I’ve been hearing for two days about how the crash in France of the Germanwings flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf was a complete mystery, as there was no sign of a mishap on the cockpit voice recorder nor any recorded response to concerned air traffic controllers. On the news last night there was a report that the pilot had been locked out of the cockpit. Today’s New York Times reports how we know that:
. . . evidence from a cockpit voice recorder indicated one pilot left the cockpit before the plane’s descent and was unable to get back in.
A senior French military official involved in the investigation described a “very smooth, very cool” conversation between the pilots during the early part of the flight from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany. Then the audio indicated that one of the pilots left the cockpit and could not re-enter.
“The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer,” the investigator said. “And then he hits the door stronger, and no answer. There is never an answer.”
He said, “You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”
And then this just came on my CNN newsfeed:
There was a “deliberate attempt to destroy the aircraft,” Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin says about the Germanwings crash.
The most plausible explanation of the crash is that the co-pilot, “through deliberate abstention, refused to open the cabin door … to the chief pilot, and used the button” to cause the plane to lose altitude, Robin said. He emphasized that his conclusions were preliminary.
If the copilot wanted to kill himself, did he have to take 149 other people with him? One solution: put an outside lock on the cockpit door, and then give the keys only to the pilots.
Absolutely horrific.
The link doesn’t go to an article BTW.
I’ve removed that link.
Early speculation. The copilot might also have been incapacitated by a stroke or something like that.
Then why the programmed controlled descent? That would not have been done by the locked-out pilot, even before he left the cockpit.
I don’t know what in involved with said “programming”. Might it be a heavy object plopping on some control?
Yes, that can easily happen. Sometimes the pilots release their harness while on auto-pilot.
Well.. it does seem the “deliberate act” hypothesis is gaining support.
I agree. There could be medical reasons which should not be discounted.
But a question I raise:
I understand why the cockpit door is always locked for security reasons but why is it allowable for only one person to remain in a cockpit? Even a steward(ess) who is incapable of piloting the plane can unlock a door or get help if necessary.
Exactly.
In US planes, it is in fact not allowed for only one person to remain; if one pilot goes to the loo, someone from cabin personnel needs to go in.
The point with the keys is, that the people in the cockpit ultimately get to decide whether anyone gets to enter. In many cases, that may be the wisest decision; but not always, obviously.
Patrick Smith doesn’t agree (Cockpit Confidential):
“While not a necessity, it’s a good idea to have a second person on hand to help with radio communications, the reading of checklists, or the manipulation of certain switches or controls (deploying the landing gear, setting flaps, etc.).” [He was talking about operations after a pilot dies inflight.]
An untrained person in the cockpit could easily be a hazard rather than a help.
I don’t think anyone is thinking that the untrained person should be there to help fly the plane, except perhaps as specifically instructed by the single flight crew member in emergency circumstances.
The untrained person should be trained, though, in why they they are in the cockpit when only 1 of the flight crew is there and what their responsibilities are. Which should be simply for safety, e.g. raising the alarm if something happens to the single flight crew member, and security, e.g. raising the alarm if something occurs that warrants it. Or in any kind of emergency doing as instructed by the single flight crew member.
Unless, of course, that flight crew memeber is trying to intentionally crash the plane.
Yes, this is possible (“read the checklist”, etc.) Act like a robot for the pilot.
Having sat in many cockpits in real commercial airplanes and their simulators: If you aren’t trained to use these (vast numbers of confusing) controls, your most likely outcome is to cause a failure.
The COM tells the operator what to do in normal and emergency operations; and pilots train to those procedures. But they still have to use the book, usually, especially in emergency operations.
Modern commercial airplanes are immensely complex machines. (It truly used to amaze me every time I saw one take off for its first flight from Renton (Municipal) or Everett (Payne) fields. It’s an incredible management job to make those machines happen, day after day.)
People also have no clue (generally) about how reliable they are and the efforts (on all fronts: Manufacturer, Operator, Regulator, pilots, mx crws, operations control centers, cabin crews, etc.) that go into maintaining that reliability. Every major operator has several thousand flights per day. The one I used to work for completed (safely) over a half-million flights every year. Large numbers roll up pretty quickly at that rate.
In design we used to use 1e-09 (10 to the minus 9th power) as the standard for frequency of failure. That was the goal, one in a billion. That is very hard to do in any human-made, human-operated machine, let alone one as complicated as a large commercial airplane.
When I worked for the FAA (and I’m sure it still is), the constant refrain was: Yes, we’ve had only one accident per 100-million flights in our airspace, that’s really outstanding performance of our system. Now go out there and make that number even smaller.
When one considers the competence of the average human being on an individual basis it is very easy to see how complex a task it must be. It is nearly enough to cause one to believe in magic.
darelle: Indeed. My favorite quote from my boss at the FAA: “We are here because people are basically fuck-ups.” he told me that my first day — just to set expectations right away!
I used to write DO-178B certified software in a couple of past jobs. I remember the one in a billion failure rate was for level A and it increased to higher rates of failure down through level E. Of course, any flight critical software was level A. I never worked directly on anything over level B and the documentation, especially the test plans for that software was crazy. It is one area where all the red tape is justified as the safety record of aircraft is extraordinary.
One of my first projects was writing the bulk of a test plan that was about 900 pages long. This was for a piece of software that was 40,000 lines. Compare that to something like the Windows OS, which has a few orders of magnitude more code, and a 900 page document really stands out; i.e., you won’t find a 900,000 page test plan for Windows 8…
I was under the impression that the Windows test plan has always been, “release it when the crashes in-house aren’t too annoying to us, and then kludge together a service patch for whatever crashes we get the most annoying complaints about.”
b&
No that’s their release plan. The Windows test plan is, “see what happens when we just push our shit to production.”
It occurs to me that we’re both typing nonsense…because we’ve used the words, “Microsoft,” and, “plan,” in the same sentence without any negating words….
b&
Or as we say in my current job where people’s safety doesn’t rely on the software, “Fuck it, ship it.”
I’ve worked places where you had to be very, very, very careful about ever showing a work in progress to somebody. If the demo had even the slightest problem, it was assumed that you had intentionally put the problem in there and that it was going to forever remain in the final version. But, even worse…if the demo went at all well…it went into production right there and then, whether or not you were finished.
In such an environment, one learns to never give anybody even the slightest hint of what you’re working on until you’re satisfied it’s ready to ship.
b&
Oh how I loath test plans, test scripts, and testing. It’s the horrid detail that just engulfs you that I think depresses me about it.
It’s not unlike cleaning up the kitchen after dinner…something I actually have to do right now….
b&
Makes me wonder how some non-STEM MBA/JD CEO management type possibly contributes anything direct and meaningful toward such an effort, pressed as they always are to reduce (labor) costs and maximize profit and “shareholder value.” It’s those who actually, meaningfully DO something, engineers, maintenance, pilots, etc., who make it happen.
My first job in 2004 involved worked on software for the Boeing 777 -GTTA aircraft and one of my (shortlived) managers came out of another industry with an MBA. One of his first questions was, “How long does an average problem report take to solve?” Obviously, he wanted to monetize the cost of fixing a bug. Needless to say, with the FAA requirements for software, he didn’t last long. You need to be at a much much higher level of abstraction than how long single bugs take to fix. For example, it is very predictable how long a project will take based on how many lines of code it has. For a DO-178B Level C application (failure rate 1 in 10^7) it is about one line of code per engineering hour. Adjust as necessary for more flight critical software.
