It's Remarkably Easy to Lock a Pilot Out of the Cockpit | Hacker News Reader

It's Remarkably Easy to Lock a Pilot Out of the Cockpit

wired.com

8 pointsjabo9 comments

Amid all the talk of how the door locking system should or should not be modified (eg always rotating another person into the cockpit or whatever), I'm astonished that there's no discussion of having a backup radio system on the plane. One of the saddest things about this whole incident is the idea of the senior pilot futilely banging on the door with no way to get in, and no way to even communicate his predicament to the ground.

Allowing ground takeover of a plane in distress would bring numerous problems of its own and is probably not feasible to implement in the immediate future, but adding an extra radio would be technologically trivial, the protocols would be easy to implement, and it would allow witnesses to (apparent) crimes of this sort to pass information that might save lives or at least give investigators a head start instead of a 3 day delay.

I think it's not a priority simply because it makes no difference. I mean, if you had some Disney-style ability to 'go back' and change one thing, it'd be the 48-hour delay in forming an initial conclusion?

Personally, I think it'd be much more productive to address the culture that leads to this - it is incredibly difficult for pilots to seek help for mental health issues. It's "career suicide", and puts them in a position where medical professionals are their enemy.

Worrying about the particular trivialities of this incident really doesn't get us anywhere - remembering that any tool put in place to help the "good guy" is also available for use by the "bad guy". Ensuring "good crew" can rush the flight deck helps in the case that it's the "bad crew" flying - but also allows for "bad crew" to rush the flight deck while "good crew" are flying. You can't win this one.

> it is incredibly difficult for pilots to seek help for mental health issues. It's "career suicide", and puts them in a position where medical professionals are their enemy

Exactly. Except that not so much the medical professionals, but the employers are the enemy. In the meantime, evidence was found in the pilot's appartment which shows that he was in treatment for a mental illness and was certified unfit for work on that day by his doctor. And his employer did not have a clue about all that... (German reference e.g. http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/a-1025956.html )

Radios outside the cockpit don't help a bad actor in the least. It's simple to establish that a plane has not been taken over, because the legitimate crew file flight plans and stay in regular contact with ATC operators, plus there's air-ground telemetry.

If you're suffering from something like major depression or dissociative disorder, you shouldn't be in charge on airplane, especially under 30 (when rates of suicide are higher) and especially if you're on medication. Yes, it's career suicide, but you can't always have the career you want. I have chronic depression myself, I've managed it for many years, and while it is manageable I have enough experience of its potential to become overwhelming that I can see why airlines and air regulators want to minimize that risk.

The worst thing is humans controlling planes. Everything else follows.

> One of the saddest things about this whole incident is the idea of the senior pilot futilely banging on the door with no way to get in, and no way to even communicate his predicament to the ground.

I 100% agree. The radio is the most obvious addition that reaps benefits without adding risks.

The cockpit should remain as secure as it is today. As inhumane as it is, the accident was a "best-case worst-case scenario." i.e. A bad thing that arose out of the best-case being not absolutely perfect (considering perfection may be impossible). If every human has equal probability of trying to take over an airplane to crash it, two people locked into the cockpit results in less likelihood than the numerous people in the passenger area. Even giving the pilot a way to let himself back in is a risk: someone could wrestle he access token/key off of him if he left the cockpit.

Possibly, the cockpit should be more thoroughly isolated from the rest of the plane. A door is not needed: a solid steel wall is. Nobody goes in or out while the airplane is airborne.

> The radio is the most obvious addition that reaps benefits without adding risks.

What benefits, exactly? And why do you think that the pilot is really going to make a call to the ground, which won't save anyone, instead of continuing to try to enter the cockpit, which may have a remote chance of succeeding?

You could do both at the same time, for one thing. For another, communicating with the ground also has a remote chance of succeeding - if ATC knows one of the pilots is behaving erratically they can communicate with him or her on that basis, instead of inquiring about whether there is a problem with the plane. Finally, while in this case there were no survivors, in other crashes there have been survivors who died of injuries or exposure because rescue workers didn't get there in time, because they were still looking for the crash site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123

I don't quite see how the radio would have had any effect on this incident.

The only thing I can think of is potentially getting a crisis negotiator on the ground to attempt to talk down the man in the cockpit. I guess thats something.

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