March 25, 2015

You don't want a war, but the war wants you...

It's beginning to look like the crash in the Alps was deliberate. One of the black boxes was recovered and it was the cockpit voice recorder. What they found when they played it back was that one of the pilots left the cockpit, and the door was locked after him. He tried to get back in and couldn't, beginning by knocking and ending by trying to break the door down.

The other black box hasn't been found yet, but we have records from air traffic control telling us that the jet went into a shallow dive which ended with lithobraking.

Some people are trying to say that the cockpit depressurized, leaving a dead or unconscious hand at the controls, but that doesn't explain why one guy left the cockpit, nor does it explain why the plane went into a dive.

As Ace says, "What was this pilot's name?"

For the time being, we don't know which one left the cockpit, but I can't see any reason for not releasing both names (unless they are still trying to reach family members with the news).

I know what ethnicity I'd put my wager on...

UPDATE: Looks like it was the copilot, who did it deliberately. But I was wrong about the ethnicity.

We may never know why he did it.

UPDATE: Oh, boy. There are rumors that the copilot recently converted to Islam.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 04:17 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 241 words, total size 2 kb.

1 "that doesn't explain why one guy left the cockpit"
Even pilots have to pee sometimes.
I saw a comment somewhere that the door can only be blocked if the pilot's conscious, which would tend to argue against a depressurization.  How that would work, I don't know, though.

Posted by: RickC at March 25, 2015 07:15 PM (0a7VZ)

2 I had assumed (incorrectly) that there was a bathroom in the cockpit in front of the locked door. You know, if they're going in and out to relieve themselves, it kind of defeats the purpose of making that door strong and locking it, doesn't it?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 25, 2015 07:51 PM (+rSRq)

3 Pilots get locked out all the time, the previous time I remember was with Delta. So, it probably took quite a bit of valuable time to realize the gravity of the situation.

What's really surprising though... It is trivial to nosedive an airliner in such a way that nobody will even have a chance to reach the door, let alone to bang on it. These things happened once in a while before 9/11. A co-pilot of Egypt Air did that in 1992 or so, for example. So, why would a suicidal pilot fly a gradual descent profile? Surely it's better to end it before someone can intervene.

Also, since these suicides were successful before 9/11 and locked doors, the calls for having the doors unlocked miss the point (Instapundit's precious Popular Mechanics joined the knee-jerkers, anonymously).

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at March 25, 2015 08:00 PM (RqRa5)

4 I don't think most commercial airliners have a separate restroom for the pilots.  Certainly not after Insty's post last night about seeing the stewardess barricading the front area with drink carts, and one going in the cockpit, while the pilots took turns relieving themselves, and a bunch of commenters said they saw the same thing.
Pete, I thought that Egypt Air thing was post-9/11, but I just found the Wikipedia article and it says it was in '99.  I remember that because the NTSB found that he probably deliberately committed suicide because of what the flight data recorder said, but the Egyptians insisted that it couldn't have been the case.

Posted by: RickC at March 26, 2015 04:52 AM (0a7VZ)

5 I'm going to go out on a limb and say the co-pilot wasn't suicidal or depressed, but exhausted. Locked the door behind the pilot, dozed off, leaned forward on the stick without even realizing it, and didn't wake up to the noise until too late.
It does seem strange that even the screams couldn't rouse him, though. Maybe had a bout of waking paralysis?

Posted by: Tatterdemalian at March 26, 2015 10:05 AM (4njWT)

6

Putting the plane into a dive required more than just leaning on the stick.

I don't think anyone is going to buy your answer. Sorry.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 26, 2015 10:16 AM (+rSRq)

7

From here:

Lubitz appears to have left the autopilot engaged, turning a small dial on the center of the instrument panel to select a lower and lower altitude while leaving the direction unchanged.

"This button is a button that turns many times to descend," Robin said. "You need to deliberately turn it. The action is deliberate. It was a voluntary action."

I think it's important to point out that the A320 is fly-by-wire.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 26, 2015 10:33 AM (+rSRq)

8

" If one person takes 149 people with him to death, it is not suicide."

Well, that's just nonsense.  A murder-suicide is still a suicide.

Posted by: RickC at March 26, 2015 11:02 AM (ECH2/)

9

I think the point he's trying to make is that suicide wasn't the primary goal. If all he wanted was to die, there are a lot of less spectacular ways of doing so that wouldn't end up causing mass death.

If he did it this way, then mass death was the primary goal. Suicide was secondary.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 26, 2015 11:36 AM (+rSRq)

10 That does seem like a fair intrepretation.

Posted by: RickC at March 26, 2015 12:19 PM (ECH2/)

11 I agree that suicide does seem to be the simplest interpretation.  However, there's also a chance of incapacitation via medical condition or drug use which left the co-pilot not fully aware of what was going on.

From news reports I understand that some airlines have a policy of putting one of the flight attendants in the cockpit when either pilot steps out.  Although the attendant isn't qualified to fly the plane, he/she is qualified to open the door to let the other pilot back in.

Posted by: Siergen at March 26, 2015 02:14 PM (Cvfrl)

12 Siergen, that's an American policy. They don't do it in Europe. (Though they may start, now.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 26, 2015 03:29 PM (+rSRq)

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