Ironically, a lot of STEM majors tend toward Creationism, at least those who are in “true” engineering fields where certification is required. Strangely, software engineers, whI are often looked down upon by the real engineers, tend more towards atheism. Perhaps it is our view that given enough memory and processing speed, the Universe is completely understandable.
“Ironically, a lot of STEM majors tend toward Creationism, at least those who are in “true” engineering fields where certification is required.”
Well, engineering is about design, and engineers claim expertise about design, and not a few of them claim to see “design” in nature. They know it when they see it, so they say.
Engineering also involves math, and good computer science math courses involve understanding the nature of random numbers.
It was one of those classes, combined with a really awesome biological anthropology professor, that made true mutation-driven evolution click for me. Before that I understood that evolution happened but not that it could be a purely natural process driven by truly random mutation events. Then I got it.
Some airlines don’t require 2 people in the cockpit at all times. My guess is this German airline will most likely change this policy posthaste.
One German news site announced that a) the policy of “2 people in the cockpit at all times” was not very common for European airlines, and b) that a Norwegian company had already changed their policy immediately after the suspicions against the co-pilot substantiated.
That change in policy has just been ordered in Canada too. It has been primarily the US airlines that had the 2-pilot flights already in place. Last news article I read from Germany has the suggestion of 3-pilot flights from now on!
Correction – 2 pilots in the cockpit at all times (not just 2-pilot flights).
Clarification on the news this morning again… In Canada, there will be 2 crew members in the cockpit at all times during flights. This would be a pilot and another crew member who doesn’t have to be a pilot.
The authorities have now removed a computer and other stuff from the co-pilot’s home.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/andreas-lubitz-germanwings-co-pilot-had-serious-depressive-episode-report-1.3011724
I wonder what might have triggered him during the flight. I’d be interested to hear about his work schedule and how much sleep/days off he’d been getting.
The are systems in place to allow a crew member back in to the cockpit if the other flight crew was somehow incapacitated. Form what we currently know this looks like the door was deliberately prevented from being opened.
Yep, see my comment under #7. Pilot incapacity is not the likeliest cause, especially if they started at cruising altitude.
Investigators could hear the co-pilot breathing on the voice recorder all the way to impact.
They really need to store video on the black boxes.
That’s tricky. Video files are hugely larger than audio files (though not than audiophiles.)
Not really. Storage is massive in very small packages these days.
True, however the problem with higher density storage is that it’s less resilient than lower density solutions.
But it is hugely more resilient than NO solution.
Standard def video wouldn’t present a storage issue.
Depending on which codec and compression is used, it’s not that difficult to manage drive space with SD files.
For instance, a 90 minute 640X480, mp4 video file, compressed in h264 is only about 1.3 to 1.5 gigs. You could record video of any flight any airliner is likely to take onto a 2TB drive and still have plenty of space leftover.
And the audio could be recorded on both low and high density media.
Even if less resilient, it can help resolve some mysteries. Although here the impact was tremendous and the recording might not survive.
Yeah, but. What reliability is required? Commerical home/office storage is, by medical and military (and commercial airplane) standards total shit for reliability. Hence the problem is much harder to crack.
You will not want to be the regulator that writes the rule that allows crappy memory to be used in black boxes.
I used to write rules (in essence law) for the FAA. The regulator is legally required to balance the cost of the change (increasing cost will drive X number of more car trips, with well-known rates of death and injury — cars are, literally, 10,000 times more dangerous than commercial air travel) versus the estimated benefit.
In this case: The benefit would be limited to understanding more (with greater certainty — we already know a lot about what happened) how the plane crashed. From which we would make what changes to the airplanes or their operations? Are terrorists more of a threat than pilot suicides? Probably yes. Lean that way. Keep the refusal “button” for the cockpit door.
The regulator will not make changes unless a clear benefit is shown.
The operators will not carry anything that doesn’t pay well in some way. (Every pound costs a lot to fly.)
The designers will only put in what is legally required or commercially desired by the operator.
(I have designed airplanes, maintained them for the operator, and written the regulations for them at the FAA.)
The clear benefit is obvious. If there was video of what happened in the cockpit of this plane there we wouldn’t be having the conversation this post has exhibited. We would know whether the copilot was conscious or not, etc.
The arguments you make could be just as easily made to avoid the current black box standards. I’m sure they were.
I’m not arguing against it. I’m saying what the realities are.
The question will come down to: What changes would be driven to the design or operation of the system with this data?
If those aren’t deemed to be worth it (would somehow significantly contribute to overall transportation system safety), then it won’t happen.
Given that the authorities are making clear statements of suicide (unambiguous) from the currently available data; I highly doubt there will be a serious benefit. Satisfying the general public’s curiosity is not part of the calculation.
One thing I learned at the FAA: The investigators know much more than we ever will. If EASA says “suicide”, then they have firm data to support that judgment. They haven’t said that yet; but it appears to be a matter of time now.
Adding a new system to an airplane is a significant impact to operations, in many different ways (which I can begin to enumerate if desired; but it’s long and significant). If there is no clearly demonstrable benefit, it won’t be required (an operator could still decide to use one, after its approval, based on their own calculations).
To be really clear here: The benefits of the current black box system are abundantly clear. Knowing the angle of the control surfaces, power settings of the engines, forces on the control column, the altimeter and airspeed readings and their changes are critical to understanding the operation of the airplane. Being able to hear the pilots voices (and other noises — e.g. breathing) are also very important (but less important than the FDR, almost always).
In this specific case, you are arguing that a new system be added to all commercial airplanes (this is a big cost, it goes very far beyond the cost of the materials*) ONLY to adduce the difference between an apparent suicide (and maybe even obvious from the data — we don’t know that yet) and a medical emergency.
Well, if we had video of the pilot we might be able to be more sure of this (he could have taken a drug to knock himself out**) or we might not.
In any case, even if you did find out that, yes, he sat there and calmly watched as the programmed AP flew the airplane into the mountain, so what? Again, what changes to design or operations would that drive? And how would those improve safety? How many lives would they save? Can you define those changes? They are the only thing that matters in this case.
If it’s a suicide (fully confirmed by the video – it’s not clearly established that this would be the case), then what changes would you make? Pilots are already carefully screened and monitored. Would you initiate periodic preventative searches of their personal homes and electronic devices looking for suicidal tendencies? Why don’t we do that now? Knowing for sure it‘s a suicide would not advance this calculus one iota. We already know (see my other comments, especially at Number 14) that pilots occasionally will commit suicide by commercial air flight. (Determined by the existing FDR and CVR.) How will being somewhat more sure in one case change our system?
If it were to clearly confirm that it was a medical emergency, what then? Pilots already have to pass initial and ongoing periodic medical checks. They are required (in the US, by the FAA) to retire by age 60 and are prohibited from being a pilot (of any sort) by certain medical conditions. Should we give them a medical check before every flight? At a greater frequency? Exactly why and how many lives would be estimated to be saved by this new regulation?
