As I understand it, airlines in the United States have always been following a rule that there have to be (at least) two members of the crew present on the flight deck at any given time. So for instance if there are two pilots flying the aircraft, and one pilot wants to go to the bath room, another crew member, typically a flight attendant, will join the remaining pilot in the cockpit until his colleague returns. Had such a rule been in place on that fateful Germanwings flight almost two weeks ago, this horrible tragedy might have been averted.
I’m wondering, though, what the official reasoning was behind creating this two-person-rule: I’m thinking that they had some kind of scenario in mind in which the crew of an airplane is under siege/attack and there has to be a crew member (flight attendant) who is able to guard the door and/or fend off a would-be-intruder while the remaining pilot can concentrate on flying the plane.
Or did they (i. e. the government agency that formulated the rules) really felt it necessary to always have a crew member to watch over a fellow crew member at all times (with somewhat watchful/suspicious eyes)?
That rule protects you from a whole bunch of scenarios, not just a single pilot with ill intent. It also, as you noted, gives an extra layer of protection so that one crew member can fight off a cockpit intruder while the other can continue flying the plane. There’s also the issue of a pilot becoming incapacitated due to oxygen deprivation or fumes in the cockpit, or perhaps some sort of health issue like a heart attack (which has happened on a plane). If the pilot becomes incapacitated, having at least a flight attendant in the cockpit allows the door to be opened so that the other pilot can come back in and fly the plane.
The cockpit intrusion scenario might have been considered the most likely, but I imagine that all of these were considered when formulating the rule.
U.S. passenger planes will also block the aisle with the beverage cart when one of the pilots leave the cockpit, a rule which is clearly designed to make forced intrusion into the cockpit more difficult.
Well, in a general sense redundancy is obviously important to every aspect of flying. And the newer specific rules regarding access to the cockpit are obviously the result of 9/11.
IANAP but it’s my understanding that once in flight (or more likely once pushed-off from the gate) a ‘sterile’ cockpit now includes a locked cockpit door. And since most (if not all) air crews now consist of only two people there’s an electronic unlocking mechanism (i.e. a keypad) to allow access as it would be impractical for the sole pilot to have to get out of his seat and manually unlock the door to let the other pilot back in each time. However, again with redundancy in mind, relying only on an electronic device for such a critical function would be unwise, so that’s why a flight attendant must also always be inside to insure the door can be unlocked in an emergency (the remaining pilot can concentrate on flying the plane while a flight attendant is free to allow the other pilot (and only them) back inside when necessary)… It’s both a redundancy of mechanism and of personnel, a two-man rule to also prevent a Germanwings-like tragedy (a suicidal pilot).
I also assume that the keypad system can be manually disabled via a cockpit control switch as this seems to be what the Germanwing’s copilot did. I also assume this switch exists to doubly protect against another 9/11 scenario at all costs, i.e. threatening, torturing a flight crew member/passenger to force them to enter the code.
I know hindsight is always 20/20 but given the existence of an in-cockpit override switch I find it a little irresponsible that all carriers did not adopted the critical two-persons-in-the-cockpit-at-all-times rule as US carriers did.
Way back in the old days (and the not-so-old days) if the hydraulics on flight controls failed, the pilot could still control the plane with the stick 'n rudder. But without a hydraulic assist, it was difficult for one person to manage, so you needed two pilots working together.
Between that and the concern about a pilot becoming incapacitated, it made perfect sense to always have two people at the controls, even before security became an issue.
We have had a two in the cockpit rule since the introduction of locking doors. The rationale, for us at least, is purely so there is someone to unlock the door if the remaining pilot has a heart attack or is otherwise incapacitated.
Edit: The flight attendant does not sit at the controls by the way, that would be illegal, they just stand behind the pilot’s seats.
I’m not sure the people who came up with the two-man rule ever gave consideration to a Germanwings-like tragedy, nor is the two-man rule really a preventative measure.
