But if a person became incapacitated in the cockpit how likely would it be that before they fell ill they would manually lock from the inside the cockpit door? Does the remaining person in the cockpit manually lock the door from the inside if the other pilot leaves to go to the bathroom? That would seem a strange thing to do, imo.
Also, if the manual lock can be overridden by putting in the emergency code - what would happen if a hijacker wanted to get in and put a gun to a FA forcing FA to put in the emergency code to the cockpit. Seems to me the safer thing is to have the ability to manually lock anyone out - even those with the codes - since in a situation of incapacitation the door most likely would not be manually locked from inside.JMO.
You should never be in a situation where there is nobody in the seat. If a pilot had to lock the door from inside the cockpit, he or she would have to get out of their seat, leaving nobody at the controls. Most doors are just self locking, you shut it, and it locks. I don’t know how true that claim is that someone can manually lock the other person out, in a way that they can’t override. As far as a hijacker forcing a flight attendant to put in the emergency code, that is why you have the deny function. If someone uses the emergency access, you have the ability to deny entry from within the cockpit. Whether that should be allowed or not is a different argument.
Don’t know - just know what I read - that the co-pilot manually locked the cockpit door. I don’t think he cared at that point that there was no one at the controls - since he was crashing the plane.
I wonder how they could have figured out that the copilot manually locked the door. I thought all they had was the cockpit voice recorder, and have not interpreted the flight data recorder (don’t know if manual door lock would even be included in that data). Did they hear him exclaim, “I’m going to manually lock you out”? Or did they have the captain yelling, “He manually locked me out, I can’t override it!” Short of that, how could they possibly know? Or is that someone speculating, commenting as fact, or deciding that since the copilot didn’t allow entry, therefore he manually locked it? The news reports on these aviation accidents always drive me crazy with their half truths and assumptions. You get some “expert” weighing in, and all of a sudden it’s fact.
From what I understand the cockpit voice recorder is extremely sensitive and can pick those sounds up.
Also, lets think logically. We have a co-pilot with a known mental illness who ripped up excuse notes from Dr. which said he was unable to work and they found medications in his house which are specifically used for patients suffering from a mental issue. We also have the data from Flightradar24 which shows the autopilot was manually changed during the time the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit. Then, we have on the voice recorder the Captain trying frantically for 13 minutes (iirc) to get into the cockpit. Do you really want to believe that he forgot the codes?
But, you are free to go on thinking the pilot forgot the codes and the co-pilot was incapacitated.
“But, you are free to go on thinking the pilot forgot the codes and the co-pilot was incapacitated.”
I don’t believe I ever said that the captain forgot the code. I want to understand why it wasn’t used. Since all of the information is not yet in, we don’t even know that it wasn’t attempted. We don’t know if there was a known mechanical issue with the door, and that the code was ineffective. We don’t even know for certain the configuration of the door of this specific airplane. However, in a panic situation, people don’t always take the correct actions. I would like to know if the code was attempted and rejected, if the door was supposedly in perfect working order, or if the code was never entered at all. If it was never entered, I’d have to wonder, why not? This are obvious questions, that I’m certain the investigators are looking into. These are also important questions that need answers, as we have many procedures that are considered as, “written in blood”. People had to die to get procedures changed.
As far as the co-pilot being incapacitated, I think it is not unlikely that he put himself into a state of incapacitation, or at least into a state that lowered his mental function. I think it is likely that he did this purposefully, based upon hearing the things that are now coming out.
I have no doubt the captain tried to put the codes in. Nothing else makes sense logically or you would have to believe the co-pilot just happened to decide to crash the plane and coincidentally the door on that plane was broken or malfunctioned, or the Captain, who had 6000 flying hours on AB320, was so panicked he forgot the codes or never even tried to entered them.
As for the co-pilots state - he had to be aware enough to lock the captain out and enter in the new autopilot coordinates at least 13 minutes before plane crashed.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck - it’s a duck.
I guess it’s pretty much not worth arguing about. Pilots are much like engineers, we need to know exactly what really happened, and what could be done to prevent the same thing from happening again. We don’t believe speculation from self declared experts and tv personalities, we need data and facts. By the end of this, we will know every detail, including the contents of people’s stomachs. It all matters.
