As soon as I heard the French prosecutor reveal that the co-pilot of the Germanwings jet appears deliberately to have flown his plane into a mountain it took me back to an anecdote told to me by a friend who is an airline pilot. A pilot, like you and I, has to go through scanners being allowed near an aeroplane. On one occasion a security scare had forced him to and his crew to go through a second time. After being asked to remove his shoes he finally flipped: ‘look, I’m the pilot,’ he said. ‘If I wanted to crash the plane all I would have to do is move the stick forwards and we would be diving into the ground.’
Since 2001 we have had endless security measures which have no doubt helped to keep terrorists off aeroplanes. We have had bans on liquids and nail scissors. We have had computers crunching passenger lists for anyone with a hint of extremism. Yet the one thing which airlines still have no guard against is a pilot with murderous intent. Ironically, one of the security measures introduced after 9/11 inadvertently contributed to this disaster. The locking of the cockpit door prevented the captain from at least having a go at overpowering the co-pilot and regaining control.
Is this a one-off? That is sadly unlikely. The only explanation which seems to fit what we know of the MH370 disaster is that a pilot on that occasion, too, deliberately took control of a plane and caused its destruction. The Germanwings disaster has similarities to the fate of an Air Egypt plane which plunged into the sea off New York in 1999, with pilot suicide the prime suspect.
This week’s events will have at least as much repercussions for air travel as did 9/11. To defend against more Harold Shipmans of the skies may require planes, at the very least, to go back to having three pilots on board, each with a key to the cockpit. Then, at least, it would be a battle of two against one.
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