* As noted above, every incremental cost drives more people to die while driving their trip instead of flying — these numbers are extremely well established.
** If you are laying the suicide to the programming of the flight deck, we already know that 100% from the FDR.
And what would prevent a suicidal pilot from taping over the camera? They will know where the camera lens(es) is(are). They know that flight deck better than anyone except the designers of it and the guys that maintain it. They would know.
And how would you determine whether a taped over lens was actually a taped over lens and not a maintenance problem? How would that decision tree affect cockpit operations? How many more accidents would result from aborting flights, based on that decision tree? How many more people would die in car crashes as a result of the incremental cost of dealing with the possibility of aborting flights based on the decision between taped lens and mx issue?
These are the kind of things that are (required by law to be) discussed and decided and costed-out in examining a proposed new system.
In almost every case, the results of the calculations are not obvious.
And if you are proposing a real-time video system with feedback from the ground, then you have a huge new array of questions to answer.
Most simply: Can you operate in weather conditions that interfere with the transmission of the video? Can you operate in areas with compromised (or non-existent) receivers? Can you dispatch with the system non-functional?
These are only the most elementary questions that would have to be answered (not addressed, like theology 🙂 ).
If you have a pilot bent on malfeasance, what will prevent them from disabling the system? How can you tell (from the ground) whether it’s disabled or just out due to failure or weather conditions? How reliable is the method of discerning this?
OK, I’ll stop now.
Well, I’m convinced!
😀
You are absolutely right about the difference in size between a video and audio file, but HD is massively larger than SD and there is an ogre on the other side of the hill named 4k that, pretty soon, I’m going to have to start wrestling with on a daily basis.
Working w/ 4k files is when you start saying things like, “give me a break man, I only have 16 terabytes of storage here!”
It sure is pretty though!
All that extra data goes into detail. We were testing out new monitors the other day w/ our 4k camera. We have black baffles on the walls of our studio which typically look uniformly black on video, even in ProRes 1080. In 4k we got an amazing color gradient on a really dark background w/o changing the lighting at all.
I think it’s pretty easy currently to store many hours worth of low resolution video on robust solid state device (think of how much HD video a GoPro captures, and that’s HD). Technology is in no way the limitation. It’s just a matter of sufficient desire, money, and jumping through the hoops that such a change would involve (e.g. getting the various parties onboard: pilots union, airlines, FAA, etc.)
No, it’s a question of whether the data obtained are expected to significantly improve the safety of the overall transportation system (see my too-long comments above).
That’s the law in the US anyway; and I’m sure in the EU as well.
Yeah. I agree. I was just saying it’s not technology that is the reason they don’t have it. It’s whether they think it’s worth the bother.
Camera lenses are so small and cheap (basically every mobile phone has one) it would be very easy to install a bunch of them in the cockpit, and they could provide some additional information in some cases, but reviewing the video recordings would be extremely disturbing.
Scientifik:
Please see my discussion above about installing a new system on commercial airliners.
There’s nothing simple about installing a new system on a fleet of commercial airliners.
Unless you can blow it off if it isn’t functional (e.g. entertainment systems) and fly anyway. And if you can do that, why install it in the first place (if it’s supposed to be a security system)?
And a video system is so easy to defeat with something as simple as a tiny roll of masking tape — or a few bandaids (plasters).
…piece of gum…sticky note…lipstick….
b&
jblilie,
Even if someone made the effort to obscure the many video lenses placed throughout the cockpit, it would already be telling information. It would remove all the remaining doubt about the intentionality of the co-pilot in this case.
That’s not particularly valuable information. The FDR and CVR already provide enough to be “sure enough” to take decisions on. And that’s all that matters.
Any suicide which involves taking others with you is both tragic and heartless. All too often we hear of men (and it’s usually men) who kill their own family before killing themselves.
The thing is that in the eventuality that this guy suffered from some severe form of depression or other mental illness that can cause powerful suicidal urges, during such an urge he would attempt to kill himself in whatever way was most at hand… He wouldn’t even be able to think of all the other people on that plane. As horrifying as it is, it’s a possibility.
It’s a stretch, as of now, but it might be worth looking into his medical history…
I’m sure his life is going to get a thorough probing.
But sometimes there’s not much to be learned from rare events.
If this does turn out to be a suicide and the co-pilot turns out to have a history of mental illness I would imagine it is going to spark a conversation about whether carriers are screening their pilots for mental health issues, and if so, how thoroughly.
And yet they were talking normally before. I cannot imagine being both catastrophically depressed to the point where you will take over a 100 people with you, and yet seem to be normal on the outside.
I am not saying it cannot be so, but that I cannot imagine it to be so.
“I cannot imagine being both catastrophically depressed to the point where you will take over a 100 people with you, and yet seem to be normal on the outside.”
The first – and very unpleasant and disturbing – thing we have to realize is that during a particularly powerful suicidal urge the person wouldn’t even “notice” or “remember” anything else. It could 100 members of the person’s family – including wife, children, parents – and this information and the feelings evoked by it would still be far-background noise, drowned by the incontrollable urge to end one’s own life.
The second, is that, unless you know a deeply depressed person well enough in and out of depressive crises, that person can actually pass as “normal” on the outside, especially considering how inattentive the average human is regarding other people’s psychology… Especially when what we usually take for “normal” is simply the capacity to make small talk in a relatively calm tone of voice…
Suicidal people do not usually take others with them unless there is rage involved.
I know of only two things that are known to induce this level of rage in an otherwise normal person. One is a brain tumor. Possible, but rare.
The other is withdrawal from antidepressant medication. This is common as dirt, and I’m betting on it in this case.
“One solution: put an outside lock on the cockpit door, and then give the keys only to the pilots.”
Indeed, it is insane that there’s even a possibility for the pilot to end up locked outside of the cockpit.
That is crazy. And it may be that a re-entry method exists. If so, it is support for the suicide hypothesis.
They have keypads I understand & an emergency way to get in that they don’t discuss on the media. It is always possible to jam a door though…
Safer when there was no lock?
“It is always possible to jam a door though…”
Yeah, but even that is kind of crazy, since as far as I know everything in the cockpit that could be used to jam a door is actually bolted or otherwise fixed in place… Unless the guy sneaked a crowbar or something like it inside the cockpit. That would mean it was deliberated before going into the plane, excluding a possible mental illness-fueled suicidal urge.
I believe re-entry with a digital code is usually possible (it triggers an alarm in the cockpit, and if no action is taken the door opens automatically after a short delay), but it can be disabled from the cockpit as well (which is what might have happened here).
A possible solution would be for the crew to be able to contact ground-control directly from the cabin (not possible at present I believe), and if needed some way to unlock doors remotely from the ground.
From what I read there is an override on the keypad to allow entry into the cockpit, but with a delay, presumably to give the person in the cockpit time to announce a threat to authorities or take action if possible.
If there were physical keys that could open the door from the outside, a terrorist with flight training could simply kill the pilot and use the key to open the door. A keypad and code makes that more difficult.
It comes down to which threat they feel is more likely and of greater risk, one from inside or outside the cockpit. Addressing one risk leaves a vulnerability to the other.
