The VCR doesn't have to survive, the recordings do - or the last 60 minutes or whatever. I agree it's not trivial providing another recorder and the connection from a VCR (or VCRs) to it, but it's (re-)using existing technology.

Since OEB 48 everybody knows how to get around the protections, even those that slept through typerating.

Airbus A320 crashed in Southern France
 

Oblivia. Accidents like this will definitely accelerate your idea.
Sept11.... whatever happened or not happened there did complicate safety all over the world.

About cockpit door...why not have ONE master key per cocpit,
(even the one made by good old key-smith)
that would override locked door from inside ?!?!

Yes, of course there's always this possibility.
It will most likely depend on the cost-effectiveness of one system compared to the other.

FLYING COUNSEL
Yet you feel qualified enough to do the accident investigation from your computer seat, even though by your own admission you are not a pilot, engineer, air crash investigator?

My wife is also a lawer, so you should know that applying the law to convict or prove innocence is about presenting ALL the evidence, allowing a unbiased view of the facts both for and against to come to a conclusion.

Unfortunaltly Pprune gives people who are utterly unqualified to have a voice, which is why Pprune has and always will be the place NOT to have an educated discussion.

By all means read the posts, educate yourself in all things aviation if you wish, but don't post your 'expert' opinions based on what you have read in the Daily Mail.

You give a pilot a key and you've just ensured that whoever wants to hijack the plane will kill him/her or any crewmember who has it in order to get in... you're basically saying go back to the pre-9/11 door system...


I may have missed it but they have 100% confirmed it was the PIC banging on the door?

The problem with a physical key, as with a keypad, is that the door has no way of knowing whether the person trying to gain access is a genuine crew member or a terrorist who has obtained the key/code under extreme duress.

It follows that the cockpit occupant(s) need to have the ability to unconditionally block access, if necessary. Making sure that decision is made by two people rather than one is probably the best we're going to be able to achieve.

Why not just go back to an unlocked cockpit door and rely on the fact that in this day and age there are going to be 149 other people on board who will not sit quietly and allow anything untoward happen?

Re pilots not feeling comfortable with opening up about personal issues for fear of losing their job, for many years BALPA had nominated members who you could call to talk things through and get advice. Am not sure whether this still exists but I always thought it was a good idea.

Maybe a sort of Samaritan service for crew would be a way forward to help pilots resolve these sorts of issues. The worst thing in the world is grappling with an issue and feeling that you can't talk to anyone about it.

Latest reports on Sky News that... EasyJet, Monarch, Virgin, all Canadian Airlines, and all German airlines (LH.) to insist on minimum of two on the FD.

Flying Council

You also have to realise that a flying career is fairly Unique unlike your Career as a lawyer where you are paid a vast amount of money and can continue that profession into your 70s if you so desire!
How would you feel ? How secure would you feel if you had to trundle along on regular occasions for a medical where someone would look at you and say " sorry mate your law career is over "
Pilots are unique often away for periods of time in Hotels here there and everywhere! Have you ever woken up in the night with no clue which hotel or even country you are in ?
Aviation medicine has changed to accommodate more and more conditions
Mental illness is one and as others have posted most people pilots as well have issues at one time or the other very few would harm a mouse never mind another human being and take their responsibilities to others very seriously!
The last thing we want through this is that pilots are pushed further away to alternative medicine or other quango treatments for fear of revealing medical conditions and loosing their livelihood
So yes it's natural we will look for mechanical problems for a crash or for the usual pilot error or mismanagement as they are the overwhelming cause of accidents
This is something else which had horrified everyone pilots and non pilots

They do have insurance for that, however. I used to know a Virgin pilot who had a standard £250k cover against losing his Class 1.

As before. People have been in the back and let it happen. Pilots in the USA are now armed. Not that being armed would have helped in this case.

The "significant find"
 

There would seem to be a limited number of items that would qualify as a significant find at the FO's home(s). It's too soon for an analysis of the computer content and no suicide note was found.

