Airbus Door Procedure Including emergency entry
Thanks.
An interesting tidbit:
http://live.independent.co.uk/Event/Germanwings_Alps_crash_Live_updates_and_reaction
No one in the press seems to able to find out what Germanwings’ policy is.
My son flies for one of the big US carriers*
Anecdotal cite I guess, but he assures me they do require an “eligible” crewmember in the cockpit at all times. I posted in another thread that the airline’s definition of “eligible” includes rest rules. Occasionally an odd situation arises when he’s deadheading and one of the active crew needs to hit the head. If he’s timed out, he has to sit in back while a flight attendant occupies the vacant pilot’s seat. He thinks this is a dumb rule, and it would be better to have a qualified pilot occupy the seat, no matter how tired he is. (I agree)
*their commuter line
If there is one nightmare scenario, the kind of nightmare that makes you wake up screaming on the top of your lungs and soaked in sweat, that must be being a pilot, having yourself locked out of the cockpit and your PIN to open the door doesn’t work.
There are an infinite number of ideas that, if implemented, would make air travel safer and definitely would save lives. The problem is in the money spent relative to the number of lives saved: if the projected cost is more than a few million dollars per saved life, it’s deemed “not worth it.” This is surely one of those cases: the cost to develop, certify, and maintain the system you describe (and train people in its use and maintenance) would not be worth it.
FWIW, El Al has been locking their cockpit doors a lot longer than anyone else, without the system you describe.
Breaking news is that the copilot locked the other pilot out and intentionally crashed the plane.
And then what? The pilot gets in and is faced with the other pilot wielding the fire axe. Or the other pilot simply flies the aeroplane in a way that makes it impossible for anyone not strapped in to their seat to do anything. A steep inverted dive would sort out anyone who wanted to get in the cockpit.
There is very little you can do about a suicidal pilot. Much like there is little you can do about a suicidal driver in an oncoming car. We don’t need a technical solution to every conceivable problem. Perhaps better psychological support services would be more appropriate?
Um! I see this is from the Marseilles prosecutor - not the accident investigation team. The conclusion seems to be based on the assumption that the sequence of events could only have been deliberate, not accident, not technical failure. He might be right but I’d feel happier if someone who actually knew about aircraft and aviation accidents was saying it.
I will not comment on security procedures. All that stuff is “classified” under US federal law.
I will comment that any airline pilot who chooses to commit suicide while flying can easily do so even if the other pilot is sitting right there alongside him/her. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how to render the situation all-but unrecoverable in just a few seconds. By the time the other pilot reacts, the game is over.
The armored doors stop about one nutcase a month someplace over the US. So far they’ve been a very definite net positive for safety. Ensuring that a hostage under duress or a knowledgeable traitor can’t get in from the cabin is a pretty important goal that ought not be compromised.
In a modern jet the flight computer will let you crash the plane? There’s no level of, “Are you sure you really want to do that?”
I suppose you could turn off the computers but anything that throws more steps in the way of intentionally crashing the plane and allowing the other pilot to intervene would be good. Of course in this case the other pilot could not intervene but you do what you can.
I had no idea that the cockpit citadels were challenged that often. As an aside, how does that frequency compare to the pre-9/11 period?
My main question though is, in your opinion, roughly how much money would it cost to institute in U.S. airlines something like the Personnel Reliability Program used in U.S. Department of Defense special weapons programs? IIRC, you used to fly F-15s and mentioned the B61 lay down drop procedure once or twice, which is why I’m picking on you.
My other related questions probably fall within the classified area you mentioned above, but in case they don’t…
[ol]
[li]In your opinion would a PRP-like program significantly lower the number of potential threats like Andreas Lubitz, and if so, what’s your estimate of the number of increased threats per year that such a program would find? (I am guessing that the PRP is more stringent that your employer’s background check and continual personnel screening process, but I don’t know.) [/li][li]What’s your estimate of the increased number of false positives—i.e., people who would be found unreliable under a PRP, but wouldn’t otherwise pose a significantly increased risk to harm themselves or others. [/li][li]What additional costs would those false positives incur to the airlines?[/li][/ol]
I am assuming that instituting such a program would give the airlines some legal immunity from EEOC complaints, false terminations suits, and that actions taken under that program wouldn’t be a unfair labor practice. I’m also assuming that ALPA would be prohibited from striking or taking any action in response to employment decisions made as a result of this proposed PRP-like program.
