In order for terrorists to use airliners to ram buildings,
etc, they have to get into the cockpits. Is there some
reason why the cockpits cant be sealed before loading the
passengers, and not opened until after landing? I realize
the flight crew might need access to a lavoratory of their own. Perhaps only an expensive re-design with separate entrances would suffice, but after the attacks on the WTC, it seems like a good idea to me.
Can any of you teeming millions please explain to me why it wouldn’t work?
I was wondering about this but then I thought - what if the cabin crew all got ill (maybe due to loss of cabin pressure) and all went unconscious. Maybe there’d be a pilot amongst the passengers but he wouldn’t be able to get into the cabin to fly the plane.
And this is a far more likely scenario than what happened today ever happening again.
I believe the Israeli passenger planes have a sealed, bullet-proof door, and a security guy w/ an uzi on every flight. Despite being one of THE prime targets for terrorists, from what I understand, they’ve never been hijacked since these security measures were put in place.
On a side note, I must say that the hijackings are what piss me off the most! I was under the delusion that these cockpits were sealed, to some extent…locked in some manner. That’s just common sense!
I’m pretty sure there were armed guards on American planes 10 or so years ago. Discontinued for some reason? Fewer hijackings? Economy cuts?
What if it is true that these hijackers were armed only with knives and cardboard cuting razors? Maybe we’ll be able to afford armed guards again. What a thought.
I haven’t checked the FARs, but I think cockpits are supposed to be locked while in flight. I’ve seen flight attendants knock on the door and I’ve heard a latch being moved.
But the doors aren’t all that strong. I’m sure they can be broken down. Also, what if a terrorist grabbed a four-year-old girl and threatened to slit her throat if the door isn’t opened? There is no way the flight crew would have known that they would be unwilling kamikazis. A cockpit crew may open the door in such a case thinking they are only being diverted or being held for ransom. Negotiations usually rely on giving up a little to diffuse a situation. Openning a door may seem like a little thing, if you didn’t know the terrorists’ goal.
Someone on the news talked about this last night. The one overiding reason that “vault” -like doors can’t be put on airplanes’ control cabin doors is due to the risk of decompression. He said that if the cabin explosively decompressed, and the pilot’s cabin was sealed in this manner, the plane would self-destruct, due to the way they are constructed. He also said that on modern planes even have special panels that are designed to blow out in case this happens. He was an engineer from Boeing, so I guess he knows what he’s talking about.
I am not an engineer so I perforce don’t know what I’m talking about but this smacks of BS to me. Not what you posted catmandu42 but the supposed reason for not putting vault-like doors on a cockpit.
My guess is the real reason is it costs money the airlines don’t want to spend. It would seem to me with all of our engineering skills that someone could design a vent system to equalize pressure without destroying the plane in the even of decompression.
This is exactly why it wouldn’t work. If you get a message saying that “for every minute you don’t open the door, another passenger dies” – what pilot is not going to open the door immediately?
Agreed but I wouldn’t be surprised if new regulations are put in force that tell the pilots to keep their door shut in ALL circumstances. If they truly comply with that rule terrorists would soon figure out that that particular ploy will get them nowhere and they’ll have to figure something else out.
Really, the only way I see that this could work anyway would be to build a plane in such a way as the flight crew has NO contact with the passenger cabin whatsoever. No doors, intercom, nothing. Admittedly, it’s a stupid idea when faced with the “what-if-something-goes-wrong” question.
The only other way I can see is if you shackled all the passengers to their seats during flight, which I don’t think anyone would stand for.
BTW, a lot of middle-eastern and African airlines have armed guys on board. I suppose if you want to risk explosive decompression, that’s OK.
What is the pressure difference between the inside of a plane and the atmosphere at 30,000 feet? I guess what I want to know is if there really would be EXPLOSIVE decompression or if that is just dramatized by hollywood…
Well, I am an aircraft engineer, and I agree with you. It’s a bullshit excuse. There’s no technical reason why the cockpit couldn’t be isolated from the cabin yet still be safe in an explosive decompression. It would just cost $$$$.
But as others have said, there are other, more compelling, non-technical reasons why this is a bad idea:
The hijacker threat to “open the door or we kill passengers”.
A mechanical problem in the cabin (or which can be seen from the cabin) that the flight crew needs to assess.
The remote - but real - possibility that the flight crew is incapacitated and someone in the cabin can fly the plane.
Long international flights - which are more likely to be hijacked than domestic flights - very often have relief crews of pilots. The need to accomodate three or more pilots, a rest area, galley and lavatory all separate and sealed off from the cabin would be very expensive indeed.*
In any case, a hijacker need only grab the aircraft’s crash axe and start chopping through the cockpit door.
*Some would say to hell with the cost. Well, the cold hard fact is that all safety equipment and procedures on all modes of transportation is implemented only if it’s economical to do so. Airlines (and auto manufacturers, etc) get their money from the people buying the service. No matter how safe it is (and nothing can be made 100% safe), if that service is too expensive, nobody will buy it. gruven, believe it. The pressure difference at 30,000 ft is about 10 pounds per square inch. That’s 1440 pounds per square foot. Easily enough to squeeze you through a broken cabin window like a tomato through a juicer.
If the terrorist hasn’t smuggled aboard anything more destructive than a knife, I think this tactic would work for exactly one minute before the rest of the passengers suddenly realize that they all have airline-issued steak knives.
They are sometimes called “Sky Marshals”. Done a lot during the hijacking epidemic of the 70’s. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them put on planes again. It’s a very feasible solution that would be relatively quick to implement. IIRC, they didn’t put them every flight - they randomly assigned them so that a hijacker wouldn’t know whether or not an armed guard was going to be on the flight. I think India uses them currently.
It would seem like this is a doable, if expensive security upgrade. Aircraft electronics would have to be modified, but that doesn’t (as far as I can see) involve a massive overhaul of the structure or mechanics of the aircraft itself.
Submitted for your approval:
Modify the necessary computer systems in the aircraft so that all of its helm controls can be disabled via radio command from the nearest control tower. The mechanism that governs this would not be accessible from the inside of the plane.
Once air traffic control sees a plane veering off course (as all of these planes did early on), remote control can be used to override the manual cockpit controls. The plane can then be made to circle over an empty stretch of countryside until more information can be gathered from the pilots (whoever they may be).
If it’s possible to go one step further and actually land the plane remotely, then we don’t even have to worry about crashing it in the countryside. That would also help us in the event of a “what if both pilots lapse into comas?” scenario.
Are all of the helm controls in the cockpit electronic? That is, switches & dials rather than pedals & levers. If switches & dials, then I do not see why we shouldn’t be able to take control of our aircraft remotely, from whatever location we need to.
Decent idea. The fear I’d have is an infiltration/assault by terrorists into the “remote control tower” which would then let them take control of a plane or planes and send them anywhere they want. This could even allow them to
have hijacked 40 planes insteadof just 4. Security would need to be MEGA tight I think.
Or maybe less likely (because of encryption and such), a “pirate” remote control device that allows terrorists to sit at home and steal control of an aircraft without needing to be in the central control room.
