Dirik

The problem is also there on Positioning flights when there is no one on board other than the two crew so its not just Cargo Flights and in the wrong hands an empty jet is just as lethal a weapon as a full one.

Going back to Cabin crew entering the Cockpit when one crew member leaves this is opening another avenue for terrorists organisations to train an extremist with a good record and to then get that Girl/Man to apply for a job as Cabin crew (easily achieved) That makes terrorism more likely as the terrorist FA only has one person to deal with and can stop entry to the cockpit by the other crew members.

The only way Cabin crew should be allowed access to the flight deck is by training them for that role. Designating certain Senior Cabin crew with a track record of at Least 3 to 5 years with the Airline.
Those Senior and trained Cabin Crew with a long track record in the company should be the ONLY Cabin crew qualified and allowed to enter the Flightdeck

to allow any Cabin Crew to enter the cockpit with one flight crew member is asking for future trouble

Well life goes on for everyone. Things happen. It can be a fine line between outing a loved one thus ruining their career over nothing and doing the right thing. So if a pilot friend going through a divorce says he is depressed and wants to kill her, do pick up the phone and call the FAA knowing he has been a rock solid pilot for 2 or 3 decades?

People say a whole lot of things they don't mean and almost always it's nothing. Everyone needs confidants. Pilots are human, it doesn't mean they have any intentions other than complete commitment and dedication to the wellbeing of their passengers. Creating a situation for pilots in which they are unable to intrust anybody with the inevitabilities of life isn't the answer.

QuantzClearly you should stick to writing/ journalism. If a pilot can go rogue, why can't a marshall? Now you have twice as many people that have to be sane.....ie you've halved your odds. Brilliant.
Bringing an extra human to the flight deck makes no sense whatsoever, it double your chances of a takeover. The pilot can still crash the aircraft anytime they want, but now someone else also has that opportunity.....someone who hasn't been psychologically screened no less. It may make the odd person feel safer, but that just means they are a bit dim.

Do you have another efficient solution ? Not "someone with a gun", as you write improperly : a police officer or an agent from an enforcement agency with a gun.
I don't see why this couldn't be debated here.
As a passenger, and as a long-haul pilot's and former army fighter pilot's son myself, I would certainly be reassured by such a disposition.
No psychiatric test whatsoever will permit to detect if, when and how a psychopath will act. My wife is a therapist herself and she knows she will not meet some patients
alone in her office — borderline is borderline.
And please, aggressiveness is of no use here, a bit of decency won't do no harm. I took precautions in what I wrote, with some caveat.

No it doesn't. It may reduce the risk, it does not prevent it. Once we had 4 out of 5 asleep including both pilots.

Patient/doctor confidentiality hasn't exactly helped much here.
Whoever the doctor was signed him off for work. It appears that he suffered from some form of mental illness that led him to intentionally crash a plane full of people. This could have happened at any point in the past 50 years and maybe already has. What are the genuine ways to avoid it? At no point should the doctor be obliged to warn somebody that a pilot has such an illness...?
With this type of illness, surely the doctor should be assessing potential risk to other people...

Many years ago, while undergoing line training as F/O in a new company, I started getting stressed, due to wanting to do well, not screw up etc. I started making small confidence/stress related mistakes like dropping check-lists, missing my call-sign and rushing things. The training captain, a calm elderly guy with a lifetime of experience, must have recognised this and announced in the cruise " I am going back for a break. You have control."
This was just what I needed. I looked around the flightdeck, noticed the beautiful sky for the first time, checked all flight parameters, and methodically collected my thoughts for the descent and approach. Requests from ATC were complied with in an orderly and professional manner. I was the business!
When the boss returned, I updated him on our progress, and asked if he would like an arrival briefing. "Ready to copy, Sir." was his reply. I went on to pass my line check with distinction.
Now, more than twenty years later, I am a training captain. Recently, I had a similar occasion, this time with an experienced F/O on a command upgrade. I knew he was very capable, but saw the stress mistakes creeping in. I remembered that time long ago, and went for a break, leaving him alone. It did the trick, and all was well from then on.
How sad, that recent events have now prevented this valuable training aid from being used.
Even on smaller types with less than fifty seats, there will presumably have to be two flight attendants, otherwise there will be no-one to look after the pax if one is guarding the pilot, and a flight attendant on the flight deck can also be a distraction.

