201–210 of 277 posts
2020: Airbus announces no-pilots planes 2025: All airplanes are now required to be auto-piloted 2030: It's been 5 years without a single accident
How is it that each pilot doesn't have a key of their own, so as not to be locked out. No body saw this coming?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't imagine a more false statement, as the business model before 9/11 was do nothing and cooperate and everyone will be safe, and the business model after 9/11 is every person on the plane must rush the hijackers or thousands will be killed. So the reinforced door is a response to a problem that no longer exists. Ideally you'd have a door that is strong enough to be "people proof" for long enough for the entire p…
> So the reinforced door is a response to a problem that no longer exists. I very much disagree. Previously, an attacker could get to the cockpit by surprise and by suddenly overwhelming cabin crew. That is now much. much more difficult.
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…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bruce Schneier has said several times that reinforced doors are one of the very few improvements when it comes to airplane security[1]. I think the deeper question would be, if your pilot is compromised, can you really do anything ? If the pilot of the EgyptAir Flight 990[2] could not keep his co-pilot from crashing the plane, what could a mob of random passengers realistically do? It seems to me like the DRM problem…
I think it's the same thing as intelligence (in the national security sense). You can do lots of things to prevent outsiders from getting in, but if the insiders want to circumvent the protections, they can. Someone has to have "root" access, when you can't trust that person, you are done. About the only thing I could think of is some way for people to report a problem like this and air traffic controllers on the gro…
Even then, there are considerations like not allowing the cockpit to kill all com links / power so that people outside the cockpit are still able to communicate with the ground to get the root pwd, and as mentioned elsewhere the person inside the cockpit could change their strategy to make recovery of control difficult or impossible even in this case (EDIT: e.g. throwing the plane about). Also, you'd probably want >1 ATC person to authorise to reduce the chance of the door being unlocked by someone at ATC in cahoots with hijackers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not an absolute solution, but it makes such a crime both psychologically and physically much more difficult. Turning a knob is impersonal and easy, but killing someone with your hands is neither.
"Turning a knob is impersonal and easy, but killing someone with your hands is neither." Killing someone is extremely easy if the other person trust you. You get behind her and hit her with a heavy object in the head or in the nape. If the pilot is busy doing something like piloting the plane, it is very easy for a copilot to get rid of her.
That makes it physically easy, but the psychological demands of that situation are clearly very different from turning a knob. I think there's good reason to think that there are people who would do the former, but not the latter. If the pilot is inclined to crash the plane due to overwhelming depression, for example, I doubt that this pilot is likely to also kill a flight attendant with his bare hands.
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…