots' unions have been fighting for a long time. ALPA has been pushing our sloth-like FAA for an electronically verifiable system of ID since the late 80s. Action from the FAA? NADA. Just like everything else.
Blacksheep -
I don't see any "rights" being trampled there. I see your procedures as a "condition of carraige." If you don't want to comply, then you don't ride. Nobody has a "right" to fly on an airliner. I think the depth and scope of you ideas might be impractical both in terms of do-ability and cost. At some point the market dries up and flying becomes only for the very wealthy. All are risk-reward tradeoffs. At what point on that scale we place ourselves is the debate.
With so many different countries with so many varying degrees of corruption, data access, automation, and ID integrity, it'd be hard to trust, unless say you'd be willing to exclude virtually all Africans, Pakistanis, Indians, etc, etc.
Join Date: Sep 1999
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http://www.iasa-intl.com/RoboLander1.html
and
http://www.iasa-intl.com/RoboLander.htm
in due course.
and
http://www.iasa-intl.com/RoboLander.htm
in due course.
