I am just reading the latest news on the air plane crash that happened couple days ago and it dawned on me that one too many times have I read a story where after black box is obtained, it provided no additional information and almost always resulted in mystery (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/...
I spoke with my father yesterday morning and he anticipated the "one pilot locked out of cabin/intentional CFIT" story. I still can't believe it, I am still hoping he could be wrong :/
I don't trust the NYT, they were wrong about one or two details earlier this week already. All other newspapers seem to be quoting the NYT. I am waiting for. in my opinion, more trustworthy sources...
@falstro I am with you, and yesterday I dismissed the hypothesis of my father as simple "union litigation induced stress" (remember what I told you yesterday? since Alitalia does not exist anymore it has basically torned in a fancy low-cost, as far the contracts are concerned, that is). I will obviously be waiting for additional sources and official information, but I am not anymore in a clear state of mind.
This question was closed as a duplicate of two others.
I feel this happens often enough that there perhaps needs to be a more satisfactory resolution of duplicate/overlapping questions.
It seems to me that there would be some merit in merging the questions and gathering the answers together.
...
@Federico -- p.s. on the crews not flying the next day -- I suspect they simply were grieving to the point where they considered themselves unfit to fly
"The actions of the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 have been "analyzed as willingness to destroy the aircraft," Brice Robin, the Marseille prosecutor, said at a news conference today."
That may be a wrong analysis, but it is beyond speculation.
I feel kind of bad that my first thought after reading the theory about the FO intentionally crashing was "Well, at least he didn't cut everything but the Inmarsat, make a turn, and then crash over water."
"It's like a pandemic man, it just keeps happening!"
yea, the a/p altitude would never be set to 100, for any reason that I can imagine
no airport is going to have a first level off altitude of 100 feet, no g/s intercept altitude will be that low, no non-precision lowest altitude will be that low and no missed approach will level off that low.
@casey Plus: The aircraft had just reached cruise flight, the top of descent was miles away and even during an emergency descent, you would command different altitudes.
@ratchetfreak well its easy to miss-set in the 100' off sense, but not to grossly miss-set it like that
@SentryRaven absolutely. 10k feet in emergency descent or MEA, whichever is higher. Even with TOD looming closer, no sense to set it prior to descent / descend-via clearance
and you'd never get a clearance to maintain 100', and even if you would it wouldnt come from a high altitude sector
I haven't read any news of the crash but as soon as I saw the headline "one pilot in cockpit" I immediately thought suicide at worst, something grossly improper at best.
even in our regional jets, if one of us goes back a flight attendant comes forward. Always 2 in the cockpit.
@Federico @casey was talking about having two people in the cockpit at all times, so if one pilot leaves, a flight attendant needs to occupty the seat.
Yes, I know. Your statement above said pilots, so I just wanted to point out that casey was referring to people, not necessarily pilots. We are on the same page :)
Is it plausible for a pilot inside the cockpit to be incapacitated and that at the same time the pilot locked outside simply doesn't remember the code or the procedure for entering the cockpit?
anything more than a "yes/no" answer is also answering the question "I am not authorized to enter the cockpit and do not know airline procedures to gain entrance, how can I convince the crew to let me in?"
If one pilot is out of the cockpit and they don't know how to get back in, I'm assuming they are under duress and landing alone.
anything abnormal in regard to the crewmember re-gaining access to the cockpit and that door stays closed until the airplane is landed, boarded and cleared.
> PARIS — The co-pilot of Germanwings flight 9525 deliberately crashed the aircraft, French officials said Thursday, pointing to voice recorder evidence that he had locked the captain out of the cockpit, ignored his pleas for re-entry and steered down into the French Alps as passengers were heard screaming.
According to an Airbus video describing the operations of locking the cockpit door, it is locked by default when closed. But when a pilot wants to lock the cockpit door to bar access to someone outside, he or she can move the toggle to a position marked “locked,” which illuminates a red light on a numeric code pad outside. That disables the door, keypad and the door buzzer for five minutes.
If someone outside the cockpit suspects the pilot is incapacitated, that person would normally first try to establish contact via the intercom or by activating a buzzer. If those efforts were unsuccessful, the video shows, a crew member outside the cockpit would need to enter an emergency code on the keypad.