Actual studies show there are 125 to 150 police suicides per year, at a rate of 14 - 17/100,000 (the public is 11/100,000 and the Army in 2009 was 20/100,000).

I don't understand the logic of this debate. A malcontent in the front seat has plenty of opportunity to cause harm and perhaps will not wait for a toilet break. If you are content with two crew up front most of the time, introducing a temporary stand in only increases risk. Only real mitigation would be to return to 3 on the FD, all screened as now.

Agreed on that one, they also need a good understanding of what goes on if they are expected to detect the unusual. Would a cabin crew member have intervened in this case when the FO dialed an altitude and pulled the knob to descend? I suggest not until too late.

A shrink may be able to expand but I guess suicide is a lonely thing and maybe someone else on the flight deck would break that mind set, whereas alone on a locked flight deck he is on his own to do as he pleases. Any shrinks on?

Also, you always hear breathing on CVRs because the mikes are 'hot' to the CVR.

That will not stop a determined sleeper. Look at the guys who planned 9/11. They were in it for the long game.


Then you also add the dimension of increasing the already steep authority gradient present in some cultures/airlines whereby a junior cc feels unable to contradict/intervene in a situation where a senior is showing poor judgement/unable to perform said duty... again... the solution creating its own problems...

737, I agree, that sort of environment won't help either, but there needs to be some sort of go between... even some kind of confidential help line for the industry where people can vent, get advice or even run the 'my boyfriend said XYZ, he's flying tomorrow, should I be worried?' type scenarios without fear of getting anyone sacked. Then they could follow up if they so chose...

Such a helpline exists in Australia for kids/young adults facing problems they feel they can't go to anyone else about. It's funded I believe by donations/govt funding. A few cents per airline ticket worldwide? Worth it.

Sigh. Although access to the door is absolutely worthless in preventing crew mischief, because if a pilot has murderous intent he will be able to destroy the aircraft in a myriad ways, if you *must* go on about the door, here is a solution for you.

Lock the passengers in.

They're the threat the door is supposed to guard against, no?

Move the door back so it seals off the cabin, where the threat is.

Then we can have an open cockpit, walk around, stretch our legs and aching backs, chat with the crew and enjoy our jobs a bit more. Its not good for my mental health to be locked into a 2x2m room 12 hrs a day.;)

After 40 years flying as cabin crew I had a pretty good basic knowledge of the flight deck.

However if I had been sitting in on the German Wings flight whilst the Captain was absent I would not have noticed anything unusual in the co pilot altering the flight level it would be a normal action if he had received instructions from ATC.

The only time I would have been of useful assistance would be after the initial request to enter the cockpit was declined.

I guess I could have opened the door as I am familiar with the operation of this but would that have been sufficient given the time available for the Captain to get into a position to fly the aircraft safely?

I think that two persons at all times is a good idea but don't think it is the answer to the problem alone.

Are we really sure that FO's depression played a role here at all?

He went to a doctor and got a sick note. Are you sure that was for depression? It could have been an injured knee after all that running.

He went to a hospital that did not treat him for depression. Bad knees?

When he had a bout of depression in 2008 he reported it and was treated until he was satisfyingly well. As you all noted, five years went by until he actually flew an airplane.

There are other possibilities out there. Don't slam people because once they were depressed. You can recover very well from a depression with the correct treatment. You can also be depressed without having suicidal thoughts. So excluding every single pilot that has suffered from depression is not necessary, although I see some here make those claims. On the contrary, a pilot that does not fear losing his/her job because of this illness have better chances of recovery because for them there is a light at the end of the tunnel, they have something to fight for!

