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Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane'

#231

Post by ceejayoz »

frevd wrote: post #193
ptaipale wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not foolproof either. There's always a compromise to make: if you have more automation to prevent pilot from being suicidal or making mistakes, you also have more automation that prevents a pilot - or anyone - taking over when the computer control goes wrong. Let's accept it: we may make things gradually better, but there is no silver bullet that would solve all these problems.

Fine. You authorize the whole crew, not by fingerprint and not by code, but by voice recognition and secret code words per person. Then you allow the override to be overridden by a majority (recursively). Sounds way better than making the door break when a majority of people kicks at them. It is faster than remembering and entering codes, and cannot be overridden by one sick authorized person. An attacker would have…

> Then you allow the override to be overridden by a majority (recursively).

Thus rendering the doors essentially useless, as hijackers threaten to kill passengers one-by-one until the crew (who will generally outnumber the 1-2 people in the cockpit) open the door.

Re: Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane'

#232

Post by jcfrei »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #228
jcfrei wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in the near term a possible remote override from air traffic control would make more sense.

Now you have two problems: instead of worrying about rogue pilots, you have to worry about rogue pilots and rogue remote control. Oh, and latency in remote control is also a nice thing to have. And signal loss. And jamming. So, five problems (actually, that's just a random sample). Such a terrible idea in such a short sentence...

The chance that multiple operators in a collective are actively abusing their control (and try to crash the plane) is decreasing in probability. History shows that such actions are usually performed by individuals. Even high latencies would not have prevented a successful intervention in this case (they've had a window of about 8 minutes for an intervention). Jamming is a possibility and an issue with the current communication systems the pilots already rely on.

Re: Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane'

#233

Post by mikeash »

walls wrote: post #224
mikeash wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly doubt it (for the particular case of strong cockpit doors). Historically, hijackings are more deadly than rogue pilots. Neither one is a particularly big threat, but hijackings are the more important threat of the two. How many potential attacks from the past decade and a half got stopped in the planning stage because "Well gee, Bob, that sounds great, but how are we going to get into the cockpit?" While t…

> Historically, hijackings are more deadly than rogue pilots. Is this true? I can't remember a single other plane hijacking that resulted in the deaths of passengers outside of 9/11.

They didn't necessarily crash, but dead passengers weren't uncommon in hijackings, typically either killed by the hijackers, killed by security services storming the airplane, or both:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings

Lots of those were resolved without death, or with just a few deaths, but many others got lots of people killed.

Re: Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane'

#234

Post by Piskvorrr »

quonn wrote: post #142

Any ideas for future improvements to the current mechanism? A possible idea is to release the lock (allowing entry using the PIN) if the board computer determines that a crash is likely. (This is safe, because it's unlikely that there is an attacker who wants to enter the cockpit and at the same time a situation likely to result in a crash.) This clearly only helps against the problem with the locked door, but it see…

> ENGAGE AUTOPILOT

Autopilot engaged.

Your autopilot has malfunctioned and has initiated a steep dive. This has knocked the other pilot unconscious.

> DISENGAGE AUTOPILOT

You need another person to disengage the autopilot. Autopilot remains engaged.

> DISENGAGE AUTOPILOT USING YOUR FOOT

The buttons are too far apart, you cannot reach both at the same time. Autopilot remains engaged.

>

The plane hits the ground and disintegrates. YOU HAVE DIED. Do you want your posessions identified (Y/n)?

> _

Re: Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane'

#236

Post by arrrg »

vixen99 wrote: post #226
tswartz wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These types of scenarios are why the U.S. requires a flight attendant to enter the cockpit when a pilot exits. I wouldn't be surprised if the agencies in Europe implement the same policy by the end of the week.

Let's hope so. Not fool-proof but this is a sound procedure isn't it? So why wasn't it implemented by European Authorities as well? I wonder what their counter-arguments were?