Have more planes have been wrecked by suicides than terrorists in the past two years?
the Malaysian Indian Ocean one – possibly, the Mozambique one certainly
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25482083
The cockpit doors can be opened in two ways: In the normal fashion or via an emergency override.
Normally the person entering the cockpit would sound a buzzer, the pilot inside the cockpit would verify that everything is in order through a video system and open the door.
In case of an emergency (e.g. unconscious pilot) there is the option to override this system by entering a code on a keypad. This causes to sound a buzzer inside the cockpit and after a short delay the door is unlocked. There is however the option for the pilot inside the cockpit to explicitly prevent that from happening.
If I am informed correctly, in this case any further entry attempts are automatically denied for a period of time.
If the pilot was unable to enter the cockpit, the co-pilot must have explicitly denied him access.
I guess this is the first time an airline company had to deal with “an enemy from within”? From now on, this possibility will have to be taken into account when designing aircrafts’ internal security measures…
No, it might not be the first time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990
Yeah, commenter jblilie linked that incident and also one from Silk Air. Too bad this possibility will only be taken seriously (at least I hope it will) now that it happened in the “first world”…
Also http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25482083
I think the key idea won’t go anywhere specifically because of the “think of the terrorists!” crowd. If a terrorist hypothetically got the key, nobody could stop him from entering the cockpit. Thus, this system that relies on someone inside the cockpit allowing entry will continue.
Unfortunately, there are some events that you simply can’t fix with policy changes. And many of those events are inside jobs where the people we’re supposed to be able to trust with their jobs simply aren’t trustworthy.
“Unfortunately, there are some events that you simply can’t fix with policy changes. And many of those events are inside jobs where the people we’re supposed to be able to trust with their jobs simply aren’t trustworthy.”
That is 100% true. But, still, it’s really difficult to admit to oneself that we have absolutely no guaranteed way to prevent certain forseeable outcomes. In any case, a more thorough screening of the crew’s psychological/psychiatrical condition should help to some degree, especially in cases involving clinical depression and other suicide-inducing pathologies.
“Locking pilots outside the cockpit” has prevented tragedies like this on a number of well-publicized occasions.
My guess is they will find some sort of suicide note when they examine the copilots home computer.
My biggest question is why have we not been informed if any passengers on the plane called the authorities or loved ones or did any tweets or Facebook postings during the 10 minute slow descent where everyone on that plane saw the pilot banging on the door to be let back in. One would assume that one of the stewardesses or the pilot would ask for a cell phone to call The airlines emergency number.
I’m not sure about the suicide note. How could the copilot be sure in advance that the pilot would leave the flight deck? It looks quite opportunistic.
It could be a very common thing, either in general or for this specific pilot. If the two flew together on some regular basis the copilot could easily have noticed a pattern of behavior.
Having to leave the cockpit to use the lavatory during a 2-hour flight should not be a very common pattern of behavior, even if you add the time on the ground and for the pre-flight checks that pilots do. I can think of several rather trivial examples of 2- to 5-hour stretches during which I can’t use the lavatory (except under dire circumstances), just in the context of my own job (which doesn’t have any human lives at stake).
Everyone acknowledges that pilots are human animals (hard to believe I know) and will have to use the “lav”. It’s accounted for in the regulations and training.
We are talking about trying to prevent a suicide by someone who is displaying no symptoms (as far as we know) of mental issues.
Propose a reliable system for doing that! Lots of luck.
As the German Minister in charge of pilot certification said (quoted in English on US NPR this afternoon) said, No matter how high you set the bar, you can’t 100% prevent this sort of thing.
Terrorist/hijacker attacks on airplanes are much more frequent than pilot suicides. The system is always going to account for that disparity. By giving preference to cockpit security over cockpit re-entry by “good guys”.
Are you arguing that pilots should not be allowed to use the lavatory? That doesn’t really have any bearing on what I wrote.
But, on that subject, I don’t see any reason why pilots should be expected to not use the lavatory, even if it is a two hour flight. This is one of many reasons why there are two people capable of flying the plane on board. There is always risk, but the level of risk in allowing pilots to use the lavatory while the copilot flies the plane is comparable to me getting up in the middle of the night and using the lavatory.
No, of course I’m not arguing that “pilots should not be allowed to use the lavatory.” I don’t know where you would get that from my comment above. My point is rather that it would not seem to be a common pattern of behavior for a pilot to need to leave the cockpit to use the lavatory during a short flight, i.e. not something the co-pilot in this case would have expected or predicted to happen. On a long-haul flight, of course one would expect the pilots to use the lavatory. On short flights of say, three hours or less, I think it might be a more random and unpredictable occurrence.
I suppose it’s possible that the Germanwings co-pilot put something in the pilot’s water, coffee, etc. that made him need to use the lavatory … but this is wild speculation. I know little to nothing about airplane cockpits, and I guess I’m kind of hoping there aren’t cup-holders like in my car.
According to participants in this (http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/105804/) aviation forum:
“… Most of the [cupholders] … on Boeings are on the sides of the center console … The capt’s would be next to his left shin, and the other one next to the F/O’s shin…”
“On 737’s they’re little flip-things on either side of the pedistal. On 757/767’s, its above the pilot’s nav bags … On the MD-88, it’s also a hole right near the audio selector panels, near the pilot’s outboard knees” [sic. throughout]
“On the 744 it’s in the side tray table that folds down right above your nav/computer bag”
“Boeing had an entire team that worked on it’s design while … building the 777. It’s designed to be removable, easily cleaned, holds an airline standard coffee cup and soda can”.
See also: http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/spinning-a-dream-96228110/
In 2011, a coffee spill in the cockpit of a Boeing 777 diverted a Chicago–Frankfurt flight (http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/01/05/faa.flight.diverted/).
as we learn more I agree that maybe we wont find much on this guys computers……….but I am still befuddled as to why as yet, we have not a single passanger, stewardess, or the pilot getting a cell phone and calling the airlines, or the police, or the head of the military, or the air traffic controllers, or cnn or any family member to leave any type of message to the outside world. the doomed plane had 15 minutes—-the protochol for crisis suicide intervention is to call the patients wife, girlfriend, parents or anybody to try to communicate—-we see there was ten minutes of the copailot sitting in silence breathing, and watching the plane go into the mountain.
do you think that if this were you on the plane, you would call the airlines with a iphone or whatever phones the passanges had with them, to let the airline know what is going on? we have seen in other hijacking and like crisis, hundreds of phone calls are made by passangers etc….I have seen no news covereage all day of anyone even asking this question. do you think there are no calls made by anyone on the plane to anybody?
Very strange, and tragic.
According to the recordings they have, the passengers only realised the crash seconds before it happened. I guess there won’t be many (if any) postings because of that.
What I’m hearing, there’s a keypad lock to get back in, but there’s an override on the inside.
De person outside enters a code. The pilot inside can either grant direct access, or do nothing (in which case outsider gets automatic access in 30 seconds), or explicitly deny access.
This game can in principle repeat every 30 seconds.
(source: friend at Boeing)
It may be slightly different on an A320; but the basic principle should still prevail.
