Airbus A320 Crashes in Alps

The biggest criticism of autonomous planes is that they can be hijacked or develop a fault.

A completely autonomous plane could definitely not be hijacked as there wouldn't even be any controls for someone to take over on the aircraft. And planes as they are develop faults, they are rarely catastrophic and the computer systems often have fail-safes to compensate for the failure of some component.

Modern aircraft are essentially flown by computers anyway, I'm all for going towards the next step and testing complete automation flights. Just look at the self-driving car industry - the cars developed by Google have a fantastic track record with almost zero incidents. It is time to start replacing humans with computers as far as aircraft technology is concerned.
 
Does it need to just be flicked once, or do you need to keep flicking the switch?
They kept talking about a lock out for between 5-20 minutes.

Could for example, a person have a faint, flick the switch downwards in a last action by grasping for it in error, and then leave the door on lock while being unresponsive? (not this situation but hypothetical)

TBH I'm not positive on the time frame when you have switched it. As I said before I have only done it in jest to lock a boss out of the plane and each time he put the code in I just kept rejecting it. I have read that once you lock/reject they are locked out (by code) for 5 minutes but I have never had reason to test it. If the pilot did it in error he could still select open straight after.

You couldn't faint and lean on the switch of keep it pressed, the sides of the switch are raised up and the toggle is back to neutral. The side guards on the switch would even prevent operation if you fell on the console.

Here's a picture:

http://prod.static9.net.au/~/media/images/2015/march/26/150327_raw_a320_vid.ashx?w=718
 
Can't believe it's come to light he was signed off work by the doctor and he chose to go in anyway. All seems so... preventable.. :(
 
TBH I'm not positive on the time frame when you have switched it. As I said before I have only done it in jest to lock a boss out of the plane and each time he put the code in I just kept rejecting it. I have read that once you lock/reject they are locked out (by code) for 5 minutes but I have never had reason to test it. If the pilot did it in error he could still select open straight after.

You couldn't faint and lean on the switch of keep it pressed, the sides of the switch are raised up and the toggle is back to neutral. The side guards on the switch would even prevent operation if you fell on the console.

Here's a picture:

http://prod.static9.net.au/~/media/images/2015/march/26/150327_raw_a320_vid.ashx?w=718

ah, it is a toggle switch, so each time someone enters the code you have to flick the button down to keep them locked out?
then it toggles itself back to the centre?
then keep flicking it down every few minutes to ensure thy remain locked out?
 
Can't believe it's come to light he was signed off work by the doctor and he chose to go in anyway. All seems so... preventable.. :(

What do you expect. You only have to to look at this forums attitude towards depression and manning up and getting on with it to know why so many people with depression in all walks of life carry on going in.

People just treat you like you have taken a sickie, I have known engineers be phoned up and asked to stop taking the ****. I was in a very serious accident a few years ago which took me a long while to get over. I stupidly returned to work the following week. In my back to work interview I requested not to be put on anything too technical as my head wasn't right but I didn't want to sit at home. I was then put on about the most important and technical job we had a massive rebuild with stacks of flying control inspections and functions. To this day I'm not sure I did anything right and I'm glad that aircraft isn't in service anymore. I just tried to do stupidly what everyone says you should do, man up.

Thankfully I no longer work for a company with 1940's attitudes towards stress.
 
Maybe....maybe not.

But my post still stands.

since 1999 it looks like more suicidal pilots have killed more passengers than terrorists.

So we fixed one problem but created another.

The massive flaw in your thinking is that the 1999 Egypt Air disaster predated the 9 11 security increases...
 
Maybe....maybe not.

But my post still stands.

since 1999 it looks like more suicidal pilots have killed more passengers than terrorists.

So we fixed one problem but created another.

Doesn't stand at all, you are forgetting the thousands killed on the ground.
And procedure are now updated again. Many have already implemented minimum of two in cockpit. Not that it'll stop all situations. But you never will.
And then you can't even estimate lives saved through the introduction of locked cockpit.

There was the one in america, was it a fed ex cargo plane. Where one worker wanted to crash the plane and claim life insurance for family. Thankfully the other pilots managed to fight him off somehow. Despite being badly injured.
 
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The other massive flaw is that terrorists hijacking planes have killed a few thousand in that time frame, completely dwarfing all deaths as the result of "Suicidal pilots" combined.
 
What do you expect. You only have to to look at this forums attitude towards depression and manning up and getting on with it to know why so many people with depression in all walks of life carry on going in.

People just treat you like you have taken a sickie, I have known engineers be phoned up and asked to stop taking the ****. I was in a very serious accident a few years ago which took me a long while to get over. I stupidly returned to work the following week. In my back to work interview I requested not to be put on anything too technical as my head wasn't right but I didn't want to sit at home. I was then put on about the most important and technical job we had a massive rebuild with stacks of flying control inspections and functions. To this day I'm not sure I did anything right and I'm glad that aircraft isn't in service anymore. I just tried to do stupidly what everyone says you should do, man up.

Thankfully I no longer work for a company with 1940's attitudes towards stress.

