Will 9/11 Security rules kill pilots in an accident?
All commercial jets have doors that deenergise with loss of ac power, have (simple) normal and emergency access codes, automatically unlock with depressurisation and an alternative escape path.
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I do NOT want to know how but, if the FA knows a code to open the door and the pilots are a little hungry, busy and in a non high profile area, ie gaurd down like US domestic used to be, is there a mechanism to prevent someone threatening the FA get the code and gain entry?
Just a yes or no please, not fishing for a way round, just trying to understand.
Ta
Just a yes or no please, not fishing for a way round, just trying to understand.
Ta
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Skipness One Echo,
Yes. Cameras and/or spy holes in the door.
Jsl
P.S. Before anyone accuses me of giving away any state secrets, both are plainly visible and in the case of cameras, there will be notices stating that they are there.
Yes. Cameras and/or spy holes in the door.
Jsl
P.S. Before anyone accuses me of giving away any state secrets, both are plainly visible and in the case of cameras, there will be notices stating that they are there.
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Question from a pilot who retired three years before 9/11. There were no (or at least, very few) locked doors in my day.
Do you pilots really feel any safer today with mandatory locked doors?
Jack
Do you pilots really feel any safer today with mandatory locked doors?
Jack
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I don't.
It is a barrier to emergency egress, crew communication (critical in an emergency), positive interaction with the passengers and fosters a sense of paranoia that before long, if not already, will become taken for granted as the 'norm'.
Yes, a layered approach is important, with the FD door as the last bastion, but ffs sake let's have some common sense applied - something lacking from management/DfT in the Pablo Mason case.
What keeps us safe is Intelligence (with a capital 'I'), not bulletproof doors. I can think of 100 different ways to take out an airliner without breaching the door, the recent convictions of the 3 bad guys show that Al Qaeda can as well. So I doubt we are any safer, it just means the baddies have to be more creative!
It is a barrier to emergency egress, crew communication (critical in an emergency), positive interaction with the passengers and fosters a sense of paranoia that before long, if not already, will become taken for granted as the 'norm'.
Yes, a layered approach is important, with the FD door as the last bastion, but ffs sake let's have some common sense applied - something lacking from management/DfT in the Pablo Mason case.
What keeps us safe is Intelligence (with a capital 'I'), not bulletproof doors. I can think of 100 different ways to take out an airliner without breaching the door, the recent convictions of the 3 bad guys show that Al Qaeda can as well. So I doubt we are any safer, it just means the baddies have to be more creative!
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I feel a LOT safer with the locked doors, with my cockpit-crew colleague peering through the peep-hole, wanting to pop out to the toilet, but not daring to open the door because there is a TEN-YEAR-OLD child standing out there, waiting for the toilet himself...... 
Yep, we are much safer.....
Yep, we are much safer.....
I Have Control
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Fatuous thread
Locked door prevents terrorists gaining control of a/c by taking over flight deck.
End of story.
(If I should see a 10 year-old outside waiting for the toilet, I am not inhibited to go for a pee, obviously. Rather stupid previous comment. If I see a suspicious-looking person, having scanned with the cameras available to me, I just ding the CC and ask them to clear the area...simples....if there is a problem, I stay on the right side of the door and deal with it.)
End of story.
(If I should see a 10 year-old outside waiting for the toilet, I am not inhibited to go for a pee, obviously. Rather stupid previous comment. If I see a suspicious-looking person, having scanned with the cameras available to me, I just ding the CC and ask them to clear the area...simples....if there is a problem, I stay on the right side of the door and deal with it.)
Thread Starter
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If I should see a 10 year-old outside waiting for the toilet, I am not inhibited to go for a pee, obviously.
You shocked,blanched, the angry mom approaching, running to rescue her 'abused' child (but runs right past you both into the now open cockpit)
.....
No, the thread wasnt and isnt about the need for the cockpit door -IN FLIGHT. It's what happens if there is an accident and pilots are unable to receive help. (Sorry if the thread title didnt make that clear
)
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With Helios the CC did get into the flight deck, but no one knows when they got there, and so what their options were. If, however, as investigators are commanded, your job is to prevent repetitions of what happened rather than explain exactly what did, you might recommend giving up the locked door on the assumption it was an obstacle to reviving the pilots. They didn't.
IIRC this was a concern of ALPA's when the doors were first mooted. It is still very difficult to get "normal" safety to do "joined up government" with anti-crazy safety. Which is more probable, an emergency like Helios or another 9/11? Answers on a postcard.
IIRC this was a concern of ALPA's when the doors were first mooted. It is still very difficult to get "normal" safety to do "joined up government" with anti-crazy safety. Which is more probable, an emergency like Helios or another 9/11? Answers on a postcard.
