Germanwings flight 4u9525 CVR.

[amyk]

Probably not capacitive but still highly reliable "old-school" ruggedized low-travel switch contacts (like those found on ATMs.)

[Kjelt]

Another big flaw in the "arm the cabin crew" plan:

In order for it to work The cabin crew should have regularly and extensive combat and shooting training to the level of special forces skills or what you achieve is that real terrorist passengers will simply overpower the crew and take their guns as an adult takes a bike from a kid.
So the thing you will have achieved with that great plan is that you arm terrorists on a plane, what a great plan 

[a210210200]

Another big flaw in the "arm the cabin crew" plan:

Just give everyone a machine gun and fireworks...

But seriously just have a key pool that the cabin crew have so they have a method of opening the cockpit door. In addition the duress erase capabilities you can have a poison pill pool where 0, 2 or more cabin crew members are told by the system that their cards are only to be used to disable the lock override. In this manner terrorists can't tell which card will work while still needing to use many. The crew members don't know who else has a poison card and can't reveal the number because it would be randomly controlled, and lying would be undetectable on an individual level.

It would take an entire insane malicious crew to abuse the system at which point you are definitely screwed.

[dannyf]

The primary purpose of a gun is to inflict harm - seeing them as harmless is delusional.

by inflicting harm on those who are inflicting harm on you is probably more than harmless?

It is not rocket science.

[dannyf]

Gun control is a tough issue.

If we could eliminate all guns, we would have, by definition, eliminated gun violence.

But the reality is that we cannot eliminate all guns. In that case, all gun control laws do is to deprive the law-abiding citizens the right to self defense. And it is not that difficult to envision a scenario where having more citizen gun owners helps deter potential gun violence.

But on a flight, the ability to stripe anyone of guns is much better and the risk of a malfunctioning gun is much higher so I am not sure if it is a good ideal.

[EEVblog]

Any gun debates end right now folks.

[Biff383]

  Trust your pilot or don't fly. I've been up in a plane around 200 times. I've landed in a plane about 10 times. Every plane I have been in I have trusted the pilot.....even if I don't complete the ride.

  I have found most pilots to be extremely component.  If I didn't I wouldn't have gone up with them.

  If you can't trust a pilot.....take a boat and hope for no icebergs.

[Biff383]

Compitent. ....d <>( auto spell )

[coppice]

  Trust your pilot or don't fly. I've been up in a plane around 200 times. I've landed in a plane about 10 times. Every plane I have been in I have trusted the pilot.....even if I don't complete the ride.

  I have found most pilots to be extremely component.  If I didn't I wouldn't have gone up with them.

  If you can't trust a pilot.....take a boat and hope for no icebergs.

I agree. Any time a flaw is found in a current working practice, lots of people propose ways to fix things. The snag is most have side effects much worse than the flaw. You can't eliminate every problem. You need to live with that reality and be VERY VERY VERY VERY cautious about changing anything which has a low a serious problem rate as modern passenger flight.

[nctnico]

It is more frightening that no one said the door lock logic was stupid in the decade+ it existed because even with two people either one could be the attacker and since they are already on the secure side and if they win the struggle the cabin crew can do nothing to fight back because of the door lockdown as it currently exists cannot be overridden.

I agree that the existing door lock protocol is a bit scary and needs to be reviewed.

I agree. Once a terrorist is inside the cockpit he/she can lock the door and execute any evil plan. On most bigger airplanes there is some space between the cockpit and the passenger compartment. I think they should re-arrange airplanes to have passengers sitting up to the cockpit door (which cannot be locked from the inside) so terrorists can't get into the cockpit unseen and people can pull a terrorist from the cockpit if necessary. The biggest force on a plane are the passengers; if they don't act then they deserve their Darwin award.

[EEVblog]

  Trust your pilot or don't fly.

Practically no one knows the pilot who is flying their plane, majority of the time you will never see who was in charge of your life.
Instead you have to trust the airline, and the industry, and their procedures etc.

[coppice]

  Trust your pilot or don't fly.

Practically no one knows the pilot who is flying their plane, majority of the time you will never see who was in charge of your life.
Instead you have to trust the airline, and the industry, and their procedures etc.

You shouldn't really trust the airline. They are surprisingly casual about the handling of their very expensive machines. You need to trust a regulatory system that licences and continuously monitors those allowed to fly aircraft.

[SeanB]

If you automate the plane what about the service techs, the ATC and then the airport service personnel, all who will then have to be checked as well as they have access to the aircraft and it's navigation systems. Then the designers, who might have included either accidental logic bombs or even deliberate ones that are not discovered during testing and certification.