The code activates a loud buzzer and flashing light on the cockpit control panel, and it sets off a timer that unlocks the door 30 seconds later. The person outside has five seconds to enter before the door locks again.
@rbp The descent profile on FlightRadar24 shows nearly 10 minutes from maximum altitude until CFIT. Shouldn't the 5 minute time have expired, allowing the captain to enter the emergency code?
@Federico Thought about that. I guess the guy inside would need good timing to hit the switch again. If I were outside and the plane were pitched significantly down, knowing how the emergency access system works, I'd be pushing against the door waiting for that timer to unlock it...
And your link is to a B767, not an A320. May have a different locking mechanism.
1. I do not see why you would need a good timing (pushing the button before the 5 minutes are over might make the time reset, remember that this system is designed to keep terrorists out, *by design* is easy to keep people out) 2. the door opens outward, pushing will achieve nothing 2. pulling either, you still have to insert the code
A 2014 study identifies 24 suspected U.S. cases of “aircraft-assisted” suicide over the past 20 years." http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/suicide-airplane-its-rare-it-happens-180952198/?no-ist
@Federico Because the proper response to what appears to be a suicidal individual selfishly taking out a bunch of other people with them is clearly to pile hate on any one or thing that may have had an association with them when they were alive.
@DanHulme computers are stupid: they do what they're told. In this case to descend to 100ft.
one might argue that GPWS should have triggered a pull-up (and maybe it did, isn't there a slight pull-up in certain plots?) but coming from 3000ft/min descent with a mountain in front it was too late
@DanHulme there are plenty of approaches that fly straight through the egpws if the pilots have the field in sight, if the autopilot pulled up there it would destabilize the approach
And I wrote code that does both, I can guarantee you, the complexity for the first part is humongous and is definitely not something I would trust blindly
@DanHulme an if-else on an angle of attack is not the same as "the engine is out, find the reason, apply approriate responses" (see this answer aviation.stackexchange.com/a/1805/1467)
@falstro yes, that was my answer; but (a) it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that a landing is just a CFIT at an aerodrome, there are other differences; (b) it could be disablable, like (IIRC) envelope protection on Boeings
@Federico there's a difference between finding a response to a system malfunction, and rejecting erroneous human inputs by default
@DanHulme you have to define erroneous first: for angle of attack is straightforward: if beyond limit, danger. For CFIT, as falstro said, you're preventing landing.
from wiki: > The traditional GPWS does have a blind spot. Since it can only gather data from directly below the aircraft, it must predict future terrain features. If there is a dramatic change in terrain, such as a steep slope, GPWS will not detect the aircraft closure rate until it is too late for evasive action.
Is it bad that this annoys me more than how easy it is to CFIT?
:-)
I felt bad for the a/p today as a result of the discussion at the office. I was imagining it seeing the end coming but dutifully flying to the requested height.
It seems that every time there is a major airplane related incident, there is a minor flood of questions related to that particular incident.
Sometimes the posters try to couch it in general terms; sometimes the question is clearly specific to current incident.
Should this board deal with quest...
going to bed, see you tomorrow (if in the meanwhile someone can explain him why is not ideal to make medical analysis by reading newspapers or to me why that's accepted terminology/behaviour on SE, I would be grateful)
In a comment on my answer to a recent question, mins wrote
Why providing the names of the crew members? I doesn't add to the value of the answer, but it may hurt their families who are not responsible.
I had originally referred to several crew members potentially liable for accidents by nam...
This question was closed as a duplicate of two others.
I feel this happens often enough that there perhaps needs to be a more satisfactory resolution of duplicate/overlapping questions.
It seems to me that there would be some merit in merging the questions and gathering the answers together.
...
Is it plausible for a pilot inside the cockpit to be incapacitated and that at the same time the pilot locked outside simply doesn't remember the code or the procedure for entering the cockpit?
It seems that every time there is a major airplane related incident, there is a minor flood of questions related to that particular incident.
Sometimes the posters try to couch it in general terms; sometimes the question is clearly specific to current incident.
Should this board deal with quest...
In a comment on my answer to a recent question, mins wrote
Why providing the names of the crew members? I doesn't add to the value of the answer, but it may hurt their families who are not responsible.
I had originally referred to several crew members potentially liable for accidents by nam...
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