They confirmed it wasn't depression though. It was something else that the doc deemed him unfit for work for.
 
A completely autonomous plane could definitely not be hijacked as there wouldn't even be any controls for someone to take over on the aircraft. And planes as they are develop faults, they are rarely catastrophic and the computer systems often have fail-safes to compensate for the failure of some component.

Modern aircraft are essentially flown by computers anyway, I'm all for going towards the next step and testing complete automation flights. Just look at the self-driving car industry - the cars developed by Google have a fantastic track record with almost zero incidents. It is time to start replacing humans with computers as far as aircraft technology is concerned.

Computers are only as good as their programming, and several possiblr crashes have been averted in the past because the aircrew were able to spot things that they hadn't been trained for and work out a solution on the fly.
That has from memory included doing things that went against what would normally be acceptable, not to mention the number of times aircrew have averted an accident because they've realised that one of the instruments feeding them (and the computers) was at fault.

As examples how many autopilots are programmed to find an out of service airfrield, do a visual approach and landing when the engines have all run out of fuel?
A situation that was thought to be impossible before it happened, but the pilot of the jet had fortunately got a lot of experience in gliders and was able to combine his knowledge of the aircraft, knowledge of gliders and history of the area he was flying over to work out how to get a passenger jet down relatively safely (IIRC they managed to repair it enough that it flew on to a functioning airport within a week).

At the moment the situation with the Pilots AND a good modern autopilot is about the best you can get, and will likely remain so for a very long time as humans are almost always going to do better in unexpected situations that haven't occurred before than the computer (for one thing humans can make use of their own senses if an engineer has forgotten to uncover one of the instruments).
 
Not to be morbid, but crashing at this speed is it literally instant death for those on board, would the body even register the gforce of the impact?

As far as plane crashes go this has to be preferable, compared to a loss of control and eventually crashing 32 mins later as happened with that Japanese Boeing flight.
 
Not to be morbid, but crashing at this speed is it literally instant death for those on board, would the body even register the gforce of the impact?

As far as plane crashes go this has to be preferable, compared to a loss of control and eventually crashing 32 mins later as happened with that Japanese Boeing flight.

I would imagine yes it would be
 
Not to be morbid, but crashing at this speed is it literally instant death for those on board, would the body even register the gforce of the impact?

As far as plane crashes go this has to be preferable, compared to a loss of control and eventually crashing 32 mins later as happened with that Japanese Boeing flight.

4 survivors. wow.

Yumi Ochiai (落合 由美 Ochiai Yumi?), an off-duty JAL flight attendant, age 26, who was jammed between seats;
Hiroko Yoshizaki (吉崎 博子 Yoshizaki Hiroko?), a 34-year-old woman and her 8-year-old daughter Mikiko Yoshizaki (吉崎 美紀子 Yoshizaki Mikiko?), who were trapped in an intact section of the fuselage;
Keiko Kawakami (川上 慶子 Kawakami Keiko?) a 12-year-old girl, who was found from under the wreckage.[13] Air Disaster Volume 2 stated that she was wedged between branches in a tree.[14] Kawakami's parents and younger sister died in the crash, and she was the last survivor to be released from hospital. She was treated at the Matsue Red Cross Hospital (松江赤十字病院 Matsue Sekijūji Byōin, Japanese article) in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture before her release on Friday, November 22, 1985.[15]
 
[TW]Fox;27836344 said:
The massive flaw in your thinking is that the 1999 Egypt Air disaster predated the 9 11 security increases...

Doesn't stand at all, you are forgetting the thousands killed on the ground.
And procedure are now updated again. Many have already implemented minimum of two in cockpit. Not that it'll stop all situations. But you never will.
And then you can't even estimate lives saved through the introduction of locked cockpit.

There was the one in america, was it a fed ex cargo plane. Where one worker wanted to crash the plane and claim life insurance for family. Thankfully the other pilots managed to fight him off somehow. Despite being badly injured.

The other massive flaw is that terrorists hijacking planes have killed a few thousand in that time frame, completely dwarfing all deaths as the result of "Suicidal pilots" combined.

Hang on.

I wrote since 1999 suicidal pilots have killed more passengers than terrorists.

Then it gets thrown back that it pre dates the 9/11 changes. Well it will do I said 1999 which is before 2001.


And again I said Passengers. I know full well and can still remember that day in 2001 when nearly 3000 people lost their lives. Most of which were not in the aircraft involved hence not being passengers.


I wasn't saying run for the hills, never get on a plane we are over run with suicidal pilots.

I picked two dates and in between those dates (and assuming MH370 was suicide (you can read many many many articles on the net regarding this)) Suicidal pilots have killed more passengers than terrorists.

If you look further down the page you will see that I don't think getting rid of the door is a good Idea. (you can read that as "the toughened door is a good idea")

1999 stood out because of the egypt air crash.

So on reflection starting in 1999 was a bad Idea.

So lets jump forward then to September the 10th 2001.

So it looks like since September 10th 2001 suicidal plots have killed more passengers by purposely crashing an aircraft than terrorists.

Is that better?
 
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