SchnookoLoly

Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane' - BBC News

It's horrifying.

Howefamily

Yes, awful. I feel shocked

itsasmallworld

So so terrible. So unbelievable.

Pizzawheel

And the reinforced cockpit door would have worked against what it was supposed to do.

Where does it end.

Howefamily

Indeed, where do they go from here?

magnumpi

"Appears to"

No 100% proof yet that he did that, why would he ? They need to find a solid reason, he had a GF and loved flying, he flew gliders in his spare time and loved his job. It don't make sence.

Horrid crash either way anyhow, thoughts are with the families

In the US no one is allowed to be in the cockpit alone, these measures need to be introduced in Europe ASAP (what if he was having a heart attack?)

Howefamily

I love that rule in the U.S. I didn't know about it and I feel sooooo much better now

Pollyana

Its up to the individual airline, and some European airlines already have the rule that a flight attendant must replace flight crew if they leave the cockpit. Lufthansa and its offshoots apparently don't have this rule.

sharkus

Firstly, yes, absolutely horrific for everyone involved.

Secondly (and this is not meant as a personal attack against you ), solid reason? I don't think we'll likely ever have that, he's dead. Who said he loved his job? is there 100% irrefutable proof of this. So what if he had a girlfriend, doesn't mean he loved her, doesn't mean he was happy. No-one every really truly knows what another living being is thinking or feeling.

Howefamily

I wonder if he'd been brain washed by bloody ISIS

Tirytory

Yes but I guess the point Magnumpti is making is that this dead man is being made a scapegoat without any solid reason as yet.

On a side note, a heart attack would have changed his breathing... I wondered about a stroke or mini stroke...could you accidentally hit the descent buttons if you slumped??

Siouxie

According to news reports, he deliberately locked the other pilot out (manually) and then set the controls to crash (manually).

Tragic.

Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane' - BBC News

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-32070528

MarkG

As much as I'd like to believe it was some medical thingy, you'd have a hard time accidentally setting the autopilot to crash by falling on them, and you can't lock the cockpit door by accident, unless they were trying to unlock it and turned the switch the wrong way.

SchnookoLoly

First, Air Canada has just announced today that effective immediately they are adopting the same policy - two people in the cockpit at all times. Air Canada policy update: 2 people in cockpits at all times | CTV News

Re: the heart attack, I was listening to an Air Canada pilot on the radio this morning who was talking about it. Basically what he said is that the cockpit door has 3 settings: Open, Normal, and Locked.

Open is open.

Normal is when the door is locked, but can be opened from the outside with a specific override function. The pilot on the GW plane tried to use this function to get back in after he used the bathroom.

Locked is for stuff like terrorist attacks and whatever else - the door is locked from the inside and no override will open it up. It remains locked.

However, the Locked state is on a timer, ranging from 5-20 minutes, depending on the aircraft. After that time period elapses, the door will revert to Normal state -- so that if the copilot did have a heart attack, the door does not remain permanently locked.

That said, the timer can be "overridden" by simply flipping the door from Normal and back to Locked every 4-5 minutes - that will reset the timer. The AC pilot on the news said he thinks that this is what the copilot was doing.

scrubbedexpat091

I remember when the US required a flight attendant to go into the flight deck when a pilot left and people (not here) claiming it was an over reaction, not needed, and so on.

Seems there have been a couple cases now where having someone in the flight desk would have saved some lives.

I know pilots have to undergo physical exams every year or whatever it is, but I do wonder how much if any is focused on mental health and the pilots overall emotional well being and whats going on in their life.