Samurai_Jerk wrote:Cyka UchuuJin wrote:I have seen suggestions that airlines are considering putting a neutral 3rd person into cockpit, and although that will likely push airfares up, I'm all for it.
It may not push up airfares. They can just have a flight attendant step in anytime one of the pilots leaves the cockpit. If these doors are pretty much impossible to break down it doesn't make sense to have one person locked in there anyway. What if he or she has a heart attack? Sure autopilot would keep things going smoothly for awhile but it's not going to land the plane.
In the door design on the A320, this is already taken into account. The pilot is not locked out if the other pilot has a heart attack. See the video Russell posted. The pilots and flight attendants are supposed to know an emergency security code number to open the door. When they key it in to the keypad, an alert goes off in the cockpit. Anybody in the cockpit has 30 seconds to respond and click a "lock" button to prevent the person from entering. If the lock button is not clicked, the door will open. The reason for this feature is presumably so the guy in the cockpit can judge if a terrorist has forced flight crew to key in the override code. Unfortunately it also lets a crazy pilot lock out another pilot.
So presumably on this flight either:
1) Lubitz continued to push the "lock" button every time the pilot tried to key in the override code.
2) Or the pilot & all flight attendants forgot the override code.
3) Or the door mechanism was broken.
I feel #1 is most likely. I am sure Lubitz was prepared enough to know how to cancel the override. He probably would not have attempted to crash the plane that way, if he thought there was a way for the pilot to waltz back into the cockpit. In other words, remembering forgotten codes, or fixing a broken door, would not have helped even if #2 or #3 were the case.