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posted by LaminatorX on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the trust-no-one dept.

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...

 
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  • (Score: 2) by mendax on Friday March 27 2015, @07:06AM

    by mendax (2840) on Friday March 27 2015, @07:06AM (#163124)

    I have to hand it to this co-pilot. He's got to have some major balls to find the courage to fly a plane into the ground. Suicide is a decision made after a period of long deliberation. Once the decision is made, a plan is made to carry it out. However, the actual act of suicide is pretty quick. The decision to pull the trigger, kick the chair out from under oneself, or jump off the bridge is usually irrevocable. The rare survivors say afterward that they regretted what they did in the first place. Yet, this guy spent minutes in a cockpit after having made the decision to crash the plane. It takes real courage to maintain the will to not change one's mind over that long of a period.

    For those Trekkies here, recall a depressed, probably suicidal Commodore Decker flying a shuttlecraft into the maw of the planet killer and the reactions the actor who played him William Windom displayed as the shuttle got close. That should give one an idea of what goes through a man's mind in that situation.

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