On the plus side, the single-pilot airliner scheme discussion is squelched forever. Pilotless airliners - still on the table, but only after we have a decade of driverless cars and zero accidents.

Maybe true, but it is speculation.

In my opinion the French Prosecutor is not following ICAO Annex 13.

Happy to read that IFALPA just came with a statement.

Dried ears

This has been addressed numerous times
If locked and timing out the 30 sec buzzer does not sound
He probably locked it as soon as the cpt left the cabin
And a few times while he was trying to get in
The buzzer would never sound

It only sounds if in 'auto' mode to give the crew to verify ID

The door was locked
The plane was piloted into the ground
The ap alt was reset to 100'
The fo was alivecand breathing
Never requested help
All this in a few minute period

It took 8 minutes
The time out was 5
So if he was incapcitated and accidently locked the door the cpt could have gotten in after the 5 minutes expired
Since he could not it means the fo hit lock again

It's clear what happened

Altitude set once or more than once?
 

I have read all the posts before posting. I wish others did. I have not seen a resolution to whether the altitude set was made one time only, just before the beginning of descent, or whether there were subsequent resets, as has also been posted. This makes a big difference on the question of consciousness. The noise of breathing, without characterizing any changes in it, is by itself no proof of consciousness. If unconscious, knocking on the door, and musings about what one moral issues one thinks about during an 8 minute suicide, are moot confusions.

I once flew a trip with a junior copilot with whom I'd never before flown, into one of the world's highest and most challenging airports, at the end of day one in a three-day sequence. Without out knowing anything about him, I might have flown the leg myself, but I knew his background was in military fighters, the cockpit atmosphere during the day had been totally normal - relaxed and friendly, it was daylight, and good weather, so he flew the leg.

On the arrival he was holding a good bit more airspeed than I was comfortable with fairly late in the profile, however, so I reached over for the lever and casually announced that I was going to go ahead and deploy the slats.

He immediately slammed the throttles shut, turned to me red-faced and asked in an angry tone, "Do you want to fly this f**** thing yourself?"

Many things went through my mind in a fraction of a second, but I resisted the urge to say, "Why yes, I believe I do." I knew if I did, I would build a brick wall between us and I'd be flying solo. Transferring duties at that point and flying without normal call-outs would have compromised safety, since I knew he'd let me crash rather than say anything in his mental state.

We continued with standard call-outs, etc. and he flew an otherwise flawless approach and landing.

Once we left the airplane nothing was said between us, even during the trip to the layover hotel. I changed and went to the restaurant to find him sitting alone at a table. I sat down, ordered, and said nothing.

After a few minutes of silence he said, "I guess I shouldn't have said that." I started laughing and we then had a discussion about the vast differences between flying single seat fighters and airline transports.

The remainder of the trip was normal and we parted friends. But I was concerned enough about his cockpit explosion to follow his subsequent trips for awhile and touch base with his captains to see if there were any repeats of his cockpit outburst. Aside from a few nits, no captain had witnessed anything similar, so I dropped it. But I'd never before witnessed anything like it in 30-years of flying.

So you really never really know.....

Because it is a simple fact.

As unfortunate as it is, if somebody is intent on causing harm, either to themselves or others, and their intent is not known in advance, there is little that can be done to stop them. This applies to anybody in any situation or profession. All that can be done is to analyse what they did, and try to make changes to prevent re-occurrence of the same sequence of events. There will, however, always be a way - it is not possible to completely eliminate risk - in ANY environment.

The aviation industry uses the ALARP standard - As Low As Reasonably Practicable - in risk mitigation. This means that, whilst concreting pilots into the flight deck after boarding may be a way of eliminating the possibility of in-flight FD intrusion - it is hardly practicable.

And commercial realities often have to be taken into account when deciding what is 'practicable'.

In 1999, before the advent of the current cockpit doors, an Egyption Airlines First Officer who was about to face disciplinary issues from his airline, managed to crash a 767 into the Atlantic Ocean and kill 217 people, even though the Captain had gotten back into the seat and was trying to recover the aircraft.

