Discussion for article #234710
All these flight rules and all this technology: apparently for nothing. In short order, pilots will start complaining that they are being treated like potential criminals because now NO ONE will ever be allowed to be alone (which I thought was the rule to begin with) since passengers might be terrorists, the flight crew might be terrorists, and there are no cameras in the cabin and we still rely on black boxes. This is a terrible, terrible story and very angering.
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Those poor passengers. Their poor families left with wondering why.
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Makes me think about how, after 9/11, cockpit doors were heavily reinforced to prevent unauthorized people from entering the cockpit, but what do you do when a deranged person actually IS an authorized person? It’s pretty scary stuff.
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Wow. Murder/suicide by plane. Again.
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This is apparently the fourth suicide-by-pilot in the past ten years, according to a CBC interview I heard. Two took place in Africa and one out of New York.
Anyone know of the other details?
There was Egyptair from New York. There was one in Indonesia. I don’t recall the incidents in Africa, but they may have happened. And, of course, pilot suicide is the most likely, but still unproven, explanation for the disappeared Malaysian plane. Enough incidents to say it’s a serious risk. How to stop it? Not clear.
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Absolutely horrific.
Maybe time for video surveillance of cockpits, and that the video/audio/flight data not only be stored in the black box, but be streamed to a server somewhere.
This would at least make culpability at least clear, and we’d avoid the ridiculous scenario like MH370 if we can’t find the black box.
One thing to note: It does show how safe modern jetliners are – humans are the only thing that seem to bring the big planes down nowadays, not mechanical failure.
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Seems to me there is a gaping hole in the automated systems and the cockpit door protocol.
There will be lots of speculation but the fact is no one knows anything until the German authorities investigate the life of the co-pilot. Who will be the first to make an ass out of themselves for laying blame with zero facts. It should not take long to find out
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You seem to be doing a good job of laying blame on fictional commenters.
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This tragic crash must demonstrate conclusively that Obama is a failed leader. The big question, among the many that remain, is how does this event tie in with Benghazi?
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How did you get FOX’s banner and headline for this tragedy?1?! Have they already gone with it! 
The Telegraph has a bit more detailed piece on Lubitz, his background and the tragic unfolding of the crash.
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…Hillary Clinton’s emails were aboard…
Currently, the right-wing nutters have taken to frantically searching for “evidence” that the co-pilot was a muslim.
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If so, his breathing was the only “normal” thing this idiot had going for him.
A couple of issues concerning “normal breathing”.
I have seen a person breath normally even though a displaced tumor in his brain had paralyzed his limbs.
Also, one cannot rule out hypoxia, which affects different people in different ways, even depending on one’s short term history, what what one did the previous night.
I have seen a vast majority of people in altitude chambers whose muscles are paralyzed and cannot accomplish normal physical tasks due to a lack of oxygen in the blood, even to simply putting their oxygen masks on, seemingly breath normally.
While your apparent ignorance seems to compel one to shortcut to calling someone an “idiot”, perhaps a little more information might suggest a different conclusion.
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Well, he was apparently alert enough to keep the door locked if this BBC post is accurate:
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Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr has described the entry mechanism of the cockpit door.
“There is another code you can enter at the door which will lead to a bell ringing and if nobody reacts, the door will open automatically and allow entry,” he said.
But he added that this can be blocked from the cockpit by pushing a switch that will lock the door for five minutes.
“Either the captain didn’t enter the code correctly - which we find unlikely because everybody involved knows this code by heart - or the colleague had entered the code and the co-pilot prevented the door from opening by pushing the lock switch,” said Mr Spohr.
That’s all true, but if he programmed the plane into a descent, I don’t think that can be done by accident. And it seems 6 years ago he took a break from his training due to burnout/depression. Also could be significant. Now if a person has some kind of “event” that makes him go into the state you describe and could accidentally hit something that could start a steady descent, that’s different, and I don’t know enough about the plane to say that, though it is being said that is not possible. Plus what are the chances of an event as you describe happening while the pilot went to the lav, and why would the door be in the locked mode where even the pilot could not get in.