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BBC reports the co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the Alps intentionally locked the pilot out of the cabin and initiated the flight's descent into the ground:
The co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps, named as Andreas Lubitz, appeared to want to "destroy the plane", officials said.
Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin, citing information from the "black box" voice recorder, said the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit.
He intentionally started a descent while the pilot was locked out.
Mr Robin said there was "absolute silence in the cockpit" as the pilot fought to re-enter it.
Air traffic controllers made repeated attempts to contact the aircraft, but to no avail, he said.
The story seems SN-worthy because it is an object lesson in the consequences for our lives when we put complex machines and systems into the hands of others. In this case it was a trained pilot who killed a plane full of people who were powerless to stop him. Another example could be engineers who sabotage a dam and wipe out entire communities downstream. We mostly don't think about stuff like this because there is an invisible web of trust, sometimes called a "social contract," that leads people to get on a plane, or go to work, or take their kids to school without giving it a second thought. But when that social contract unravels, all bets are off...
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:33PM
This turns out to be another ISxx related plot, all public/private transportation people should have background checks periodically for ties to ISxx, and banned from service if involved in any way. Enough is enough.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Archon V2.0 on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:42PM
All public and private? So background check *millions of people* periodically. At that level of paranoia and expense and logistical nightmare you might as well just make everyone walk.
Also, what if he's a garden variety crazy and not anything to do with the terrorist-du-jour? Should we psych check everyone?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @05:37PM
Yes, and yes. Do you personally know who is at the controls? It only takes one to slaughter hundreds. And, what logistical nightmare? I'm sure some 3-letter agency already has that info, all they need to do is take action and deport the sick fuc*s. Only the limp wristed flower lovers and terrorists would complain about it. This isn't Kansas anymore Dorothy, get used to it or do something about it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by wantkitteh on Thursday March 26 2015, @06:32PM
Flightradar24 [flightradar24.com] is listing 10853 planes in the air right now. Deliberately crashed commercial planes in the last 30 years can be counted on one hand - 3 [businessinsider.com] to be exact. Spending any further significant amount of time beyond the screenings already in place would do nothing but waste money and inconvenience passengers when pilots get grounded by the inevitable false positives. After all, since when were TLA's any good at actually catching terrorists without causing infinitely more collateral damage than good in the process?
"All they need to do" - that says right there that you know nothing of which you speak. Go post your bullshit with your own kind where it belongs. [dailymail.co.uk]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @06:49PM
Duhh ahh, OK Dorothy. Ignore what's happening and who wins?
(Score: 1) by cmdrklarg on Thursday March 26 2015, @06:24PM
Periodic psych evals for airline pilots seems reasonable.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @09:16PM
It would only seem reasonable if they worked and the benefits outweighed the costs. Since this happens extremely, extremely rarely (assuming this was even intentional), that doesn't seem likely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2015, @06:18PM
Perhaps there is another reason the plane failed and someone is trying to cover it up? Maybe it was really a mechanical failure and the plane manufacturers don't want to look bad? Or the air traffic control accidentally messed something up but it's so much easier to blame dead pilots than it is to blame, say, air traffic controllers or the air traffic control system? Or the airlines did something wrong causing mechanical failure?
These days, with huge conflicting reports among differing nations (ie: one country saying a military aircraft suffered mechanical failure while another saying it was shot down, depending on what country is speaking and what kinda propaganda is being pushed) who would know the difference? It's not like mainstream journalists really dig that deep. For all we know the reason the plane crashed could be something completely different from the various reports. Those responsible for determining what gets reported to the public (ie: reporters, airliners, government officials, etc...) could say or fabricate anything, it's not beyond them to do so, and who would know the difference.