The key in the possession of the pilot idea was discarded long ago because hijackers could force a pilot who was out of the cockpit to give up his key and so take over the aircraft. I think we’d have to know more about the copilot to understand what happened here. And have some verification of the investigator’s statements…
Exactly. If a hijacker forced the outside pilot to open the cabin door with his key, and then crashed the plane, we would all be saying that you shouldn’t be able to open the door from the outside.
You can’t build a safe plane if one pilot wants to crash it.
This is correct.
Eliminate pilots! Let computers fly the planes. 😉
But, then, you’d have homicidal programmers.
The risk free world is so elusive…
Evidently many US carriers have a policy of having other staff occupy the flight deck if a single pilot must leave.
Sounds prudent.
Mike
It may be a policy. I am virtually certain it is not a regulation.
Of course, if the ‘other staff’ strangles the copilot and locks the pilot out…
Nothing’s foolproof.
Indeed!
And I was wrong: It is a regulation in the US currently (or at least all the media are saying so, so I have to assume that it is. I wasn’t able to find it in the CFR yesterday.)
Horrible. It’s like those people who shoot their co-workers or families then kill themselves but random people. I can’t imagine.
The BBC are reporting that the copilot deliberately crashed the plane.
There is more on The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/mar/26/germanwings-plane-crash-investigation-press-conference-live-updates-4u9525
Professor Coyne and others, why haven’t any one of you asked the one important question; was the co-pilot who did this a Muslim?
“German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere says there are no indications that the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, had “any kind of terrorist background”, the Reuters news agency reports.” [BBC]
Andreas Lubitz — about as German a name as you can get.
Andreas Guenter Lubitz
Didn’t know that slavic-rooted family names are considered typically German in the American perception.
You aren’t trying to be funny, right?
There hasn’t been any bit of information released that would justify such a question.
A little unfair on Nimesh I think. It might be the first question that came to the minds of many non-muslims, especially these (hysterical?) terrorist fearing days. But probably not.
Well, call me an islamophobe if you like, but if it turns out that the co-pilot had converted to Islam within the recent past, I would consider that to be highly suspicious, if not quite a “smoking gun”. Up to now, I’ve read nothing to suggest that this was the case, but I’m sure it’s something the investigators will look into.
One would have expected him to make some sort of declaration in that case. No sense in striking a blow for the glorious cause and dying a martyr’s death if nobody else knowns about it.
There is plenty of precedent for pilot suicides inflight.
Egypt Air 990
Silk Air 185
I knew the guys who reviewed the black boxes from Egypt Air 990 (I worked at the FAA at the time); and they were 100% sure it was a suicide. The Egyptian government position was: “Muslims do not commit suicide.”
It’s a shame that this kind of thing usually has to happen in Europe or in the US before people start taking the possibility sriously…
“The Egyptian government position was: “Muslims do not commit suicide.””
Huh? Where the hell have they been?
Oh, well those ones weren’t true Muslims. Just like the people who leave the Christian faith were never true Christians.
I love the smell of bagpipes in the morning!
b&
What Ben said. 😀
Bullseye.
I just yesterday heard a local (Minneapolis) Somali leader (virtually all Somalis here are practicing Muslims) state on the MPR station that ISIS is not motivated by religion — at all. “That’s not Islam.” This nonsense is becoming bullet-proof (the friggin’ reporter doesn’t even question it!) and Sam Harris is sounding like a voice in the wilderness.
There will be a thousand opinions from as many people on this tragedy but if you attempt to remove the idea of suicide from possibility you would compromise other areas of security and you would never be successful 100 percent.
Just think about any other idea or situation and come up with a bullet proof idea that removes the possibility of suicide. You can’t do it.
Yes, pilot training, screening, and observation are the only ways to prevent such an act by a pilot.
Yes, this seems confirmed now:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/26/germanwings-flight-4u9525-deliberately-flown-into-mountain-says-prosecutor
There is a video showing how the reinforced cockpit doors work, here: http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/266/f/3503/s/44d24fc1/sc/16/l/0L0Sindependent0O0Cnews0Cworld0Ceurope0Cgermanwings0Ecrash0Eairbus0Evideo0Ereveals0Ehow0Ereinforced0Ecockpit0Edoors0Ework0E10A1354140Bhtml/story01.htm
or here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixEHV7c3VXs&feature=youtu.be
I’m hearing that Germanwings and Lufthansa are one of the few airlines that don’t require at least two crew members in the cockpit at all times during flight.
I guess that is bound to change now.
Suicide by pilot may have happened before. There was the Malaysian airline crash last year into the ocean, where the plane went way off course and eventually flew into the ocean.
Years ago I remember there was a crash off the western coast of the US. The pilots were from Egypt, or somewhere similar. It appears from the data recorder that a pilot had deliberately sent the plane into a diving spin. You could hear the other pilot(s) desperately trying to regain control.
Egypt Air 990 and Silk Air 185 were definitely pilot suicides.
There have likely been quite a few others as well.
This one smells like it; but I will wait to hear what the final judgment from EASA.
Yes, in the Egypt Air 990, the two pilots were fighting over the pitch of the airplane. This was 100% clear from the FDR (which records forces on the control column) and the sounds in the CVR.
Egypt continues to deny this clear case of pilot suicide/homicide.
Yes, and i remember the detail about the denial that it was suicide. The reasoning was that a Muslim must not just commit suicide.
You forget Mozambican Airlines flight TM470 2013…
The real answer is to put an impenetrable wall with no door between the pilots and the cabin. The pilots enter through the door on the right side of the plane; passengers through the left. Pilots get their own lavatory and refrigerator and microwave and what-not.
But that costs money, both to install and in operating fuel….
b&
Simple and elegant. I like it. But, as you say, airline companies won’t.
That would likely result in a lower rate of such events, but like has been mentioned a few times upthread it is impossible to completely safeguard against such events.
It is like putting a top rated dead bolt on your door. You will prevent more break-ins than without the dead bolt, but a sufficiently knowledgeable and / or motivated person will still be able to break in.
“That would likely result in a lower rate of such events”
But that is really all we can ever hope for. :/
Yes, that was the jist I was trying to convey.
The spate of downed flights into the ocean has renewed the discussion calling for better transponders that (I think) continually send out info about a planes position, speed, altitude, etc. This would make it much easier to find a downed airline.
But this discussion has been going on for some time, and the reason why it may never happen is b/c of cost. I think that is what we will find here, in the end. If a better solution exists to prevent at least some of the pilot suicides then nothing will be done if it costs a lot of $.
Odds of death (US) from flying about 1/7000000. If less 5% is suicide, I prefer them to spend the money on the other 95% of failures.
My mouth kind of dropped open when a pilot being interviewed on MSNBC last night explained that while the cockpit door is heavily reinforced and bullet-proof, on an Airbus A320 the forward lavatory wall shared with the cockpit is not. He went on to say that the copilot should have tried to somehow cut through that wall instead of pounding on the door.
Oh, great, and now everybody knows that.
Ben,
Please see my discussion above.
For every dollar you raise the cost of an airline ticket (which this would, very much, as you noted), X number of people will die in their cars because they choose to drive rather than fly.
These numbers are very well established. Auto travel is (literally) 10,000 times more dangerous than flying (in the US and EU and similar systems).
From the regulator’s standpoint, they don’t give a damn about airline profits. But raising the costs will drive ticket costs and that will result in more traffic deaths. You can say, just this once, we force the airlines to eat the cost — well that just doesn’t work. It’s never one time. The whole system was built incrementally.