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The initial article in Hurriyet and the subsequent report in Flightglobal, a product of "churnalism," were incorrect. None of the investigators nor rescue team co-ordinators of this event believe that any of those in the cockpit were alive following the impact. A very tough decision was taken very early on in the rescue to spend resource to save those who could be saved and to a degree, ignore those who had already perished.
This will also be one of the first accidents where the performance of the rescue teams will have been filmed from the outset. A bright minded individual working for the roads department who was passing by at the time requested that the camera operators to turn their traffic cameras towards the scene. This occurred with minutes of the crash and they remained pointed in this direction for the next few hours. Data and footage obtained from these recordings can now be used to improve the response by emergency services worldwide.
PM
This will also be one of the first accidents where the performance of the rescue teams will have been filmed from the outset. A bright minded individual working for the roads department who was passing by at the time requested that the camera operators to turn their traffic cameras towards the scene. This occurred with minutes of the crash and they remained pointed in this direction for the next few hours. Data and footage obtained from these recordings can now be used to improve the response by emergency services worldwide.
PM
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In the case of the Helios accident (the final report for which I have right in front of me), there were no passengers entering the cockpit, and there was apparently no attempt to revive the pilots.
What actually happened, as far as the accident board could piece together, is that a flight attendant entered the cockpit just before the first engine flamed out from lack of fuel, and sat in the captain's seat and appeared to be attempting to fly the airplane. This attendant, the only male member of the cabin crew (and thus easily identified), also held a valid U.K. CPL and a valid first-class medical.
CVR evidence indicates that standard emergency procedures were used to access the flight deck, but the board was puzzled by the fact that this FA waited until 30 seconds before the engine flameout to actually open the door. A possibility is that he didn't know the proper access code and could not actually open the door until power to the locking mechanism was lost as engine failure occurred. Only the Cabin Chief normally had the access code at Helios.
Once the door was open, the FA tried to sit in the left seat and appeared to be trying to fly. He didn't see the F-16 escort at first. At one point he sat up and remained motionless, as if unconscious. After the engines flamed out and the aircraft began to descend, as it passed through 7000 feet or so the FA appeared to see the F-16s. In response to their signals to follow them to the airport, the FA merely pointed down (as if to say that he had no choice but to go down now). Shortly thereafter the aircraft crashed. Nobody else was seen moving on the flight deck. The CVR recorded two weak attempts at a mayday call, but this was not on the radio record; perhaps the FA was too far gone to remember to key the microphone.
The CVR evidence seems to indicate an entry onto the flight deck using standard procedures, but that doesn't explain why the FA waited so long to enter (he waited hours to do so, in a depressurized airplane with an unresponsive flight deck), nor does it explain the remarkable coincidence of him opening the door only seconds before the first engine flameout. This does tend to encourage speculation that he was unable to open the door for some reason and gained access only after it unlocked on its own, by which time it was too late. The report concluded that the secured cockpit door was not necessarily a contributing factor, but there isn't enough information to know that for sure. There were some anomalies in flight-deck access procedures at the airline, but those were not necessarily contributing factors, either.
The bright side to the story is that the flight deck was thoroughly protected against any evil terrorists on board for essentially the entire flight.
There are far more accidents than terrorist attacks aboard aircraft, so it seems to me that the emphasis should be on dealing with the former rather than dealing with the latter … which means that access to the flight deck should be made easy in any emergency situation that cannot be readily provoked by passengers. If the flight deck is unresponsive, the risk of letting terrorists enter the flight deck pales to insignificance (in fact, the risk of terrorism is already vanishingly small even in normal flight), so the flight deck door should unlock in any emergency. It is not sufficient to assume that the right person in the cabin crew will be able to open the door.
There is too much paranoia in the aviation industry today in relation to the very small threat from the bad guys, whereas the standard paranoia about safety—which is far more justified—seems to be waning. This is a worrisome trend. One need only look at the numbers to see where the real concern and emphasis should be placed, and it's not on dealing with mostly imaginary bogeymen.
What actually happened, as far as the accident board could piece together, is that a flight attendant entered the cockpit just before the first engine flamed out from lack of fuel, and sat in the captain's seat and appeared to be attempting to fly the airplane. This attendant, the only male member of the cabin crew (and thus easily identified), also held a valid U.K. CPL and a valid first-class medical.
CVR evidence indicates that standard emergency procedures were used to access the flight deck, but the board was puzzled by the fact that this FA waited until 30 seconds before the engine flameout to actually open the door. A possibility is that he didn't know the proper access code and could not actually open the door until power to the locking mechanism was lost as engine failure occurred. Only the Cabin Chief normally had the access code at Helios.
