Germanwings A320 crashed in France :(
Discussion
el stovey said:
Ayahuasca said:
I knew someone would say that. Not too difficult to program the system to know the difference between a runway and a mountain...
if you have a fire on board you might only have 20mins to get it on the ground/water or a bird strike on take off like the Hudson river event. What about an all engine failure or if it runs out of fuel? There are plenty of reasons that make your plan less safe than the rare event of pilots trying to crash on purpose.There are plenty of other controls levers and switches that could result in the aircraft crashing regardless of your computer that won't let it be intentionally flown into the Alps.
I guess the solution to this, and other pilot-induced problems, is to move to a fully pilotless aircraft.
Although I guess the same Hudson River incident can be used to argue against that too...
lord trumpton said:
eharding said:
GloverMart said:
One quick question. If he planned to kill himself and everyone on board, why did he use the oxygen mask?
Conceivably, whilst still at altitude, someone in the back could have deliberately caused a cabin depressurisation - taken a crowbar to one of the windows for example. Had he not been on oxygen, and lost conciousness, then it may have been possible to gain access to the flight deck once the door entry veto timeout had elapsed. He was just removing any last influence the folk outside the flight deck might have had over him. Or maybe he just had a thing about oxygen masks.
b
hstewie said:
hstewie said: Apparently the FDR supports the the evidence so far - pilot commanded the descent and accelerated it several times.
The BBC article also mentions 40 mobile phones recovered though no mention of their state - if that goes the way I think it might I don't envy the investigation team.
I just read that as well.The BBC article also mentions 40 mobile phones recovered though no mention of their state - if that goes the way I think it might I don't envy the investigation team.
He used the autopilot to dial in a decent to ground, then also increased speed a couple of times also using the autopilot.
I find that a bit odd really. You would have thought someone bent on suicide would have just rammed the stick forward and mashed the throttle levers up rather than calmly twiddling a couple of little knobs and just sitting there waiting.
bhstewie said:
hstewie said: The BBC article also mentions 40 mobile phones recovered though no mention of their state - if that goes the way I think it might I don't envy the investigation team.
What a horrendous job. Filtering through all of those mobiles, but not just seeing any videos recorded during the flight but having to dig through all of their life - text messages, photos, voicemails.
Awful.
f the pilot who allegedly crashed the plane is proven 100% then he succeeded in his mission 100% and there is nothing that can be done about it. It will happen again, either by the same method or a different opportunity. Part of life & death and will always be with us. Lots of vindictive people around wanting lots of 'money' but that makes them the same in my eyes, greedy and selfish.
NinjaPower said:
You would have thought someone bent on suicide would have just rammed the stick forward and mashed the throttle levers up rather than calmly twiddling a couple of little knobs and just sitting there waiting.
I read elsewhere that increasing the thrust would have caused overspeed protections to kick in. Although the mainstream media are using woolley phrases like 'he accelerated the plane' it's more likely that he was adjusting the speed to ensure that it remained within ordinary operating tolerances so as to accelerate it's descent without protections noticing an anomaly and intervening.MitchT said:
I read elsewhere that increasing the thrust would have caused overspeed protections to kick in. Although the mainstream media are using woolley phrases like 'he accelerated the plane' it's more likely that he was adjusting the speed to ensure that it remained within ordinary operating tolerances so as to accelerate it's descent without protections noticing an anomaly and intervening.
He's simply increasing the rate of descent a bit.
Perhaps he was aiming for that mountain for some reason.
An interesting point has been raised on PPRuNe (apologies if it has been mentioned here before); If the cockpit door had been openable, via whatever means, then the person flying the plane would have put the plane into a vertical descent, or at an attitude such that nobody was able to approach the door.
I wonder if any work has been done on remote overrides? Not remotely piloting the plane, that would be hugely risky even if it were technically viable (which I believe it is) but a sort of "safe mode" where the plane ascends to a low (10,000ft) or high (36,000ft) nominal course and attitude. Activation might be via one or more cabin crew entering a passcode into a beacon system, still images or video of the flight deck, just outside it, and the interior of the passenger compartment are then sent to an approved control room, where an assessment can be made, and an encrypted override key (locked to a plane ID) can be sent back. If need be, the same method could be used to unlock the cockpit door (but see above).
Of course even this moves the problem on to "well what next?", but it gives options in a currently option-less situation. If nothing else then it can give images or video of a live situation, useful for later investigations. Given the size of flash memory devices now, I wonder how long it will be before full cockpit video recording is available.
Obviously that's an over-simplification, and it may well just be an intermediate step to full robotic and remote control, but I would be interested to know if any work has been done on it.