Having a FA sitting on the jumpseat will do FA to prevent a re-occurrence of this.

While it is possible now to quantify the number of lives lost as a result of increased cockpit security, and keen observers also class MH370 as a probable candidate here, it is not possible to put a number on how many potential lives have been saved by these measures.

The answer to this problem lies in monitoring our fellow pilots and taking an interest in their welfare. Aviation is a balance, a compromise. Always was, always will be.

AKAAB
 

....really like most parts of your reply/input, Sir.

Many F/D crew (incl. alcohol) not really sure what 'normal' is in that day-today environment and put up with a load of 'stuff'.

As any Psychiatrist/Psychologist will tell you...hopefully truthfully....there is no test ever to explain why someone just 'snaps'.

Dysfunction, mentally, can come as either 'inwardly-directed' suicide at almost a moment's notice and 'exogenously-directed' to 'kill them all' within frighteningly short timescales. (Almost common in Post-traumatic stress cases, such as war scenarios, for just one example).

The truth is that despite people saying things like he/she would never do that, unfortunately, we are governed by brain activity and anyone can do anything under certain circumstances that are completely undetectable beforehand.

How the relatives/family/friends react will likely be their eventual understanding of the above truths.

@Gonna
 

According to recent findings the pilot was the "terrorist" so the door did not help any.

ZS-NDV
 

So why was the flt deck door kept locked, why did the co-pilot keep the door locked, why did the co-pilot not talk to ATC ?....that explanation is the biggest load of BS I've heard for a long time. :ugh:

@Leightman 957: set once, see the post above yours

but door lock was activated at least twice in the 8 minute descent period

Longtimer
 

I also think that during those years of Pan Am, most A/C used to have four Cockpit Crew because they had a Flight Engineer and Navigator besides the Captain and F/O. Other than that they might have had a positioning crew in the cockpit. Nevertheless this co-pilot was determined to fly the plane to the mountain.:sad:

It all goes back to 9/11 - and the perpetrators behind all that, viz locked cockpit doors

I bet all the passengers had to take off their shoes to satisfy security before boarding.

Sorry, don't want to sound insensitive but I'm sure you get the point, the Bad Guys - of any persuasion - will do precisely what they want, whenever they want to do it, despite our best efforts.

John James: post-mortem toxicology is absolutely feasible and these days highly accurate providing the correct body is identified. For my sins I have attended a lot of fatal multi-casualty disasters in my career (the vast majority - but not all - thankfully non-aviation related) and I have little doubt that both the pre-mortem medical records and post-mortem toxicology will be respectively scrutinized and run very carefully. A post-mortem - and I hope this doesn't distress any relatives - will also be looking very carefully for medical problems such as tumours etc. which can absolutely cause aberrant behavior. But actually, the incidence of that is really low. It is not zero so most of the anecdotes people have read are true but it is low.

my bold and italics

Don't think you have.!

The CEO of GW/LH has confirmed the BEA statement that the Lock switch was operated more than once 5 mins apart.

You should understand the relevance/significance of that as you have read all the posts included twice where I have posted (as have others) extracts from the 320 manual explaining the Lock function and time delay.

Rex: are you suggesting that might have been a straw that broke a camel's back? :cool:

Unfortunately I suspect there won't be enough left of the co-pilot to do an post crash forensics on his brain to determine any presence of abnormal physiology etc. that might influence behaviour as some previous posters have suggested.
Hard to believe that what was a terrible tragedy now appears to be even worse.

Not sure if there is sarcasm intended there but just in case not, no I'm saying subjecting flight crew to the same security measures as passengers in the light of what has just happened - and the very notable fact that there is an axe on the flight deck - exposes such practice as the sham that it is and ought to be repealed immediately.

DAP info (such as SELECTED ALTITUDE) is routinely interrogated by the surveillance system from all suitably equipped aircraft and visualized on the controllers screen either as track label or in the flight list.

I can remember that there was a post on this. I could not find it again. The French Prosecutor did not state this. Somebody had mentioned that LH CEO mentioned this. But it has not been reconfirmed to my knowledge.