Basically, I’m trying to get an idea about the cost/benefits tradeoff of drastically increasing background checks and off-duty behavior scrutiny of airline workers, not that the U.S. airline industry (or anything else that the DOT takes responsibility for) isn’t already heavily regulated and its employees’ behavior scrutinized. If you can’t answer, or any answer would be too much of a WAG, I understand.
In the early days of the Airbus fly by wire system there was a lot of discussion about the level of authority the computer might have. Questions about whether the system would allow a pilot to exceed the rated or even maximum loads on the airframe. But the flight computers are not omnipresent and all knowing. In general that last thing you want is a safety critical software system that has the level of complexity to outguess the pilots. There would be zero chance you could make it bug free. Indeed the first problem would be getting the requirements bug free, let alone the implementation.
Airbusses have cheerfully impacted terrain whilst under full computer control. Altitude warnings are no match for a fast rising mountainside.
A large jet plane has a lot of modes of flight that are in the “you can’t get there from here” category. Once you are in them, you are dead, as there no mechanism to get the plane back before it either breaks up or slams into the bricks. There is going to be a fine line between giving the pilot the authority to make manoeuvres are needed to rescue a critically dangerous situation versus ones that consigns the craft to oblivion. Eventually you need to trust the pilots. Look at incidents where pilots have skilfully retrieved near fatal calamities - these are times when the computer systems were of zero or negative value. OTOH, no shortage of incidents when just letting go and letting the computer sort it out would have saved an aircraft as well.
Can an Airbus pilot switch the autopilot from Normal Law to Alternate Law at will?
Why then have pilots there in the first place? The reason why they are there is to manually fly the plane in case of an emergency and if an emergency arises the pilot has to be able to react FAST - so putting in delay functions into the plane is counter productive.
Whenever an Airbus crashes because the pilots couldn’t figure out why it was doing what it was doing it is criticized for being too automated. Whenever the things crash because the pilot stuffs up, they are criticized for not being automated enough.
Well, statistically pilot error is the cause of most airplane crashes.
Certainly there are instances where a pilot saved the day and no computer could have. There are other instances where the reverse is true. Then there are cases like Air France 447 where the computer could not fly the plane and then the pilot flew the plane into the ocean.
There are times when the computer cannot fly the plane such as what happened to Air France 447. The plane’s speed sensors malfunctioned and the autopilot threw its electronic hands up and said it could not fly the plane.
Interestingly enough it is thought pilots rely on automation too much these days and forget the basics. The pilot on AF447 flew the plane into the ocean but if he had followed some basic procedures everything would have been fine. When pilots re-created the circumstances in flight simulators the ones who knew and followed procedure had zero issue keeping control of the plane. The thought is the pilot who crashed the plane lacked the many hours older pilots had actually flying with their hands on the stick and this inexperience showed.
But yeah, some are foreseeing a day when planes are flown by computers and pilots, if there at all, will be along for the ride and only intervene in very unusual circumstances. Planes can very nearly do all the flying today including takeoff and landing. We are not there yet but as technology marches on there is no reason to think it won’t happen eventually.
How are all you guys monitoring the cockpit to see what the pilots and crew do? I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that. I don’t think I’ve ever had a clear view of the cockpit door. Are you all flying first class?
There are a lot of carriers that have only one class. If you fly Southwest being up front means you checked in 23 hours and 59 minutes before the scheduled flight time. Although they are starting to have an earlier check-in for a smallish fee. But even if you don’t buy early check in you can still see the cabin door.
I have definitely seen the flight attendant standing in front of the cabin door when one pilot is in the restroom. I don’t recall if another flight attendant went into the cabin while the pilot was gone.
Yes, human error is the culprit in the majority of plane crashes and the pilots these days are mostly there check that the autopilot works properly.
Therefor they end up having less experience in actually flying the plane manually, but are then required to do so during a “crisis” situation.