You can go down a rabbit hole forever doing that.

[Biff383]

  I've met all of mine.....but I  don't  need to travel much. No answer by me to those of you that do.

  I still believe that most pilots are way over the top as far as safeties goes.

  And chute or no chute, I appreciate that.

  I suppose that if you really want to be safe you could dig a bunker and huddle down till you die from something else. I'll keep doing what I'm doing.

[SeanB]

  I've met all of mine.....but I  don't  need to travel much. No answer by me to those of you that do.

  I still believe that most pilots are way over the top as far as safeties goes.

  And chute or no chute, I appreciate that.

  I suppose that if you really want to be safe you could dig a bunker and huddle down till you die from something else. I'll keep doing what I'm doing.

I only really wanted a parachute one time, but got to know the flight engineer **Very** well, seeing as I was holding him by his web belt with one arm, with the other around a chair, while we were both leaning out of the C47 door looking under the wing, with me being the human intercom. Luckily it was just the &^@% switch acting up. But the best landing ever in a Dakota, somewhat marred by the Pathfinder cruising on the grass next to the runway with a foam cannon armed.

[dannyf]

At some point, you just have to make a decision for yourself if a particular risk is worth taking. Hopefully (for you), the collective actions of like-minded people will change the market place in your favor.

Government regulation or knee-jerk actions are not the solution to anything.

[ConKbot]

It's amazing the mental gymnastics that people will go though to find a possible situation where the act wasn't intentional, and try to refute new pieces of evidence.

And then go through more mental gymnastics to come up with schemes to change the cockpit door lock. Either you the cockpit is secure from the meat passenger compartment, or it's not. You can't trust the general public to make the right decision as a whole in an emergency. A few will rise to the occasion, the rest are idiots. If there is some sort of override code or codes, that's relying on the flight crew to potentially resist torture, or other deception. Or some sort of majority system involving passengers?  6 people with guns, stand up on a plane, grab 6 children, say they are only interested in taking over a plans for negotiating the release of some prisoner, and aren't trying to crash the plane, can you count on a majority of the people to make logical, non emotionally compromised decisions? 

2 man rule to prevent rogue incidents like this, lock it down so there is zero chance for unintended access to the cockpit. That way there are only 3 parties that need to be trusted. Also, how about not over working and under paying pilots so much, I mean really, how many people per week do they move, even $0.50 per ticket extra divided between pilot and copilot would be significant.

Is there still risk? Yes, but you did drive to the airport that morning, so you must not be *that*adverse to risk.

[SeanB]

Yes, new pilots are poor. Airlines want bonuses for the top, and want to pay the workers peanuts or less.

[Neganur]

There is now an interview of the copilot's former girlfriend, who described an individual of unstable character, with suicidal tendencies.

Might want to add that the newspaper being quoted is the German BILD Zeitung, i.e. a gossip magazine like the Sun or daily mail.
Chance is, they interviewed one of the victims too - they've done it before.

[Biff383]

  I think that if you ever rode with my SHMBO....a terrorist might just be a better option.   

[Artlav]

Some flight data, compiled from flightradar24.com.
Looks like there were 10 minutes between the start of the descent and impact.
Now, it would be nice to find when exactly did the captain came back and knocked on the door...

[Wytnucls]

He would have tried to reenter the cockpit as soon as the unexpected descent started.

[G7PSK]

The answer is to only ever fly with the main airlines and never one of the low cost or third world airlines, I wont fly with Ryanair as a matter of principal, its either BA or KLM or not at for me.

[a210210200]

Practically no one knows the pilot who is flying their plane, majority of the time you will never see who was in charge of your life.
Instead you have to trust the airline, and the industry, and their procedures etc.

Trusting a group of people is much easier than trusting a single individual. You can never predict what a single person might do they could be insane, suicidal, terrorist, ... but as a whole the people on a plane most would not want to die and would do anything to prevent that from happening to themselves.

Having a method of entrusting the plane's security to the entire crew as a pool of people would provide a good method of ensuring that no one bad actor amongst even the crew could use the secure door system inappropriately.

[cimmo]

Yes, new pilots are poor. Airlines want bonuses for the top, and want to pay the workers peanuts or less.

Capitalism in a nutshell.
There is a reason why aviation IS one of the most heavily regulated industries (at least in the western world) - it has to be, the lure of short term profits is too great to rely on self-regulation in an industry that is so unforgiving of error.