Be glad there are people who have the same attitude as me who are investigating and looking for the truth, as that’s the reason for the highly improved safety record of major airlines. You don’t want everyone to say, “Whatever.”
I appreciate hearing the information from you, busdriver - it is good to hear from someone who can look at this from the inside. This was a tragedy all around… please, all, let’s keep things civil and polite here, and assume that everyone is posting with good intentions.
"I appreciate hearing the information from you, busdriver - it is good to hear from someone who can look at this from the inside. "
Thank you. As someone who has been flying Airbus equipment for 17 years, I really want to know the specifics and the truth. Procedures, training and equipment may change after this. I’m sure anyone who sees news reporters and “experts” winging it about something related to their occupation start going nuts. The Malaysian Airlines missing 777 was another one that made me crazy. My favorite stupid headline was from CNN was something like, “Boeing 777 will struggle to maintain altitude once the fuel tanks are empty”.
“This was a tragedy all around… please, all, let’s keep things civil and polite here, and assume that everyone is posting with good intentions.”
My take is more from a PR standpoint: If you’re Lufthansa, your employee intentionally murdering 150 people is the WORST possible scenario. It’s worse than outside terrorists, it’s worse than a mechanical failure, it’s worse than anything.
So if Lufthansa’s bigwigs publicly announce that their employee deliberately murdered 150 people, then they must have really good evidence that that’s what happened.
Well, they ALWAYS want to blame the pilots first. They can say it’s just that one person, one crew that messed up (or in this case, went crazy). They don’t want people to think there is something wrong with their airplanes, their maintenance, their procedures, terrorists trying to attack this airline. It’s just this one person, and he’s gone now. It’s not our fault, it’s HIS fault.
While I think they probably had plenty of evidence based upon the cockpit voice recorder, and may have already interviewed his ex girlfriend to come to their conclusion, If they were that worried about PR from a situation such as this, they would have waited for the investigation to get further along and the publicity to die down before announcing what they thought. However, I think they are now going to be in for some serious scrutiny that they will not like. Things such as hiring someone without an adequate background check, with such low flight time. All the people that flew with him and didn’t notice anything was wrong, doctors prescribing medication illegal for flight, cockpit door procedures that were inadequate for passenger airplanes, who knows what will come from this?
I hope some attorneys will chime in. From what I have heard so far, at least in the US, it would be nearly impossible for an airline to get off the hook using this line because of strict liability rules applied to common carriers and vicarious liability of employers for their employees’ on-duty actions.
I hate automatically locking doors, w the burning passion of a thousand suns. We once drove many hours to get to a ski resort in Austria. When we all got out of the car, the stupid “smart” power locks automatically locked us out, with all our ski gear still inside the car. X(
^^That must have really ruined your day!! I hate automatically locking doors too. Sometimes the mechanics shut the door on the ground, with nobody in the cockpit. So the only way to get into it, is to enter the emergency access code, which is really loud, and if there’s someone on board, they’re staring at you like you just broke something or set off a fire alarm!
A rather humorous example of poor reporting is from the Vancouver Sun, which tried to describe the story exactly as they thought happened, with the scoop of,” Der Spiegel reported that he had suffered “burn-out syndrome.” A special coding, “SIC,” was entered on his licence, meaning that he needed a “specific regular medical examination.”
The code of SIC is on all first officers pilot licenses. It means “Second in Command”, not that there is anything wrong with you, requiring a different medical examination than anyone else. They also speculated that he might be gay and confused about his sexuality. Amazing how they came up with all this, apparently just because he had worked briefly as a flight attendant. Therefore, he must be gay, right?
@busdriver11, I’m absolutely NOT saying that you are ignoring evidence because you don’t want to believe a pilot could do such a thing, but I wonder…
Do you feel worse about this than the average Joe because you are a pilot and it hurts to think one of your own could do such a heinous thing?
My Dad is a retired pilot instructor for a major airline. He told me that when he heard about the manner of the descent of this plane, he immediately suspected a deliberate act on the part of one or more of the flight crew. He said “this hurts me to the core.”
We have a commercial airline pilot in the family. His first thought, without any hesitation, was that MH370 & Germanwings was deliberate pilot suicide.
My friend’s husband was a commercial pilot. He was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder four years ago and hasn’t been allowed to fly since. My friend said this whole incident has hit both of them really hard. She had tears in her eyes when we discussed it today.