I also see that many of you have absolutely no idea how SSRIs actually work and how they are linked to suicide. That is sad. Very sad. Misinformed, I would say.

No, if you're referring to the new EASA recommendations, they exempt aircraft operated with only one cabin crew and those with 60 or fewer seats.

Innocent until proven guilty
 

Allegedly he did. It might look like the most likely scenario, but it would be a logical fallacy to rule out other chain of actions and events at this point.

It's a good exercise for the rational mind not to fall too early for believable yet unproven. Particularly for pilots, supposedly one of the most rational minded professions out there.

I'd be willing to bet that every member of the cabin crew realised that descending 30,000 feet less than an hour after departure from BCN wasn't SOP.

If the two persons on the flight deck is such a critical procedure as the door can be locked from inside leading to a mentally unstable person being able to abuse of the aircraft for other than the intended purpose, I wonder, as has Nigel, on the potential backdraws of such procedure.

A better way, IMHO would be to have an override key in the cockpit that the person wanting to take a personal break takes with him/her and therefore can get into the cockpit any time.

FA - limited pilot training
 

Just to play devil's advocate a little.
What if, during the Captain's toilet break with the Flight attendant in the cockpit, there is a depressurisation problem and the remaining pilot decides on an emergency descent? That's what Lubitz's action may have looked like to a FA, though we pilots know different.

Is the FA now likely to club the pilot with the fire extinguisher to prevent him/her, or do we give limited pilot training to all cabin crew?

Any solution has to be carefully thought through.

If, and I mean IFF, this was indeed a planned act including concious and thought-through actions, I will be very angry and very sad. Because then this is a mass murder. And that can not, will not, never be justified.

But first: We don't have enough evidence. Right now there are rumours, innuendos and circumstantial evidence to something that might have been.

And second: In all other cases where there were confirmed suicide-murders by airplane, the employee in question had a beef with someone in the company. PSA1771, EgyptAir990, FedEx705 (unsuccessful but makes this list anyway). SilkAir185 has some convincing circumstantial evidence that this is the case. All these guys had a very special personality, one that didn't take defeat well. Most of them almost led a double life. Did this German youngster qualify to that? We don't know that yet.

What I do know is that I agree with Pace on this one. An act like this is more the mindset of a school shooter than that of a depressed person.

But to be honest... we simply don't know what really took place in that cockpit yet!

ETA: Oh yes, I forgot that Mocambique flight, can't remember the number now... Again, strange fellow with company issues.

Aviation runs on trust. You trust the mechanics to do their jobs right, you trust the dispatcher who plans the flight, you trust the ATC controller handling your flight, you trust the security screeners to keep weapons off your airplane, you trust the cabin crew to do their jobs properly and you trust the person in the other seat to know their stuff and operate the aircraft safely.

It is an amazing thing that we often climb into cockpits with total strangers and yet have an aviation safety record that makes the drive to the airport the riskiest part of the journey.

Sometimes, the system breaks down, but these are exceedingly rare occurrences. Aviation remains an extraordinarily safe industry despite the incredible complexity of the aircraft and support systems that keep us flying.

9/11 prompted a massive overreaction that changed the industry and job for, IMHO. the worse. It would be tragic if this event did something similar. What would be even worse is if the trust that keeps everything running was undermined, particularly since this seems to be the kind of "black swan" event that by definition is at the tail end of the probability distribution.

When I hear talk of mistrust of cabin crew, "airlock" doors, armed marshals and the like, I cringe -- and think about early retirement. I chose aviation because, like most, I absolutely love flying airplanes. Retiring from flying and using the law degree I have may be something I need to consider if things get even worse than they are because this prompts yet another ill-considered overreaction.

To truly live is to accept a certain level of risk and the elimination of all risk is an unattainable fantasy.

But, to sum things up, this remains, despite it all, a remarkably safe business, which is a fact that is often lost when incidents, whether accidental or deliberate, occur.