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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2015, @11:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2015, @11:37PM (#163360)

    What needs to happen is there needs to be a camera within the cockpit showing passengers, on a screen outside the cockpit, everything that's happening. There should also be another camera facing the cockpit entrance door with another screen showing all passengers what's happening. The doors should be unlocked. This will give passengers an earlier indication of what's happening, if something is happening (ie: a struggle) so that they can respond. Or give a security guard (or two guards) outside the cockpit access, with a key (though that presents a whole new set of problems. The security guard could be a terrorist, the security guard could have his key forcefully taken from him so that a terrorist could use it to access the cockpit. I think delegating the task to passengers is the best bet). While airliners and the govt may disagree the fact of the matter is that passengers have a right to know what's going on in and around the cockpit.