Can you imagine how horrific it would be to feel the plane descending, seeing the pilot frantically pounding and trying to break the door down to the cockpit?
Yikes! I don't really care what cause this, the only reason he was locked out was by design flaw. Something else no doubt initiated the event but there is no reason valid, where the pilot is locked out of the cockpit.
Really? Pilot goes pee, terrorist waits for him, shows him a picture on his cell phone of his buddy holding a knife to his wife and daughters throats. "Let me in the cockpit or they're dead!" From what I understand is that pilots can lock themselves in the cockpit and the door can only be opened from the inside once the flight is in air. Can't guard against every scenario but you have to protect from terrorists vs suicide.
In that case the pilot should choose to stay out of the cockpit, hey! But in this case the pilot was indeed locked out. Not good. He should have override capability. Anything less is a design flaw.
Actually, there is no reason for this to happen these days. When the pilot leave the cockpit, he can give over control to a controller, like a drone controller, until he resumes responsibility by actions only available to the pilot. It can be done, it damn sure needs to happen soon. There are pirates about these days.
The pilot tells the copilot "you have control of the aircraft" A chair is heard moving back and the cockpit door heard closing. The co-pilot deliberately sets the autopilot to descend. The pilot heard banging the door from outside. Normal breathing sounds can be heard in the cockpit. Air Traffic Control is heard asking about what is happening on-board. An alarm warning that the plane is too close to the ground is heard in the cockpit. At the last minute the screams of the passengers are heard. The sound of the plane hitting the slope is heard.
Copilot did it. In the US there needs to be two people in the cockpit at all times, if the pilot leaves a stewardess takes his place. In Europe they dont have this law. There is also a manual override to allow people into the cockpit if its locked but this manual overide can be denied by anyone in the cockpit. http://news.yahoo.com/official-1-pilot-locked-crash-plane-cockpit-072049706.html?clear-cache
I have never heard about this before. Fucking trippy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1771
Can't see how having a flight attendant in the cockpit is going to do a bit of good. Any pilot can easily disable him/her since the pilot is strapped in and and the FA isn't. barfo
I think you are forgetting the primary purpose of the copilot. What if the pilot has a heart attack while he's taking a leak? Or if terrorists attack the pilot in the can? barfo
No shit, Imagine that! Well lets' see, we can now do real accurate bombing with no pilot in the cockpit. Imagine that! I bet someone could figure out how to unlock a fucking door in plane too. Probably could refuse also, although in this case I can see no upside to a refusal, even if you were 60% sure the request came from a terrorist hijacker.
Germanwings Co-Pilot researched suicide and cockpit doors http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/world/europe/germanwings-lufthansa-andreas-lubitz-black-box.html
If only google could've used their powers for good here, and let the police know that someone was searching for suicide and cockpit doors...