We are talking about a vanishingly rare and bizarre event. We don’t typically redesign systems for vanishingly remote scenarios.
Along with the modified airplanes, are you going to strip- and cavity-search every pilot before every flight and prohibit them bringing anything into the cockpit? That’s what it would take to prevent a determined suicide and even that might not be enough.
There are about 100,000 commercial scheduled flights every day. That’s 36.5 million flights per year. (The air transport system is, by far, the safest transport ever devised.) We’ve had a handful of suicides. (The Wiki lists 7 positives, 4 probables, 1 maybe and one foiled attempt since 1982. 4 of the positives were the 9/11 flgiths, which really should count as terrorist attacks) That’s (counting all of those, even 9/11) 1 suicide per every ~93 million flights. One part in 93 million. People die from taking aspirin much more frequently that this. People die from lightning strikes more frequently (average 51 per year, just in the US).
There really is no way to prevent suicides 100%. The best we can do is screen and monitor pilots. And continue to make it hard for “bad guys” to enter cockpits — a much more significant risk.
A far better place to invest all that money would be in improving the road and bridge system. It would save far more lives.
I’d certainly agree that you have to do the cost-benefit analysis in all situations, and I’d emphatically agree that road safety is horrifically atrocious in comparison to air safety. You’re far more likely to die driving to the airport than you ever will be on the plane.
But my suggestion had less to do with reducing the risk from pilot suicide and more to do with the risk from hijacking. If there isn’t any way to get from the cabin to the cockpit, not even with a special code or a key or a button press from inside the cockpit or whatever, then it’s impossible to hijack the plane.
As a side benefit, sure, it’d keep both pilots in the cockpit to watch over each other. (And, perhaps, we should add a dog whose job it is to bite the first pilot that reaches for the controls?)
But my main objection…is that a solid bulkhead with a separate entrance would have solved every meaningful security problem that the TSA has been ostensibly created to solve…and, in contrast to the TSA, this would both work and preserve our civil liberties.
If the problem to be solved is preventing hijacking, solid bulkheads and separate entrances is the complete solution…and everything else is security theatre designed to make us more vulnerable (but just to government agents, trust us!) and enrich the pockets of selected contractors.
b&
They could do this already. Pilots can enter and exit through cockpit windows — this is their alternate escape route. (Tough design problem too by the way.) The “regular” door is really a convenience. They’d just need to permanently bar the “regular” door.
There would be a large weight penalty to the separate facilities (–> cost –> traffic deaths); but it’s entirely feasible.
I don’t know of any assailant entries into cockpits since the 9/11 modifications; but there may be some out there.
We have to be able to trust certified pilots. Establishing and maintaining the trust is the design problem to solve.
When I worked for the OEM company (Boeing), I was once part of a team that looked at modifying airplanes to provide a safe bomb-jettisoning system. Find the bomb, jettison it, everyone lands safely. We looked at the entire history of all bomb attacks on commercial airplanes (at the time, there had been about 1000 confirmed cases — this was the 1990s — I was amazed there were so many and we hadn’t realized it).
Many problems to solve. The main one: Finding the bomb. In the huge majority of cases (>95%) the bomb was never found prior to detonation. (Screening doesn’t count — it never gets on the airplane.) Of those 1000 bombings, 65% of the airplanes survived the attack and landed safely (some people were killed or injured of course by the blast). In the end, it became clear that such a system would never pay off in lives saved and the plan was scrapped.
The system is so safe, adding incremental safety to it becomes exceedingly difficult. The answer is rarely obvious — well, pretty much never anymore. Armoring the cockpit doors was an easy one. No one anticipated suicide terrorist pilots — probably we should have.
New regulations require political will. In the absence of a powerful driver (e.g. 9/11) that political will is very hard to find.
To be fair…anybody wanting to force a way into the cockpit these days is going to have to do it over the dead bodies of the cabin crew and passengers. We’ve already seen multiple cases where everybody on board has been quite eager to forcibly restrain people bent on mayhem, and that’s because nobody wants to see their plane fly into another skyscraper even if they have to risk life and limb to prevent it.
That, and the terrorists are smart enough to know that airliners aren’t any longer the weak link in the chain. Frankly, I’m surprised that we still haven’t seen, for example, a coordinated suicide bomber attack on security screening lines at airports during holiday travel season. Or somebody dumping a truckful of smoke detectors into a reservoir, or whatever. Those sorts of things wouldn’t at all be difficult to pull off if you were fucking insane enough to want to do it…and the fact that nobody’s even tried tells me that nobody’s really that fucking insane.
b&
I’m betting the co-pilot was on antidepressant medication and had recently stopped taking his meds.
Pilot certification requires six months of supervised medication before certification of anyone suffering from depression. The co-pilot had a mysterious six month break in flight training.
Could be coincidence, but I doubt it.
Or recently started taking an ADM.
According to media reports, he was in exceptional health & passed all medical assessments with ‘flying colours’; however, psych assessments are not always a component of medical evaluations.
Makes sense. Most people hugely underestimate the kind of devastating effects depression can cause – so, if that is indeed the case, the company psichiatrist and his superiors might have not taken the possible implications of the scenario you described seriously…
*That is, of course, assuming that the airline company runs psychological/psychiatric screenings. They have to, right?
Yes. And they have rules regarding antidepressants. Which is why I think the long break during flight training is curious.
They do take it seriously. that is why the requirement for six months of supervised stability when starting meds. Did I mention that the regulations also require a 60 day supervised break when going off meds?
Why would that be?
The problem is that compliance in reporting changes seems to be voluntary.
Antidepressant withdrawal is a major problem. I’m not sure why it is under-reported.
Events may overtake me in this case. I could simply be over speculating.
“The problem is that compliance in reporting changes seems to be voluntary.”
I just went “holy sh*t” on that.
“Antidepressant withdrawal is a major problem. I’m not sure why it is under-reported.”
Yeah. As far as I know, if not made properly, the withdrawal, can actually cause stronger symptoms than if the person was never even medicated.
“Events may overtake me in this case. I could simply be over speculating.”
Even so, given what you just wrote, this would still very much be a conversation worth having.
ADMs may be prohibited for commercial pilots (not sure on that). I am fairly sure that they are required to report all medications they take in order to maintain their credentials.
Of course, again, that’s self-reporting…
Indeed, which seems like it was an issue in this specific case(!).
Looks like changes to the reporting system(s) are called for.
“Matthias Gebauer, Der Spiegel magazine’s online chief correspondent, has tweeted that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz may have suffered from depression or burnout.
He says he spoke to his neighbours and friends who said he was struck by depression during the several months he took out of his pilot training in 2009”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11491587/Airbus-A320-crashes-in-French-Alps-with-148-people-on-board-live.html
Very interesting detail.
Vox Day blames feminism for this. If women gave out blow jobs more equitably, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened. Seriously, he wrote that: “Now, obviously no one else was responsible for Lubritch’s actions if it indeed was Omega rage at work. He alone bears the blame. But it is somewhat haunting to think about how many lives might be saved each year if the sluts of the world were just a little less picky and a little more equitable in their distribution of blowjobs.” Link: http://www.donotlink.com/framed?666874
Was any confirmation needed that he is a moron?