(Score: 2) by sigma on Friday March 27 2015, @01:10AM
The NSA etc already do that, and consistently fail to prevent incidents like this one.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:43PM
Fuck man, you need to get the NSA/FBI/CIA/Lockheed/or whoever to send you back to astroturfing school. That's got to be the worst attempt I've seen it months.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by The Archon V2.0 on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:44PM
All public and private? So background check a million people periodically, or some such huge number. At that level of paranoia and expense and logistical nightmare you might as well just make everyone walk.
Also, what if he's a garden variety crazy and not anything to do with the terrorist-du-jour? Should we psych check everyone? Or are background checks only acceptable when there's headlines at stake?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:46PM
> If... This turns out to be another ISxx related plot
And if it doesn't? What conclusions will you draw from that?
Here's an interesting fact. [unc.edu] Since 9/11 there have been more than 200,000 murders in the US. Of those, 50 of them were committed by people proclaiming some sort of islamic extremism as a motive. Not the only motive, just one of the claimed motives, some of the other motives being robbery, jealousy, etc. There have been so few terrorist attacks in the US that at least one american patriot felt he needed to fake one in order to make people understand the risk. [splcenter.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday March 26 2015, @05:08PM
Indeed. In fact you can go further. You can tot up all the "deaths by terrorist" across the world since 2001 and you still end up with a comparatively small number - a few hundred thousand at most. It sounds like a big number but worldwide, over 14 years? It's a rounding error. You're more likely to be killed by a faulty domestic appliance than a terrorist.
Where's the trillion dollar War on Washing Machines?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday March 26 2015, @05:32PM
It's trillion dollar war on a political agenda.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday March 26 2015, @06:14PM
Indeed. In fact you can go further. You can tot up all the "deaths by terrorist" across the world since 2001 and you still end up with a comparatively small number - a few hundred thousand at most. It sounds like a big number but worldwide, over 14 years? It's a rounding error. You're more likely to be killed by a faulty domestic appliance than a terrorist.
Can you? You start off needing a definition of terror. Someone hiding miles away when they blow up a bomb at a wedding party - terror? Or accident? Someone lobbing missile after missile into a prison, killing thousands? Terror, or collateral damage? Someone starving to death after an invading country causing chaos through the region - terror, or accident?
Traditional terror definitions (i.e. deaths affecting rich people - the stuff like the American funded Irish terrorists killing kids while they were out shopping) wouldn't come close to ten thousand, since the end of WWII.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday March 26 2015, @07:10PM
You won't hear any argument from me, but I doubt the people you need to convince (ie those who champion the war on terror) would accept your definition of terror. By making a point using their definition you are more likely to persuade them.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:22PM
What is their definition? The point is no matter how many people you include in "terror" victims, you still don't get to the level of deaths that the richest country in the world allows to occur for the simple reason of "freedom not to have health insurance", let alone the deaths from the "freedom to smoke cigarettes" (about 160 9/11s a year)
The people you need to convince are the people making the money - the Haliburtons, the Perinis, the Raytheons, the Carlyle Groups of the world. Convince them there's no money to be made, and their employees will stop the fighting.
(Score: 5, Informative) by isostatic on Thursday March 26 2015, @06:09PM
Here's an interesting fact. Since 9/11 there have been more than 200,000 murders in the US
Here's another interesting fact. Since 9/11 600,000 [harvard.edu] people have died in the US through not having health insurance.
(Score: 3, Funny) by turgid on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:35PM
If the Market had wanted those people to live, it would have given them health insurance.
It's nothing poysonal, it's just business. And it's just the Market doing it's job.
Irritable Duncan Syndrome [theguardian.com] can tell you all about it.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Insightful) by turgid on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:29PM
It's probably indirectly related to terrorism in that, since 9/11, all aeroplane flight decks have had to have a locked door isolating the flight crew from everyone else while the vehicle is flying.
This is what happened when one "safety" measure designed to prevent a certain occurrence inadvertently leads to another one...
If the door hadn't been locked, the co-pilot would not have been able to do this.
But TERRRISTS!!!!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @11:44PM
AC to AC, FUCK YOU.