Once the door was open, the FA tried to sit in the left seat and appeared to be trying to fly. He didn't see the F-16 escort at first. At one point he sat up and remained motionless, as if unconscious. After the engines flamed out and the aircraft began to descend, as it passed through 7000 feet or so the FA appeared to see the F-16s. In response to their signals to follow them to the airport, the FA merely pointed down (as if to say that he had no choice but to go down now). Shortly thereafter the aircraft crashed. Nobody else was seen moving on the flight deck. The CVR recorded two weak attempts at a mayday call, but this was not on the radio record; perhaps the FA was too far gone to remember to key the microphone.
The CVR evidence seems to indicate an entry onto the flight deck using standard procedures, but that doesn't explain why the FA waited so long to enter (he waited hours to do so, in a depressurized airplane with an unresponsive flight deck), nor does it explain the remarkable coincidence of him opening the door only seconds before the first engine flameout. This does tend to encourage speculation that he was unable to open the door for some reason and gained access only after it unlocked on its own, by which time it was too late. The report concluded that the secured cockpit door was not necessarily a contributing factor, but there isn't enough information to know that for sure. There were some anomalies in flight-deck access procedures at the airline, but those were not necessarily contributing factors, either.
The bright side to the story is that the flight deck was thoroughly protected against any evil terrorists on board for essentially the entire flight.
There are far more accidents than terrorist attacks aboard aircraft, so it seems to me that the emphasis should be on dealing with the former rather than dealing with the latter … which means that access to the flight deck should be made easy in any emergency situation that cannot be readily provoked by passengers. If the flight deck is unresponsive, the risk of letting terrorists enter the flight deck pales to insignificance (in fact, the risk of terrorism is already vanishingly small even in normal flight), so the flight deck door should unlock in any emergency. It is not sufficient to assume that the right person in the cabin crew will be able to open the door.
There is too much paranoia in the aviation industry today in relation to the very small threat from the bad guys, whereas the standard paranoia about safety—which is far more justified—seems to be waning. This is a worrisome trend. One need only look at the numbers to see where the real concern and emphasis should be placed, and it's not on dealing with mostly imaginary bogeymen.
Per Ardua ad Astraeus
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Originally Posted by AGA
A possibility is that he ............could not actually open the door until power to the locking mechanism was lost as engine failure occurred. ....................
This does tend to encourage speculation that he...................... gained access only after it unlocked on its own, by which time it was too late.
This does tend to encourage speculation that he...................... gained access only after it unlocked on its own, by which time it was too late.
Yes - the door may have hindered access if, as stated, there were some 'some anomalies in flight-deck access procedures at the airline' but that was in the hands of the airline, as the AMS crash was in the hands of the pilots.
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AGA, On Sept 11, 2001 most everybody agreed with your statement of not worrying about terrorists. Later that day nobody agrees with your statement. The skies are a lot safer today regarding this threat. Helios did not crash because of the new procedure in my opinion. Why the FA couldn't use the code to open the door was the big problem after the depressurization. Did he forget what it was? The engines may have surged just before fuel starvation momentarily releasing the door lock. The FDR should have shown if this did happen.
If the FA's know the code....then they can be convinced to give it up...thus the door is not secure. If the FA's have a key to the door....it can be taken away and again....the door is not secure.
The only way to secure the door is to have it designed so only the cockpit crew can open the door from the cockpit side.
The goal is to keep Hijackers from entering the cockpit.....thus all other concerns are not relevant. Or...am I missing something!
The only way to secure the door is to have it designed so only the cockpit crew can open the door from the cockpit side.
The goal is to keep Hijackers from entering the cockpit.....thus all other concerns are not relevant. Or...am I missing something!
Pardon me if this is already done, but perhaps the addition of a sentence in the emergency QRH, assuming such a thing exists, to the effect of 'ensure cockpit door unlocked' would help in the case of normal emergency situations?
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No no no - haven't you been paying attention? The whole point of the system design is that is doesn't matter if the terrorists know the code for emergency door opening, because that code gives a 1-2 min delay efore opening, all the time with a godawful alarm sounding in the FD, so pilots have plenty of time to assess the situation and, if necessary, completely disable the external keypad/entry system. If both pilots are so unconscious they don't deny entry to any bad guys using the not-so-secret code then you have problems anyway.
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Pardon me if this is already done, but perhaps the addition of a sentence in the emergency QRH, assuming such a thing exists, to the effect of 'ensure cockpit door unlocked' would help in the case of normal emergency situations?
Leaving it unlocked in an emergency should be a judgement call, not an automatic process. Good judgement is what Captains get paid for.