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Comment by jjnoakes | Hacker News Reader

This is what locked cockpits are for, not invasive luggage searches.

What happens when the pilots need to use the bathroom? This has always bothered me when people talk about reinforced cockpit doors as a cure-all for hijackings.

The cockpit door has a peep hole, and loitering near the front of the plane seems to be prohibited by most US air lines.

In addition, there is a protocol for this. The pilot will contact the flight attendant working in the front of the plane. The flight attendant will lock a beverage cart in front of the bathrooms, creating a (heavy, but not immovable) barrier between the cockpit and bathroom, and the rest of the plane. The flight attendant stands behind the cart, watching the passengers. The pilot looks through the peep hole, and when it is clear, comes out, locking the cockpit door behind him/herself. After using the rest room, the pilot knocks on the door to ask the copilot to open it. The peep hold is used to be sure the flight attendant is still standing guard and everything is normal.

There are obviously some risks here, as the door is opened briefly twice, but there are a number of steps taken to minimize this risk.

There are obviously some risks here

The biggest realized risk seems to have been Germanwings Flight 9525. A suicidal co-pilot waited until the Captain left the cockpit. Then he locked the door and flew the plane into the side of a mountain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

I'm curious - is this a 'known and standard' protocol adopted universally across many airlines? Or how do you know this? I guess I'm thinking that if this is 'known and standard' it may also be possible to design an attack against it.

There are some tweaks from airline to airline, but anyone who flies regularly has seen this general outline of events occur countless times.

An attack can be designed against any vulnerability. Whether that attack becomes practically executable remains to be seen.

This introduces a new risk, that of sabotage by airline personnel themselves. As in the case of the Germanwings intentional downing by what's now thought to be a mentally ill co-pilot. He'd locked the captain outside the cabin.

Protocols to ensure two crew members in the cockpit at all times are now being considered.

There was an exceptionally good essay on implications of this incident, with computer/systems security implications, though I cannot locate it. James Fallows' Atlantic piece was good, though not quite what I was looking for.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/03/ger...

Interestingly, the "two people in the cockpit at all times" rule was already law in the United States before the Germanwings incident.

I think if the alternative is a psycho/collection of psychos gaining access to the cockpit, a puddle/pile on the floor is a reasonable outcome in that situation.

Interesting point; are there protocols in place to prevent a terrorist on board a plane from entering the cockpit at all costs? e.g. if they start executing passengers, threaten to blow up the plane, etc?

It may be mandated, or company policy, but ultimately it's up to the pilots. Cockpits seem to have quite a bit of security since 9/11[1], with the ability of crew to enter after a 30 second delay if there is not a denial by someone within the cockpit, and the doors are supposedly rated to withstand a grenade.

As we've seen, a plane can be devastating when used as a weapon, so I think it is sensible to deny terrorists to the cockpit at the expense of the passengers. Theoretically, there are few situations where passengers can be forcibly restrained, since they should outnumber any people trying to seize the plane by quite a bit, passengers could (and have[2]) attempted to neutralize the threat themselves (as they understand the possible consequences of waiting out the situation in this era where the goal is not money, but chaos).

1: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-32070528

2: http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/07/22/911.flight.93/

The cockpit doors have been locked since Sept 12, 2001. It is impossible to open them from the outside without very heavy machinery that could not be operated by a passenger, and even then it can take over half an hour.

Even if we did away with security entirely and let people carry guns on board, there would be literally zero risk of a hijacked plane in the US thanks to the locked doors. (There might be other reasons not to do that, but hijacking fears are not one of them).

And even then, it's arguable that this would still be impossible. 9/11 happened because hijacking protocol never took into account the possibility that the hijackers would use the plane itself as a weapon. The people on the final hijacked plane on 9/11 did know this, because they received calls about the WTC, so they fought back and forced the plane to crash, thwarting the hijackers' plans.

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