Maybe the heavier aircraft has more momentum to carry it forward while gliding - Perhaps it’s like how you can throw a tennis ball further than a ping-pong ball?
Good point, hadn’t thought of that.
Put another way, a fully loaded plane has to start the descent earlier because of the mass involved.
Even in the little planes I flew, more mass = start doing everything sooner.
Another way of looking at it, a lightly loaded plane has to be pointed down at a steeper angle to achieve the same airspeed so the horizontal distance travelled is less.
There should be a fob like a car fob which the pilot can take with him if he needs to go to the toilet and which he can use to override the door lock.
Also the Cockpit Voice Recorder should have video so we’re not guessing what the guy in the cockpit was doing based on his breathing.
That is unnecessary. Just give the pilot and co-pilot passcodes for which there is no override. Which is what they should have done in the first place.
Keep in mind that not all models of airplanes have a keypad system like the A320.
Terrorist sees pilot come out and puts knife to throat: “no one needs to get hurt, I just want to fly somewhere different, let me in and it’ll all be ok”.
As opposed to the terrorist saying, “Yoink! I got your key fob! :p” ?
Point being, someone who shouldn’t could get into the cockpit if the pilot needed to step out for any reason. Rather than focusing on how we can stop a rogue pilot after the fact, which leaves these avenues open to passenger-hijackers, we should focus on keeping track of pilots’ health and incentivising them being honest about their health before they go rogue.
And give them time to go to the can before a flight.
Guess what we learned today about our “100 percent flightworthy” co-pilot:
Lufthansa really knows how to screen pilots to ensure the safety of the passengers. :smack:
…and then expect them to hold it for the entirety of a 10 hour trans-atlantic flight?
It was “several years” ago. Something that happened years ago really doesn’t say anything about someone’s current state of mind. Perhaps it was deep grief that they fully recovered from. Perhaps they have a remitting / recurring condition, where they’re fine for years at a time and are capable of knowing and acting appropriately when symptoms start to recur. Or perhaps they’re near-chronically suicidal and should never be granted a pilot’s license. There’s no way to tell without long-term on-going assessments. Apparently they felt he had recovered and was functional enough to be allowed back into their training program. The system is not broken because the pilot had one incident of mental health problems years and years ago. It fell down because apparently regular mental health assessments were not a part of their routine procedures. Health changes. Having high blood pressure “several years” ago doesn’t preclude someone from having normalized it through diet and exercise today. If the airlines can check their pilots’ hearts every six months, they can check their pilots’ brains every six months, too.
There’s no need to automatically ground everyone with a mental health episode no matter how mild or how long ago or how well they managed and recovered from it. That attitude is founded in stigma and throws the baby out with the bathwater. The solution can be more rational than that. Most people with mental illness ARE NOT DANGEROUS. Real life is still not a Hollywood movie.
That works for short flights, not long ones.
This Q&A with Dr. Richard Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, was on the front page of the New York Times today.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/30/ask-well-depression-and-its-risks
You probably wouldn’t advocate using aircraft engines that have a slightly higher risk of failing. You would probably want airlines to choose the safest kind of engines. Similarly, I want airlines to chose pilots with the safest psychological profiles. Even though most people with a history of mental illness are not dangerous, why put passengers at greater risk than necessary?
Being a good pilot depends on a number of factors, which are rarely all present in equal measure. That’s why we allow pilots will less than perfect (but correctable) vision to fly. That’s why we allow pilots who might need an extra seat cushion to comfortably reach the controls. That’s why we allow pilots who are less than totally perfect in general.
There are plenty of “mental disorders” that do no impact flight safety. In fact, a little bit of obsessive-compulsive tendency might make for better compliance with rules and checklists, which have long been shown to improve safety.
If the disorder is treatable and treatment can return good pilots to flying we should do that.
Broomstick, thank you. The level of prejudice in this thread is staggering.
I really feel sorry for the Lubitz family. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have the media machine of an entire planet picking apart the life of a loved one and condemning him as a mass murderer.
No wonder his hometown is in denial.
I thought it was really classy when the father of one of the passengers stated on TV that he also felt bad for the Lubitz family, who had also lost a loved one, that the parents are in no way responsible for the actions of their son, and they also deserve compassion and sympathy.