Why post this here now?
Someone — a passenger or a crew member — could have sneaked in after the pilot left the cabin and taken control of the flight.
But surely the cockpit recorder would have revealed some kind of commotion along this line?
Someone — a passenger or a crew member — could have sneaked in after the pilot left the cabin and taken control of the flight.
Extremely unlikely. Would have been evident from the CVR. And they wouldn’t have a clue how to program the flight deck.
First, it was only speculation, but now the evidence seems to intensify that the co-pilot really killed himself and took 149 innocent people with him.
Horrible, shocking!
I do not know, how the situation in other countries is, but in Germany lot of suicides are committed by throwing themselves in the fromt of trains. These people endanger the passengers, as train derailing is always (albeit small) possibility.
I mourn for the family members and friends of the killed people and hope, that they will find the strength to get to a normal life again in time.
I’d say the chances of derailing a train by throwing yourself in front of it were about zero.
There was a derailment in Scotland in 1984 that killed 13 people, caused by a cow on the line. (Driving coaches are now fitted with ‘object deflectors’ aka cowcatchers). I very much doubt if a person would be solid enough to cause a derailment though. Stupid car and truck drivers who ignore the warning lights at railway crossings are a much greater hazard.
The euphemism in this area is “an unauthorized person was struck.” I always question why they don’t just fill out the paperwork and get it authorized. 😉 My wife was once telling a fellow passenger on the train who was wondering why the trains are always delayed just because an unauthorized person walked on the tracks and she explained to the woman that it’s because they need to clean up and do an investigation. The woman then looked slightly ill, so apparently the euphemism fools some people.
Anyhow, to your point, I’ve never heard of a derailing due to a person on the track (and people are struck some 100+ times a year in the New York Metro area. There was, however, a nasty accident with a derailing last month north of the city when a car was on the tracks. Even then, the main problem was the fact that the car exploded and engulfed the front of the train in flames rather than the mere mass of the vehicle.
Every solution brings its own problems…. not the least a host of post-9/11 reactions.
Since modern airliners [especially Airbus] are capable of autonomous flight, it might be time to invoke Asimov’s three laws of robotics. Make a plane refuse to fly into mountains, much less buildings.
to fly out of range of nearest airport, landing whether the flight crew likes it or not. Inputs in violation of AsimovLaw would be reported to CeilingComputer…
What could go wrong? Right, Hal?
lkr is right!!
the tower has cleard you to land on
runway two-niner
all clear
and thanks for flying totally automated and robotically controlled WESTWORLD AIRLINES
WHERE nothing can go wrong,
go wrong, go wrng, go wrong GO WRONG,
go rwong, og wrngo nog orgng, or grong……
just sayin’
extra points for the name of the star of that classis robots go amuck movie!?
Yul Brynner?
Strictly from memory, and it’s been a long, long time.
There’s been a lot of recent commentary on similar advances in autonomous car technology — and concerns have been expressed that an Asimovian car might apply Trolley ethics in impending collisions, perhaps throwing itself [and you] over a cliff to avoid striking a van full of children.
To improve their odds, folks buying such cars might be tempted to take on
board a few dummies, as we see in HOV lanes today.
I’m sure autonomous cars are designed to stop when confronted with ambiguity.
The technology is easing its way into cars a piece at a time.’
Automatic parallel parking. Rear end crash avoidance. Lane change warnings.
Also…autonomous cars don’t have to be better than Mario Andretti at the start of a race.
They just have to be better than the average driver at any given moment on the road — and that’s a damned low bar to meet. In reality, by the time they make it past the legal hurdles, they’ll be better than the average driver when taking a driving exam, which is about the best any of us can ever even hope for.
And they’ll be exactly as good even when the people seated in the car are drunk, sleeping, putting on makeup, texting, or whatever.
Will there still be crashes, even fatalities? Yes, of course. And will there be huge media attention when that happens? Obviously.
But the injury and fatality and damage rate per passenger mile will plummet. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll be so much better than what we have today that it might as well be.
b&
“They just have to be better than the average driver at any given moment on the road — and that’s a damned low bar to meet.”
Indeed, especially in the US.
The machine has no:
Emotions
Hurry
Fatigue
Distractions like texting, phoning, talking, eating, putting on makeup, shaving, fishing for their cell phone, fiddling with the radio
It will always maintain a safe distance, brake appropriately, etc.
It will, however, be vulnerable to hacking.
Now the problem comes with maintaining a complex system that any moron with just enough cash to get a payment plan (and none for maintenance) can get their hands on.
The system becomes more like the airline system with higher levels of required maintenance and designed in reliability. All of which costs money and probably many regulatory changes, none of which will go down easy in the US, where driving is generally viewed a (God-given!) right, not the earned privilege it actually is.
Will we see a serious run at such a system in my lifetime? I highly doubt it.
I’d really rather they spend the money on REAL light-rail systems in our major metro areas. Much more bang for the buck there. We are making nice progress there in Minneapolis area.
I’m all for public transit. Or, even better, telecommuting for the huge number of jobs that don’t require a physical presence.
To that latter…a simple way to address it would be to require employers to pay employees their standard wages from the moment the employees set foot out their front doors, and to require employers to pay all transportation costs.
After all, the time you’re spent commuting isn’t your own; you’re only doing it because your boss won’t pay you unless you do.
Put that sort of regulation in place…and, suddenly, companies will preferably hire those who live close, dramatically reducing the number of passenger miles per day. They’ll instantly get over their fear of telecommuting and only have the absolute bare minimum number of people at the job site that they really need. And they’ll require the least expensive modes of travel…which will be public transit (despite initial capital investment costs).
Pretty much all of our transportation mess can be attributed to the unwitting generosity of the workforce in subsidizing the laziness of employers…and that subsidy ain’t cheap. Indeed, for most people their cars are second only in expenses to their homes — and the overwhelming majority of those expenses are of sole benefit to the employer, not the employee.
b&
Yikes! I poo-pooed the suicide scenario but it looks true now!
I wonder if the airline can be held liable since they screen for psychological issues. My instinct says no because how can you foresee everything that could happen to a person & how that person would react?
Lufthansa has very strict regulations and pilots are regularly evaluated. But such event is unique and cannot be predicted. Lot of discussions will start now, and perhaps they will find a solution, that such a catastrophe will can
By the way, German law does not known such high compensation money as the US law.
*that such catastrophe can never happen again*
my clumsy fingers
Yes, Lufthansa is as reputable an operator as exists in the world. If it can happen to Lufthansa, it can happen to anyone. The German system (and EU system) is very good.
Yes, but strictly speaking, it wasn’t Lufthansa, but a discount subsidiary. The subsidiaries are established specifically to lower costs, by permitting practices that would tarnish the main airline.
Here in Canada, Air Canada’s regional discount subsidiaries have different unions and HR rules that let them employ pilots that would never be hired to fly for Air Canada itself. It may be something similar for Lufthansa, and if so, may have had an impact on this tragedy.
This is possible; but I doubt it in this case.