I think the assumption was always that incapacitated pilots (e.g. because of a medical issue) would be the issue that would require someone to enter the locked cockpit. For those cases the procedure works as intended (the door can be opened from the outside if the person on the inside really doesn’t react). I don’t think suicidal pilots were on the forefront of anyone’s mind.

In hindsight a policy of always having at least two people does seem preferable. (And, just a little reminder here: Just because someone is willing to fly a plane with 149 other people on board into a mountain doesn’t mean they would be willing to do other awful things, too, like acting violently in person against another person, for example a flight attendant. Preventing this kind of behavior may well be about putting in place many small hurdles.)

I think it’s pretty clear that people in the cabin should never be able to access the cockpit against the express will of people inside the cockpit (preventing scenarios in which someone violently forces someone with knowledge of how to access the cockpit – e.g. a pilot coming back from the toilet – to divulge that information and gaining access that way), so realistically you can only throw people at this problem – and throwing people at this problem is thankfully in this case relatively straightforward and shouldn’t really have any other negative consequences. I don’t see a technical solution to this problem, but there might not have to be one.

Re: Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane'

#237

Post by fapjacks »

danellis wrote: post #209
jcfrei wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in the near term a possible remote override from air traffic control would make more sense.

Right, because that signal would never get hacked.

That's not what he's saying. The world isn't as black-and-white as "it can be hacked, so it's not worth it"... He's talking about raising the barrier to entry for this kind of situation via automation, much like TCAS would have prevented the Uberlingen collision.

Re: Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane'

#238

Post by jcfrei »

Rooster61 wrote: post #211
jcfrei wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in the near term a possible remote override from air traffic control would make more sense.

That's a nice thought, but how would ATC determine what needs to be done? We are only finding out that this was an intentional act long after the plane has hit the ground. For all ATC knows, opening the door to the cockpit could be the WRONG action. If no one is responding from the cockpit, they have no clue what is going on other than the telemetry they are getting from radar and the plane's systems (which in this c…

If you add some additional information on the status of the plane (engines, electronics, etc) in addition to the telemetry you could infer much more on the current situation aboard the plane. In this case the simple reversal of the initiation of the descent (as a precautionary measure) might have prevented the unfolding of events. Obviously we can all think of corner cases where the pilots and the ATC would come to different (and potentially disastrous) conclusions while being unable to communicate and resolve these differences.

Ultimately I think that remote control or a comparable safety measure will become a necessity in civil aviation, because passengers will demand it to feel safer.

Re: Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane'

#239

Post by frevd »

frevd wrote: post #216
ptaipale wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you are making fun of someone, but that is a good demonstration why too complex procedures are not a good idea. Any procedure that aircraft crew is supposed to handle also needs to be something that is trained, memorized, and practiced regularly. Certain simplicity is ideal.

No. It is certainly not my intention to make fun of the case that a copilot is able to control a machine and crash it at his will. Lufthansa is saying "there is no system that can prevent this kind of incident". They will have to take the possibility into account that you have to protect the plane against an authorized person as well, and think about possible solutions to this problem. Solving conflicting interests i…

In summary, there must be mechanisms to de-authorize personal, by means of majority vote. To prevent an attack vector, biometric systems need to be used to verify other authorized personal safely (it might be far fetched, but measuring certain stress hormons might prevent attackers from controlling authorized personal and using them to override controls as well, and likewise, other authorized people must be able to act, e.g. by having controls that cannot be blocked by any means (re voice recorders all over the plane to enable or disable locks etc, again by majority vote)). Does that sound too futuristic? I wouldn't want to board a plane if I cannot be sure that any and all cases are covered.

Re: Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot 'wanted to destroy plane'

#240

Post by nextw33k »

mikeash wrote: post #133
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This responsibility is to great to leave it to humans. Automate this stuff.

There's always going to be a human involved at some point (at least until the machines take over, but then they probably won't be flying us around). If it's all automated, then instead of a crazy pilot killing everyone on his airliner, it might be a crazy programmer killing everyone on every airborne airliner.

Except there are checks and balances in place before software gets installed on a plane.
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