A flight attendant is not a pilot, and would have little to no knowledge of what the pilot is doing moving buttons and dials and instruments. A flight attendant isn’t given instructions about “watch and make sure the co-pilot doesn’t move this lever in that direction.” They are not supervising the actions of the person flying the plane at all.
In other words, a pilot bent on suicide would need to add just one little step in the plan: distracting the flight attendant for a couple of seconds, sufficient to incapacitate them. For example, suicidal pilot punches some numbers into the flight computer; the flight attendant isn’t expecting the plane to dive or whatever, so is thrown off-guard and easily overpowered when the plane executes a sudden maneuver.
There are a lot of possibilities, but it’s pretty obvious that a flight attendant would know what it meant when the other pilot knocked on the cockpit door to re-enter*!* Plus even any flight attendant would immediately know that the sole pilot trying to get up out of his seat (to attempt an assault) leaving no one at the controls is absolutely unheard of. And having to physically incapacitate even a flight attendant is not a ‘little step’. It’s brutal and ugly and noisy. It adds a huge complication and psychological deterrent to the equation. A person is less likely to try something the harder it is to physically do. And an unstable person probably even more so. I doubt the Germanwing’s copilot would have attempted that if it meant having to physically assault someone first.
If the pilot in the cockpit is bent on suicide, by the time the other pilot knocked on the door to re-enter it’s already too late. Depending on type of plane, terrain, altitude, etc., it’s certainly possible to put a plane into unrecoverable error in the time it takes the other pilot to go potty, or merely to render the flight attendant incapable of opening the door.
And I think you are over-estimating how brutal and ugly it is to suddenly assault somebody who’s not expecting it. Flight attendants are usually female and not infrequently petite; a male pilot might not even have to get out of his seat to grab her throat or grab an arm to pull her down to him and slam her head into any handy hunk of metal, etc.
It doesn’t matter how noisy it is–the door is locked, remember? Moreover, the guy has already decided to kill himself and 150 other people; do you really think it’s going to matter that much if he has to physically assault one of them first?
The door itself has gotten unfixably stuck several times (see above), and who knows how many times fixably and a second person in the cockpit allows troubleshooting from both sides without the pilot/co-pilot in command having to screw with it themselves. And making sure someone is aviating and not fixing a problem is absolutely critical - a tristar crashed in florida because all 3 people in the cockpit were screwing around with a broken gear light instead of one of them actually flying the plane. (Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 - Wikipedia)
Yes, I understand. Although I still do not believe it would be easy or even possible to incapacitate someone standing by the cockpit door from the pilot’s seat. But the main point I’m making is that, especially in terms of the Germanwing’s case, from an unstable, suicidal, psychological point of view, one being left alone locked in the cockpit with one’s thoughts is much more conducive to allowing that ‘Fuck it, YES!’ moment to happen. If a pilot is determined and committed enough there will certainly always be opportunities that will be almost impossible to prevent. EgyptAir 990 showed that. But like I said, the two-man rule is as much (or more) a psychological deterrent as it is a physical one…
I certainly do think it would matter. I think that the number of people who would be willing to kill a flight attendant with his own hands and then crash the plane is much much less than the number who would simply be willing to crash the plane.
It’s sort of like the “trolley problem” - people’s instincts have a huge barrier to killing someone by hand. That barrier doesn’t exist to the same degree for a more calculated murder like steering a plane into a mountain.
I saw an interview with a former FAA commissioner who didn’t mention any of this stuff at all. The reason is – to look out the peephole through the cockpit door in order to verify that someone knocking on the door should be let in or not let in. That was it.
This same person said that most European airlines have a camera outside the door, so the pilot or copilot can look at a vewscreen and see who wants in. Their backup system is the two-person rule, if the camera/viewscreen isn’t working.
There are countless good reasons to have a second person in the cockpit, even if it is something as simple as “Hand me a towel, I’ve spilt coffee in my lap.”
Although the flight attendant can’t fly the plane, in an emergency he/she could still be help to the pilot if for no other reason that to go get the copilot back in the cockpit.