I wonder if any work has been done on remote overrides? Not remotely piloting the plane, that would be hugely risky even if it were technically viable (which I believe it is) but a sort of "safe mode" where the plane ascends to a low (10,000ft) or high (36,000ft) nominal course and attitude. Activation might be via one or more cabin crew entering a passcode into a beacon system, still images or video of the flight deck, just outside it, and the interior of the passenger compartment are then sent to an approved control room, where an assessment can be made, and an encrypted override key (locked to a plane ID) can be sent back. If need be, the same method could be used to unlock the cockpit door (but see above).
Of course even this moves the problem on to "well what next?", but it gives options in a currently option-less situation. If nothing else then it can give images or video of a live situation, useful for later investigations. Given the size of flash memory devices now, I wonder how long it will be before full cockpit video recording is available.
Obviously that's an over-simplification, and it may well just be an intermediate step to full robotic and remote control, but I would be interested to know if any work has been done on it.
i spotted a small mention that some of the drugs found in his apartment were lorazepam . having had a close relative on those for a number of years and then try and come off them i am amazed anyone would be deemed fit to fly if needing them to function normally. they were initially prescribed to my relative for extreme anxiety and panic attacks (these moved to the next level during an ill fated attempt to come off them) and while i readily accept people can function and perform many jobs perfectly fine on anti depressant medication i believe the pilot in this instance had ,and was, suffering from something far more severe than a bout of depression that most of us could face at any point in life ,which would be no barrier to any career.
as for pilots not getting a job due to mental illness,well unfortunately that is just tough luck. many people do not get the job they want due to various disabilities,indeed my own father had to abandon a career as a pilot in the raf due to being diagnosed as tone deaf, and an operation going wrong in an attempt to correct it, after spending most of his teenage and early adult life planning for it. he became an engineer instead. this pilot had a problem so severe it required time off during the training phase for what he had spent his entire life dreaming of doing. for me that episode should have been the end of his career as a commercial pilot. easy to say after the fact,and i acknowledge that if potential pilots had an inkling mental health issues could be the end of their career they would be inclined to hide them,but at the same time 150 people are dead because a pilot with severe mental health issues had control of an aircraft.
all the cabin crew in the world will not stop a pilot that is determined to down an aircraft through mental illness that already has the controls in his hand, the only way is to try and prevent them ever reaching the flight deck in the first place through far tougher screening in the selection process.
as for pilots not getting a job due to mental illness,well unfortunately that is just tough luck. many people do not get the job they want due to various disabilities,indeed my own father had to abandon a career as a pilot in the raf due to being diagnosed as tone deaf, and an operation going wrong in an attempt to correct it, after spending most of his teenage and early adult life planning for it. he became an engineer instead. this pilot had a problem so severe it required time off during the training phase for what he had spent his entire life dreaming of doing. for me that episode should have been the end of his career as a commercial pilot. easy to say after the fact,and i acknowledge that if potential pilots had an inkling mental health issues could be the end of their career they would be inclined to hide them,but at the same time 150 people are dead because a pilot with severe mental health issues had control of an aircraft.
all the cabin crew in the world will not stop a pilot that is determined to down an aircraft through mental illness that already has the controls in his hand, the only way is to try and prevent them ever reaching the flight deck in the first place through far tougher screening in the selection process.
el stovey said:
I was surprised how soon the French released the statement...
I believe that it's because the investigation has a criminal as well as an aviation element. It's the criminal investigators (Police) supplying the media with information and they have a different code of conduct.JuniorD said:
The mere presence of a cabin crew member would be a distraction if nothing else.
That example only really works for me if it's the remaining pilot that you assume to be the suicidal one. You may well have just introduced a suicidal crew member to the cockpit.How would we know?
Ayahuasca said:
I guess the solution to this, and other pilot-induced problems, is to move to a fully pilotless aircraft.
Then I'd bet that the software developers will want one heck of a pay rise 
. Also, how would we screen them for potential mental health problems? I guess that when they're writing the code we could have another developer sat next to them, but when one needed a comfort break we'd have to get somebody from accounts to step in and monitor All tongue in cheek.
I'd really like to have all the quotes in the last 3 posts in one, but do I really have to open as many windows as quotes required?
Ayahuasca said:
I guess the solution to this, and other pilot-induced problems, is to move to a fully pilotless aircraft.
Would you really want to get on an airplane with nobody onboard who could manually intervene in the event of an issue?All just in case one of the pilots decides they've had enough?
bhstewie said:
hstewie said:Ayahuasca said:
I guess the solution to this, and other pilot-induced problems, is to move to a fully pilotless aircraft.
Would you really want to get on an airplane with nobody onboard who could manually intervene in the event of an issue?All just in case one of the pilots decides they've had enough?
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