There seems to be nothing detrimental about this pilot — except that he was depressed and just broke up with his girlfriend. But those kind of pilot requirements (monitoring, reporting, flying time, rest time, medical checks, etc.) are more driven by regulation.
A pilot for a discount operation in the US or EU has no fewer or lesser requirements to meet in order to obtain and maintain flying credentials than one flying for a “flag” carrier.
Usually the only things that separates the discount carrier pilots from “flag” carrier pilots are:
– Experience
– Type certifications
– Pay
Moving to the “flag” carrier is a promotion. But so is moving from an A319 to an A330.
Discount operators in the US and EU are not permitted to cut corners on safety. That is a misperception. If they do it, they are breaking the law.
(I know and have worked with quite a few commercial pilots.)
The Tagesschau said, the authorities have no hint about a terrorist background or about psychological problems. The co-pilot had a break during his training, but Lufthansa cannot say why.
Don’t know or cannot say? I bet on the latter.
German law is very strict. An employer is not allowed to confide information about the health status of its employees to the public. As far as I know, only the prosecution can do that.
Scientik at comment 21 said this:
” He says he spoke to his neighbours and friends who said he was struck by depression during the several months he took out of his pilot training in 2009″ “
As a nervous flyer I’m always disturbed by air plane crashes. This event has made me quite emotional as I took two Germanwings flights on Monday, less than 24 hours before this crash. Not the same route, but I did interact with check in personell and flight attendants. Having had a seat close to the cockpit in a 319 three days ago, I can easily imagine the horror that became real to the passengers. I am at a loss for words what these sweet people are going through right now, with a collegue losing it. My hurt goes out to share with those who are really affected by this senseless deed, those families and friends who have lost their loved ones.
I know, what a shitty way to go because people are going to be asking if there was something they could have done to prevent this from happening. All those loved ones so affected and those poor people experiencing the horror they felt (even if it was short) before being snuffed out! Just tragic.
It must be very upsetting for you. I’ve always thought the German airlines to be among the safest and they probably still are, given the immediate policy changes.
Indeed. My Dad was delayed on the day of American Airlines Flight 191 out of ORD (the DC-10 engine pylon failure, hull loss, 100% fatality). He was supposed to be on that flight — and wasn’t.
“If the copilot wanted to kill himself, did he have to take 149 other people with him?”
That’s the way narcissists are.
We occasionally hear of some guy, estranged from his wife, killing himself, but he first has to kill her and their children.
Hey, if you want to kill someone, kill yourself. But apparently that is neither sufficient nor satisfying, eh?
This appears to have just happened here in Minneapolis. One young boy has been missing for 10 days, last seen being dropped at his Dad’s and “uncle’s” apartment. Dad last seen at the Mississippi River just prior to reporting the boy missing. Dad has failed a lie detector test. Still looking for the boy.
At the first daycare my son went to (when he was tiny, he doesn’t remember this, thankfully): One of the older children, a girl about 4 or 5, was murdered by her father to spite the mom, who was breaking up him. He then killed himself. It caused the day care provider to retire: She was very close to “her kids”.
The knocking on the flight deck door indicates that concern had commenced. An override from ground sources should have been available once a non response from the flight deck was confirmed. The details of such a system is up for grabs. No one can be sure of a pilots state of mind and I don’t doubt there are markers if your trained to observe them. But one thing is for sure, pilots are going to be very wary of toilet breaks or leaving the deck in sole charge even of someone you think you know.
All that highly seviced hardware (for the better airlines) at X thousands of metres up and then there is the human brain.
Suicide is when someone intentionally kills himself. But his self was only one of 150 people on the plane.
So if he did do it, it’s 0.7% suicide and 99.3% cold blooded murder.
I concur!
Tragedies such as this remind me of Sam Harris’ article on guns after the Sandy Hook shooting. The argument centered partially of regulations designed to prevent mass shootings versus regulations to reduce shootings in general (a neglible number of gun murders are of the mass shooting variety). Likewise, here we have a horrifying and tragic event that is very rare and killed far fewer people than the number who die daily in traffic accidents.
Yet, we don’t see headlines declaring 107 Die In Car Crashes in the United States every morning in the paper. It is interesting that we have no political will to improve our infrastructure for vehicles but I have met countless people who are utterly terrified to fly. And every time a crash like this happens, they reiterate how they prefer remaining “safely” in control and on the ground. I also think it would be interesting to see if thinking like this is correlated with religiosity as both are based in emotion rather than fact.
Yes, this is the mis-perception that humans just seem to be built with.
Driving your car is literally 10,000 times more dangerous than flying: In the US and EU, and similar systems.
These (large commercial air transport) are the safest transport systems ever devised. And I can tell from 25 years of experience in that industry, as an airplane designer, operator’s maintenance engineer, and FAA engineer (I left that work ten years ago) that everyday, the designers, operators, and regulators are doing their best to make it even safer.
Sometimes people criticize the measure used to rank these options for safety (seat-miles). I simply ask: Is driving 1000 miles more dangerous than driving one mile? The answer becomes obvious. The mission is transporting X number of people X miles, and it will be accomplished by one or another method of transport. Seat miles is the right unit.
In this specific case, I’ve compared flight counts, because in this case (pilot suicide) it’s an all-or nothing proposition; and flights becomes the right unit of measure.
My speculation regarding depression and discontinued medication is still looking plausible.
He does not fit the profile of a chroniçally hostile guy. He is looking like a nice guy with a medical problem.
Yes, I have to agree this is looking more and more the case. I just heard on the news that a ripped-up doctor’s note was found at his home — it excused him from work but was never handed in.
If the doctor wrote that note, then the reporting system probably needs to be changed to require direct reporting from doctors to both the employer and the regulator (for certain classes of employees such as commercial pilots.)
It’s looking almost fully confirmed this morning. He just broke up with his girlfriend, has been taking ADMs and was described (today) as, “battling depression.”
Now the question becomes who knew this and when; and how do we change the screening/monitoring/reporting requirements to address such a situation in future.
This guy was facing clinical depression and the end of his career. Ordinary people kill themselves under these circumstances.
If he was in a rage due to withdrawal, that could explain why he chose to take people with him.
Jerry is fond of saying we do not have free will. I would add that there are medical conditions that can induce uncontrollable rage. Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower shooter is an example.
My goodness, this is a can of worms. There are going to be people all over the world under treatment for depression, who will now have that added burden of being suspected of being capable of going bonkers at any moment.
Deepest condolences to the families and friends of those lost.
The news are all reporting that the EU are going to adopt the “second adult in the room” policy of having a second person (cabin crew) in the cockpit when one pilot leaves — just a person for vigilance and to resist a problem should it occur.
This is probably the best, fastest, simplest, lowest impact and most effective mitigation that can be implemented.
It still won’t be 100% — nothing ever will be; but it strikes directly and the issue: A bad person’s autonomy in the flight deck. it is also an effective mitigation against medical emergencies and the “pilot locked into the lavatory” scenario (which has occurred).
I think this is a wise step.
Above, I commented that I was pretty sure it wasn’t a regulation in the US. I was wrong: Apparently it is (since 9/11).
I concur, it is good to enforce a policy, that always two persons have to be in the cabin. And it is also true, that it will only minimize the risk of such a tragic occurence but not eliminate them.
A hard lesson was learned (again).