How Redesigning The Cockpit might forestall some other Germanwings Tragedy

airlines and regulators often wait to enact airline safety measures until lengthy after the urgency for such measures turns into obvious. it is painfully evident within the wake of the March 24 Germanwings tragedy, when Andreas Lubitz, 28, locked his copilot out of the cockpit, disabled the safety code, and crashed the plane within the French Alps. The incident highlights the need to rethink how we design plane cockpits.

previous to September 11, at a time when terrorists were blowing themselves as much as kill handfuls of innocents at a time, it it sounds as if by no means took place to airline security regulators that terrorists would possibly benefit from unsecured cockpit doors to take regulate of airplanes and kill hundreds at a time. Even after September 11, rules still permit cockpit doorways to be opened large all over a flight every time the pilot wants to make use of the facility.

After 12 major plane catastrophes during the last 4 decades suspected to have been because of pilot suicide, the best U.S. airline security regulators may give you to address this safety chance was to require that at the least “one member” of the airplane crew, reminiscent of a flight attendant, be in the cockpit when one of the crucial pilots left the cockpit to use a facility positioned out of doors the cockpit area. The conception that a flight attendant would have sufficient training to grasp what buttons to push to countermand the levers pulled by means of a suicidal pilot bent on killing all of the passengers is a quaint one, and entirely unrealistic—which is possibly why European regulators never felt the need to enact a similarly unnecessary law.

the necessity for a sealed cockpit in each airplane is no less important as of late than it used to be within the days after Sept. 11 when the principle perceived security threat was that of a terrorist dashing from the passenger cabin to invade the cockpit and take control of the aircraft. the current ideas, alternatively, don’t in reality work. in any case, the cockpit door is opened every now and then as pilots use the restroom or fetch a snack. Intercom bulletins warning passengers to not congregate near the toilet are also equally absurd, given that terrorists can be uninhibited by means of the warnings. Such warnings are reminiscent of the unintentionally humorous instructions given to schoolchildren in the 1950s to “duck and canopy” beneath their desks in the case of nuclear assault.

the undeniable fact is that the one regulation that may successfully offer protection to passengers and aircraft from either a suicidal pilot or a terrorist passenger is person who requires the cockpit to be truly sealed all through the complete flight. inside the cockpit space, you would have a bathroom and a small slot for handing over food and drinks. On long-haul flights, pilots would also be provided with a cot inside the sealed cockpit space.

Equally vital is a regulation requiring that airlines videotape the inner of the cockpit. That tape must be included in some of the two black boxes at the moment required. without any such regulation, the real lead to of a crash may just remain unsure (even in cases the place the pilot clearly meant to commit suicide). Pilot issues over privacy may also be addressed via ironclad ensures that such movies will likely be made available best after a catastrophe has befell and the black field found.

airlines may bitch that such redesign of cockpit areas is dear, however it needn’t be. In the long term, the expansion of the secured cockpit house to incorporate toilets can also be mandated as part of an original airplane design, and within the quick time period, small transportable toilets of the type advertised on television for a couple of hundred bucks would suffice.