General > General Technical Chat
Wreckage of MH370 washing up on Reunion Island?
donotdespisethesnake:
--- Quote from: eugenenine on February 21, 2020, 06:12:12 pm ---Last time I flew there was a small restroom right behind the cockpit and the door between that restroom and the rest of the plane and then the cockpit door could be opened to allow access to the restroom.
Thats why I say put the second off switch back somewhere else that another member of the crew has to turn it off.
Or put it inside the cargo door and the last person to close the cargo door turns it on and the first person to open it after landing turns it off so there isn't access to turn it off from inside the airplane.
--- End quote ---
A big risk in an airplane is a fire, so every piece of electrical kit has a circuit breaker to isolate it, which the pilots can access. That applies to satellite kit, transponders etc.
Having two pilots or pilot + flight attendant always in the cockpit doesn't necessarily help. Pilots can obtain weapons onboard (there is a fire ax) or smuggle weapons in. In one flight, a pilot attacked the others with the axe. Once you have a crew member hostage, they can be used to persuade other crew ("turn that switch off or I kill the captain!").
Elaborate security procedures to address a relatively tiny risk are impractical, and as we saw with Germanwings may have unintended consequences. Really you have to proceed on the basis that flight crew are trustworthy. Since a pilot has direct control of a plane, he/she can crash a plane at will really, just enter roll and dive...
The only foolproof method might be to have complete autonomous control with no access to the computer by those onboard, even then, it seems everything can get hacked.
Ed.Kloonk:
--- Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on February 22, 2020, 01:47:31 pm ---
--- Quote from: eugenenine on February 21, 2020, 06:12:12 pm ---Last time I flew there was a small restroom right behind the cockpit and the door between that restroom and the rest of the plane and then the cockpit door could be opened to allow access to the restroom.
Thats why I say put the second off switch back somewhere else that another member of the crew has to turn it off.
Or put it inside the cargo door and the last person to close the cargo door turns it on and the first person to open it after landing turns it off so there isn't access to turn it off from inside the airplane.
--- End quote ---
A big risk in an airplane is a fire, so every piece of electrical kit has a circuit breaker to isolate it, which the pilots can access. That applies to satellite kit, transponders etc.
Having two pilots or pilot + flight attendant always in the cockpit doesn't necessarily help. Pilots can obtain weapons onboard (there is a fire ax) or smuggle weapons in. In one flight, a pilot attacked the others with the axe. Once you have a crew member hostage, they can be used to persuade other crew ("turn that switch off or I kill the captain!").
Elaborate security procedures to address a relatively tiny risk are impractical, and as we saw with Germanwings may have unintended consequences. Really you have to proceed on the basis that flight crew are trustworthy. Since a pilot has direct control of a plane, he/she can crash a plane at will really, just enter roll and dive...
The only foolproof method might be to have complete autonomous control with no access to the computer by those onboard, even then, it seems everything can get hacked.
--- End quote ---
It has been suggested in the industry but the pilots pushed back as you'd expect and the airlines have the cost of training pilots so it's a bit of sticking point.
Theboel:
Hi,
Sorry if its sound stupid.
Any body have any idea how long black box and cockpit voice recorder can survive in sea water ?
SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on February 22, 2020, 01:47:31 pm ---A big risk in an airplane is a fire, so every piece of electrical kit has a circuit breaker to isolate it, which the pilots can access. That applies to satellite kit, transponders etc.
Having two pilots or pilot + flight attendant always in the cockpit doesn't necessarily help. Pilots can obtain weapons onboard (there is a fire ax) or smuggle weapons in. In one flight, a pilot attacked the others with the axe. Once you have a crew member hostage, they can be used to persuade other crew ("turn that switch off or I kill the captain!").
Elaborate security procedures to address a relatively tiny risk are impractical, and as we saw with Germanwings may have unintended consequences. Really you have to proceed on the basis that flight crew are trustworthy. Since a pilot has direct control of a plane, he/she can crash a plane at will really, just enter roll and dive...
The only foolproof method might be to have complete autonomous control with no access to the computer by those onboard, even then, it seems everything can get hacked.
--- End quote ---
Agree with all that. By deciding to lock cockpit doors (for anti-terrorism reasons I think?), sure that mitigated a risk: any passenger entering the cockpit and getting control of the plane, but introduced a whole range of new risks that didn't exist before.
The Germanwings affair was "interesting" in that regard, because not only did it show how this could go bad, but it also showed that choosing to fully trust the fight crew - which is the whole idea behind locking cockpits - is also flawed. AFAIR, the pilot had had mental health problems for a long time, and it didn't seem to have affected his position much. You may say that it was an isolated case - I'm not sure at all. Even if it's not for obvious health problems, almost anyone - no matter how good your psychological tests are - can be corrupted.
As you said, even autonomous control could be hacked, and it's impossible to automate it as far as having absolutely NO way of disabling it, even from outside, in case anything goes wrong. And as long as there is a way to circumvent it - this way will be used.
If an entire plane with hundreds of passengers is taken hostage in an autonomous plane, obviously first thing the bad guys would do is ask control towers to disable the autonomous mode (as I said above, there ought to be a procedure for that IMO.) Even if control towers themselves become fully autonomous without any human control - will we, as a society, accept the possibility that the machines will favor potential death of all passengers of a flight rather than giving them at least a small chance of surviving? That's actually a question that is raised with any form of fully autonomous systems - how they will/should handle safety when human lives are involved. This is such a can of worms that just beginning to think of this is scary, and anyone thinking they have found an easy solution to this has usually just not thought very much.
Ed.Kloonk:
--- Quote from: Theboel on February 22, 2020, 02:21:26 pm ---Hi,
Sorry if its sound stupid.
Any body have any idea how long black box and cockpit voice recorder can survive in sea water ?
--- End quote ---
When this story broke, I remember the news hounds saying that the black box needs to be recovered in 2 - 3 weeks. There are a few youtube vids where people teardown flight recorders of various vintages. Watch some of those. Your guess is as good as mine.
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