I just watched the first episode of the Apple series “Hijack”, and have two questions for the more knowledgeable here.
Maybe it’s not appropriate to ask these questions here? But I suppose any potential hijacker will already be more of this info that I am!
1. The hijackers in the TV episode needed to open the cockpit door. They use the obvious method of threatening to shoot a cabin crew member unless the captain opens the door.
This is an obvious weakness in security. It makes it very easy to threaten the pilots.
But it has an obvious weakness in that the threat is only useful if it is conveyed to the pilots. Do airlines implement a policy of not answering the intercom in the case of a hijack (and perhaps turning off the camera so they couldn’t see any written threat nor any executions)? If so, the hijackers could not convey any threat and the pilots would be unaware of any actions being taken by the hijackers. So they can’t act on that threat.
Better still the terrorists would be aware of such a policy and would know that the pilots wouldn’t answer the intercom and wouldn’t watch the cameras. So there would be no way to threaten the pilots.
So my first question is, is there such a widespread policy (turn off intercoms and cameras in case of a hijack)?
2. It strikes me that one obvious way of dealing with hijackers that haven’t gained access to the cockpit is to depressurise the cabin. The pilots could don their oxygen masks. At 30K feet everyone will pass out very quickly without O2. If the aircraft doesn’t descend immediately then the passengers masks will run out of O2 in a few minutes and most people will be unconscious. The flaw in this is that presumably the cabin crew have portable O2 that would last longer. The hijackers would obviously take those. But this could easily be designed into the systems, where the pilots had enough O2 for say 30 mins or 1 hour, while the passengers had 5 minutes and the cabin crew 10 minutes.
The would allow for the entire cabin to be unconscious after 10 minutes, whereby the pilots could restrain the unconscious hijackers (while using portable O2) before descending and landing normally.
So my second question is, is this an option in reality?
I know nether of these would make for good TV! But hijackings seem to be much rarer nowadays so presumably procedures like these have been developed and the hijackers realise that it isn’t going to work anymore. Hence they’ve turned to easier targets.
1. So then the HJs wouldn’t only kill cabin crew but possibly everyone onboard including others on the ground by turning the plane into a fuel laden missile. The door stays closed.
2. Some airliners have bottled oxygen, lasts longer (Google L888 contingency requirements). Chemical O2 can last longer too than only minutes. Some passengers might die. HJs could use portable O2 to find empty seats and switch from one mask to the next…
It’s too complicated to design this in vs. amount of required deployments (no pun).
Making all the cabin unconscious bears a high risk of permanent damage or death to pax. I would not count that as a first choice option, rather third or fourth choice. However, a valid option when one has to estimate value of different outcomes, me thinks.
Why not just land on a military base? When there is no access to the cockpit the aircraft is under full authority of the pilots. Land, and discuss the things later with armed forces. Changes are high that the rate of dead pax is significantly lower than in the other option.
Each airline and each country have their own procedures in case of “unlawful interference with a flight”. I think that is the current term for highjacking.
These procedures are updated due to events and political will.
Then there is the question of whether flight crew will adhere to procedures in the event of something happening. PICs make that choice.
I would not like to be them they could certainly be damned if they follow procedures and damned if they don’t. It is a committee on the ground that makes these procedures and then relays what they think should happen during such an event.
In the USA for instance a high jacked aircraft will nowadays, soon find F16s on either wing and if ordered to do so will destroy the aircraft.
AFAIK the only common thing the flight crew should do is fix 7500 on the transponder and of course every high jacker will know that.
Some of it can make for good film entertainment and some of it not. It depends on who makes the film and everything can’t be included and some licence always takes place.
Speaking of cockpit doors… I know of at least two instances (Germanwings and Helios Airways) where the aircraft and all aboard (271) were lost but the outcome would likely have been different had the cockpit door not been locked. There are probably more. Wasn’t there some probable suicide crash in Africa?
Have there been any studies of how many lives have been saved by the locked door policy?
Impossible to estimate @airborne_again But I believe that still the locked door is a good idea. Despite the fact that I really loved to go to the cockpit during flight when I was a child
UdoR wrote:
Impossible. But I believe that still the locked door is a good idea. Despite the fact that I really loved to go to the cockpit during flight when I was a child
What would be the “break-door” precedure? Cabin crew member calls ground to get the special door code for that particular aircraft while using distress/no distress passwords?
arj1 wrote:
What would be the “break-door” precedure? Cabin crew member calls ground to get the special door code for that particular aircraft while using distress/no distress passwords?
This would defeat the point of the locked cockpit door entirely. The rationale is, if there is “a way” to open the locked door from outside the cockpit, then the bad guys will exploit it, even if the way is “extracting” the password from a cabin crew member.
What if the bad guy(s) is/are already inside the cockpit to begin with (Germanwings)? Well the system relies on trusting the professionals involved, there’s no way around it in my opinion.
The locked door isn’t always locked. Unless there’s either a toilet within the flight deck, or a double door sluice system, it’s not very safe imho. Apparently El Al has this double door system.
AFAIK it is widely known that a member of the cabin crew has the cockpit keypad code. However, the pilots have a switch they can flip which disables this keypad. That is how the Germanwings suicide was enabled.
So you have to trust the pilots to not go crazy. This leads to a debate whether one should assemble the cockpit crew randomly, versus letting the same pair fly together a lot. Airline pilots here will have a much better view but it is possible Germanwings may have been prevented if the other pilot(s) got a better opportunity to spot that the guy was a bit weird.
Re hijacking, once the pilots become aware there is a hijack in progress (the exact mechanism for that I don’t know) they will flip the switch and leave it, and fly somewhere to land, and they must do that even if the hijackers are busy terminating the cabin crew and passengers. Yeah – it will take balls, but the alternative is everybody dies.
The obvious weakness is that, to save costs and create more seats, most airlines make the pilots use the passenger toilets. This is stupid, because they just get a cabin crew member to “safeguard” the cockpit door during this time, which is obviously no good at all against somebody determined.
