Lufthansa plane flown by autopilot after pilot faints in cockpit | Hacker News Reader

Lufthansa plane flown by autopilot after pilot faints in cockpit

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55 pointsgscott51 comments

I feel like I've heard of a rule that there must always be at least two (or maybe exactly to) people in a cockpit in any given time to guard against this as well as hijacking and stuff, am I imagining this or missing something?

The FAA (US) requires this. EASA (Europe) adopted this rule in 2015 after the Eurowings incident but it was rolled back in 2016.

I know I've regularly seen a flight attendant go into the cockpit while one of the pilots steps out for the bathroom or whatever. Did not realize this wasn't the norm in Europe.

I see this on Ryanair flights all the time in Europe.

There's a joke in there somewhere about an extra fee on your ticket if you want your plane to have a second (or even a first, for Ryanair) pilot.

What is it with people who get all nitpicky about Ryanair charging on a per use basis? Maybe they should have a kind of all inclusive, flat rate, where you pay for food, drink, signed seating, extra luggage, etc. whether you use them or not?

What am I missing? You’re also clearly free to not fly with them. All I hear is bitching.

> What is it with people who get all nitpicky about Ryanair charging on a per use basis?

People book with Ryanair expecting the advertised price, then get caught out by added fees for what typically comes standard.

> Maybe they should have a kind of all inclusive, flat rate, where you pay for food, drink, signed seating, extra luggage, etc. whether you use them or not?

They could keep the same pricing model and just flip the UX - show initial base price including standard amenities, then give discounts/refunds for opting out so it's a pleasant rather than unpleasant surprise. But they won't, because they rely on drawing people in with the low price and then sunken cost/escalation of commitment taking over.

> What am I missing? You’re also clearly free to not fly with them. All I hear is bitching.

Customers complaining is part of how that choice works. People have a bad experience (large unexpected fees at check-in, too late to change plans), make the bad experience known, and that drives decisions of future customers.

My understanding of the purported reasoning behind the reversal was:

- They required airlines to implement cameras to monitor the hall leading up to the cockpit so that the pilot in the cockpit can verify who is requesting entry (without this, they still must follow the rule — Ryanair chose not to retrofit, so they continue to use attendants who can look out the peephole).

- In testing, they decided that the extra time that the cockpit door was unsecured during the switchovers in tight spaces was more dangerous than trying to solve the suicidal pilot issue with better mental health monitoring.

(My own note, we know that suicidal actors have no problems taking weapons to their copilots or whatever attendant is stuck looking out the peephole, e.g. FedEx 705.)

Link for the lazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Express_Flight_705

"On April 7, 1994, Federal Express Flight 705... was the subject of a hijack attempt by Auburn R. Calloway, a Federal Express employee facing possible dismissal for having lied about his flight hours.

"Calloway boarded the scheduled flight as a deadhead passenger carrying a guitar case concealing several hammers and a speargun. He planned to crash the aircraft hoping he would appear to be an employee killed in an accident, so his family could collect on a $2.5 million life insurance policy provided by Federal Express..."

The kinds of planes you're thinking about, yes.

From what I understand, it's affected by two things:

1. The regulatory side, driven by the size and complexity of the plane. That in turn affects potential number of passengers and typical hiring arrangement (pay-per-seat vs charter vs personal use). If you google best single-pilot aircraft, you'll see things like the hondajet, pilatus pc-24, and citation cj2/3/4. Nothing larger or more complex than that.

2. Insurance requirements for particular flights. If you're hiring out a plane to carry other people, you need a different kind of liability insurance. That insurance might require you to have two pilots even for a small plane (like a stereotypical primitive prop plane, or a previously mentioned small jet like hondajet or citation cj2/3/4) that might in other situations be legal to fly with a single pilot. Or, for someone like an executive with hefty personal injury insurance, that person's insurance might not cover them if they fly in a plane with a single pilot.

That's not to say that all "for hire" flying requires two pilots. Consider small prop planes for sightseeing, or skydiving, or island hopping the Caribbean. Unless something's changed recently, you won't have two pilots for those kinds of flights.

The reason I brought up personal insurance for passengers: CitationMax (certified ATP pilot who flies his parents around in their private jet) on youtube has mentioned that his father's personal/executive insurance requires him to fly with two pilots. Even when they had a cj3+, they added a contract pilot when his father was onboard. Now they have a citation longitude, which is large/complex enough that it can never be flown with only one pilot, even if no passengers are onboard.

>>>>Some 10 minutes later, the captain managed to open the cockpit security door using an emergency code. He had completed training for such an eventuality a month beforehand.

This is the last paragraph of the article, yet so much is left unsaid

Yikes!. After the Germanwings incident where the copilot crashed the plane; I thought at least 2 people were supposed to be in the cockpit at all times.

Im that case, the pilot tried opening the doornwith the emergency code, but the copilot kept overriding it :(

Why would they remove that rule?

Pilot/union pressure IIRC

Probably because that rule causes more issues than it solves. Adding more mindless security theater isn't always how you improve safety.

