Reports that one of the pilots on board doomed Germanwings Flight 9525 was locked out of the cockpit, trying to break inside, has sparked renewed speculation about the cause of the crash and thrown cockpit security protocols into the spotlight.
The New York Times quoted an anonymous senior military official involved in the investigation as saying the pilot outside the cockpit could be heard “trying to smash the door down” on the recovered flight recorder.
Agence France-Presse also reported that a pilot was locked out, citing a source close to the investigation, while Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, said it was looking into the reports.
CNN aviation analysts have said that if correct, the reports — which CNN has not been able to independently verify — raised a range of possibilities for the cause of the crash, from a medical emergency to something more nefarious, like a suicide mission.
The New York Times’ source said that “at the very end of the flight, the … pilot (in the cockpit) is alone and does not open the door.”
But why, in an era of heightened aviation security, was a pilot allowed to be solo in the cockpit, with tragic consequences?
CNN aviation analyst David Soucie said that while on American carriers it was required that any pilot leaving the flight deck was replaced by a flight attendant, so that two people remained in the cockpit at all times, this was not the case with all airlines internationally.
By the time of publication, Germanwings and parent company Lufthansa did not respond to requests for comment as to whether their pilots on the Airbus A320 aircraft were required to follow such a protocol.
Post 9/11 security
Peter Goelz, former managing director of the U.S.’s National Transportation Safety Board, said that after the September 11 attacks, aviation security working groups had focused on changing protocols to prevent further hijackings.
“They talked extensively about whether we should give a random member of the flight crew … an ability to enter the cockpit,” he told CNN.
“But then they decided that that was just from a security standpoint you couldn’t guarantee that outsiders wouldn’t learn that.”
But aviation analyst Scott Hamilton said it appeared that such a practice could have made a crucial difference had it been implemented on Flight 9525.
“I don’t know what Lufthansa group’s policy is but had a flight attendant gone in she could have let the pilot back in,” he said.
Goelz said the post 9-11 improvements instead focused on armoring the cockpit and cockpit door lock to prevent intrusions, and “procedures that the pilots take to fly the airplane in a different way if hijackings are attempted.
“Those doors are built to withstand hand grenade blasts — you can’t knock them down by beating them with your fists,” Captain Desmond Ross, principal of DRA Professional Aviation Services told CNN.
Override lock
Aviation analysts explained that the cockpit door would automatically lock once it closed. The pilot outside the cockpit could then reenter by entering a code on the door.
“That ordinarily would work,” said Hamilton. “But if there’s what’s called an override thrown — basically a double lock — he can’t get back in.”
Ross said that the override was a “simple switch” on the control panel with three positions: “Lock, normal, unlock.”
“There’s a CCTV camera outside the door so the guy on the flight deck can see whether it really is his companion coming back in again or whether its someone else trying to break in.”
If the pilot who had left the cockpit “was being denied access after punching in the correct code, it meant that somebody was seriously trying to keep him out,” he said.
Geoffrey Thomas, editor-in-chief and managing director at airlineratings.com, said he understood from A320 pilots and the aircraft’s manual that there was no way for anyone outside the cockpit to open the door once the override lock had been activated.
“It would appear that someone has deliberately locked that door (on Flight 9525),” he said.
Medical emergency ‘unlikely’
Thomas said there had been speculation that the aircraft could have been set into a fatal descent after the remaining pilot on the flight deck suffered a medical emergency and slumped on the controls.
“But it doesn’t explain why the access to the cockpit was denied,” he said, adding that it seemed “beyond the realms of … possibility” that an incapacitated pilot could have accidentally both set the aircraft off course and activated the override lock.
This made the explanation of pilot suicide — of which there had been eight cases in the past 40 years — a more likely explanation, he said.
Cameras, streaming?
The latest crash has also raised the question of whether cameras should be used in cockpits.
In an age of ubiquitous camera surveillance, pilots have stubbornly resisted the intrusion of video cameras on flight decks.
Pilot and aviation analyst Jim Tilmon said while many passengers would view it as a welcome innovation, “from the pilot’s point of view, it’s not just an inconvenience or an intrusion, it’s just kind of unnecessary.”
“There are other kinds of ways to get the information,” he said.
“I’m not interested in knowing whether or not the pilot’s picking his nose.”
Pilot and author Karlene Petitt was also opposed. “If someone was to do something up there and there was a camera, you’d (only) need to get up and put your coat over it or a hat,” she told CNN.
“There’s so many better ways that we could spend that money.”
Soucie told CNN that the smartest innovation would be to focus on streaming live data back to ground control during a flight.
“It feels like we’re in archeology trying to find these black boxes,” he said.