My guess is that they've found anti-depressants. One of the main questions that doctors ask patients who are commencing a course of SSRIs (Prozac etc) is whether they are experiencing any suicidal feelings.

One of the reported side-effects of SSRIs is suicidal impulses (obviously only in a limited - but statistically significant - number of cases).

That would fit the evidence so far released.

Some posters wonder what use to have cabin crew as the second person in the cockpit while the Captain visits the WC. What could she do, not knowing how to fly the plane? As Judd pointed out on post 1764, an attractive 19 year old girl may certainly be a distraction and a witness, and a friendly ear. I would hope that most cabin crew also know the right button to press to use the radio and send a mayday, which could be useful if it is a physical rather than a mental problem incapacitating the flight crew.

As for the difference in the assessment of people and their stability, 1500 hours in small aircraft, in a flying club of any sort will certainly make people aware of strange behavior, or unreliable types.

Other posters suggest airliners should be piloted like drones, by pilots sitting safely on the ground in control centres! NO THANKS! I remember the very first passenger, who persuaded a US Mail pilot to let him sit on the mailbags, back in 1920, or whenever Lindberg started flying the mail.
The US Mail pilot said to the chap, who needed urgently to get to LA whatever the cost or danger....."Well, if my butt gets there, I guess yours will too..."

Flying Counsel, the tendency on this forum of denial of the possibility of pilot suicide is nothing new. When MH370 went down, early posts suggesting suicide as a potential motive were rapidly deleted. I don't blame the mods for this - the mods are pilots too and it is a natural human tendency to wish to protect the status of one's occupation.

The statistics from the WHO are that 350 million people suffer from depression worldwide. 5-12% of men will suffer from clinical depression at least once in their lives. A much smaller number will experience suicidal ideation. Pilots are people too and will not be immune.

Unfortunately copycat suicide - where one famous suicide influences a cluster of similar suicides - suggests that the world may suffer an increased rate of these events, so on this basis the 'two persons in the cockpit' rule is welcomed (even though it leads to its own problems).

We live in an era of instability and distrust. The economy is moving East, the ME has been at war for 20 years if not more, school killings are a regular event. Many want a confrontation with Russia now.

Doctors and Dentists btw are the profession with the highest number of suicides, and they are in charge of our health let alone flying planes.

Even in friendly Canada the security services want their laws relaxed so they can conduct "false flag" operations (Snowden leaks).

And everyone everywhere is under money pressure.

We are moving a long way from stability and sanity and trust. What kind of door mechanism we have is a little irrelevant.

I hesitate to post but given the discussion over passengers' awareness of an issue apparently until close to the end;


Is it likely that due to the angle of descent, it would perhaps to a casual observer only seem that the cockpit door had malfunctioned and not that someone had sought to take control of the plane with intent to harm?


Even seeing crew trying to break the door might not automatically lead to the supposition of deliberate locking out, especially if the plane was still descending in a roughly horizontal manner. There have been prior door malfunction events quite recently.


It may only have been when the proximity to terrain became evident through the windows that people realised their lives were in danger.


Hope this is not unwelcome speculation, it just seems to make sense to me given the facts we know.

The cockpit door is for keeping baddies out. And it successfully does that.

If a pilot wants to kill everyone on board all he has to do is jump on a rudder at 200' (or at .78 at FL380) or close the start levers below critical height or hack his colleague to bits with the fire ax or or or or or. You don't have to lock your colleague out to prang the plane. So the two people in a cockpit rule is also worthless.

The door isn't the issue.

We're missing a vital part of the picture here and that's the FDR. Incapacitation is still distinctly possible in this case. Decompression still hasn't been disproved along with associated hypoxia. When that little light on the door finally went green for the few seconds it does, did the Captain catch it? Possibly wearing portable O2 mask?

I can't believe someone purposefully flew into a mountain breathing normally.