European standards are lower when it comes to piloting. The plane itself is higher standard, the piloting is lower. They are the one with mental health problem even though USA is world famous for going postal. Ryanair? You pay what you get for. Most Europeans fly Airbus which is mostly automatic in design. Boeing in America is different. You can see that reduce the pilot skillset for automation comfort. But wherever you fly each regions have their pros and cons. That is why we need C919 to be successful to reduce Airbus and Boeing dominance.

It’s not the last paragraph. The rest of the article is there behind a “Read Full Article” button you have to click

A button that don't shows up if you have privacy enabled in firefox

> co-pilot was very pale, sweating profusely and making strange movements

Heart attack symptoms.

Someone in my village was taken to the hospital recently as indeed these symptoms can mean heart attack, or, in his case, a severe hangover.

There were previous instances of both pilots falling asleep for much longer timespans.

Wild that cars can detect you taking your eyes off the road and yet this...

It's not that the technology doesn't exist, but even assuming that it's cheap and works well, pilots in general are against these features. There have been proposals to have security cameras inside the cockpit and they've come out against it. They're even against increasing the recording capacity of black boxes... imagine a system that monitors if they're paying attention or awake.

When you're responsible for the lives of ~200 souls you shouldn't be entitled to so much privacy at your job. The safety of those people comes first. So I don't get why pilots have a say in this in the first place.

They have their say because on that aircraft they are the highest authority. You ain’t flying without them and you cannot train a replacement within a quarter.

That's to do with (inter)national regulations, regulations which can be changed by politicians. Pilots can choose another career if they dislike being monitored at their jobs. There will be other people willing to become pilots.

https://nypost.com/2022/08/19/pilots-on-ethiopian-airlines-f...

Funny how that talks about them missing a landing at Addis Ababa but shows a flight map over Tasmania.

Mmm… “hey, it looks like you are distracted, how about you stop and have a coffee break” during an emergency while on a final approach might not be what you want.

https://archive.is/nyL8X

In the US at least, the cockpit door is locked from the inside.

What happens in this situation if they can’t open it?

I think in the US at least they block the cockpit door with a food cart while the pilot goes to the bathroom. Maybe they leave it unlocked then?

The captain or co-pilot whoever is outside, has the code to open it

In the US (and other countries) the door is locked but there is a PIN to open it that the cabin crew have access to. Even then, there's a time delay to the door opening, during which people in the cockpit are notified and can reject the request.

That means that no food cart should ever be needed to block the door. But the cockpit should never be totally empty anyway, as surely only one of the two crew should be using the toilet at a time.

(Note: I'm not a pilot, just a reader of Admiral Cloudberg's blog.)

The door being blocked additionally by a food cart may be an additional security step. Some airlines treat having the flight crew needing a bathroom break very seriously when the cockpit has to be opened in flight (ex sending passengers back to seats if they try to go to the front bathrooms, closing curtains, lead staff up front on standby, etc).

Here's the cockpit locking system on Airbuses, for what it's worth as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROIH3KCEIvs

There is a button that sounds a 'request' chime, and a code that when entered starts a timer and alarm that once stops, releases the door momentarily for an emergency entry. The crew inside can still disable that unlock, if they are conscious (and this is some kind of attempted hijacking with knowledge of the code).

They should have a normal code and a distress code.

The article suggests that this is the case

Why isn’t there just a shitter in the cockpit behind the cockpit door?

Space is a premium. They already don't have room for the ones they've got. Can't afford the space for another one that only two people can use.

I think it’s more likely that the designs are basically frozen. Surely USG could regulate this into existence for safety. They didn't seem to mind a much larger impact for spinning up the TSA.

It doesn't really solve the underlying issue. On long-duration flights, pilots have to rotate who is in the cockpit and who is in crew rest. They receive food and beverage service from flight attendants entering the cockpit. On very rare occasions, they are asked to enter the cabin and examine some part of the plane to determine if something is an emergency or not. Mantraps are perhaps a future requirement for cleansheet designs, but even that seems unlikely to me.

Israel has had mantraps for decades.

Why do we even have that lever?

It was flown by an autopilot before the pilot fainted. As it was after they brought him back. My sarcastic response to this line is “I fucking hope it was, imagine the mess if it didn’t”.

The main problem is, there was one guy in the cockpit.

They're usually flown by auto-pilot, in one mode or another. That part isn't interesting.

I was going to ask, because I was under the impression that commercial airlines are mostly flown by auto-pilot anyway.

Wheels up, feet up!

En route. Some carriers prefer pilots to hand fly landings and take offs when the weather allows for it. Maintaining proficiency is a necessity in flight crews.

From my reading of the article, what is interesting is that the copilot accidentally messed with commands during the time that he fainted or his crisis but the autopilot compensated for that.

It always will when active. Once you set the control mode and parameters it will always try to maintain them. Additionally if you have flight director enabled it will alter the mode and parameters at specific points in the flight for you automatically.

A pilot putting enough force or enough deflection on the controls will automatically disable autopilot and sound the general caution. So it's very lucky he stayed within the autopilot activation envelope.

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