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GermanWings Flight 9525

How about an empty two liter of Sprite and a bucket so no one has to leave the cockpit at all.
 
Does anyone actually believe there is some combination of security technology and procedures that can stop a determined pilot from crashing an airplane? If the stewardess is in there as a 2nd person he probably asks for a coke or fakes a stomach ache and talks her into leaving for a second, then locks her out as well.

Bottom line is you trust people not to kill you every day of your life, and a tiny percentage of the population has the capacity not to care.
 
I'm sure it's regs but i always get weirded out when a crew member comes back to business class to take a nap. Its an 8 hr flight, stay awake.
 
Simply awful.

Assuming then, that this was premeditated, the co-pilot's plan relied on the pilot leaving the cockpit sometime during the flight, right? There has been speculation that the pilot left to use the bathroom, but the flight time from Barcelona to Düsseldorf appears to generally be under two hours and thirty minutes - so relying on a bathroom break on a short flight seems like a huge thing to leave to chance (absent inducing a laxative or something). Otherwise, has there been any information as to how the co-pilot convinced his superior officer to leave the cockpit?

Personally, I've never been on a flight in the past 20 years where either pilot left the cockpit during the flight, so this really stood out to me.
 
never once in 20 years has a pilot gone to the bathroom while you were on the flight? that seems utterly impossible
 
That's been my observation. Admittedly, most of my flights have been under six hours and I fly less than a handful of times per year.

ImTheCaptain said:
never once in 20 years has a pilot gone to the bathroom while you were on the flight? that seems utterly impossible
Click to expand...
 
I've seen plenty of pilots or co-pilots leave the cockpit for one reason or another.
 
CallowayDeac04 said:
Simply awful.

Assuming then, that this was premeditated, the co-pilot's plan relied on the pilot leaving the cockpit sometime during the flight, right? There has been speculation that the pilot left to use the bathroom, but the flight time from Barcelona to Düsseldorf appears to generally be under two hours and thirty minutes - so relying on a bathroom break on a short flight seems like a huge thing to leave to chance (absent inducing a laxative or something). Otherwise, has there been any information as to how the co-pilot convinced his superior officer to leave the cockpit?

Personally, I've never been on a flight in the past 20 years where either pilot left the cockpit during the flight, so this really stood out to me.
Click to expand...

it happens all the time. if the pilot is stepping out they usually stick a drink cart in front of the galley and won't let anyone up to use the lavatory.
 
This is a 2.5 hour flight, though.

I'm not suggested that my experiences match the realities of a larger sample size, but this idea that a pilot leaving the cockpit in-flight struck me as a big variable to plan for or rely upon.
 
CallowayDeac04 said:
That's been my observation. Admittedly, most of my flights have been under six hours and I fly less than a handful of times per year.
Click to expand...

Do you always sit in first class and watch the cockpit door? I'd never notice from my coach window seat where I'm asleep or reading. I feel like it'd be easy to miss.
 
So a pilot (or co-pilot) leaving the cockpit in-flight may not be as unusual as my experiences led me to believe. Moving on...
 
Is there a technological or financial reason why airline companies can't monitor all flights from a central location, and then activate the autopilot (or, allow a remote pilot to take over the controls) when any flight starts acting abnormally?

Seems that simple measure would prevent nearly all hijackings, except in the doomsday scenario where the terrorists somehow take over the airline headquarters.
 
i think RacerEngineer already told us how impossible it would be to manage the datastreams necessary to do something similar
 
TexasDeac10 said:
Is there a technological or financial reason why airline companies can't monitor all flights from a central location, and then activate the autopilot (or, allow a remote pilot to take over the controls) when any flight starts acting abnormally?

Seems that simple measure would prevent nearly all hijackings, except in the doomsday scenario where the terrorists somehow take over the airline headquarters.
Click to expand...

Exposure to cyber terrorism would seem to be a major reason why you wouldn't want to do that, I would think. A few guys coordinated to take over several planes at once is going to be hard to pull off in the post 9/11 world, but having hundreds of flights exposed to a single hack seems to far outweigh any benefit to overriding controls in a scenario like what happened with this plane.

i think RacerEngineer already told us how impossible it would be to manage the datastreams necessary to do something similar
Click to expand...

That too (and probably more likely).
 
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