[Archived] News comment

[K-Hod]

http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/11883892.Blackburn_arrest_filmed_and_posted_online___police_deny_criticisms_of_excessive_force/

Not the biggest fan of the 5'0, but I doubt they'd have let folk carry on filming if they were doing anything illegal, in broad daylight!

[DE.]

Seems like the co-pilot of the crashed plane had medical issues (presumably mental health) but had torn up his doctor's notes and not informed the airline. He had a doctor's note saying he was unfit for work on the day of the crash, but tore it up and went to work anyway. It seems all but confirmed that this guy simply snapped in mid air, and 150 people paid the price along with him.

[J*B]

Seems like the co-pilot of the crashed plane had medical issues (presumably mental health) but had torn up his doctor's notes and not informed the airline. He had a doctor's note saying he was unfit for work on the day of the crash, but tore it up and went to work anyway. It seems all but confirmed that this guy simply snapped in mid air, and 150 people paid the price along with him.

Snapped? He is a mass murderer - his name should be shamed as one of the biggest serial killers to ever walk this planet.

[Audax]

German prosecutors said Friday they had found evidence that the co-pilot of the Germanwings plane which crashed in the French Alps appears to have hidden evidence of an illness from his employers.

Prosecutors in the western city of Duesseldorf said they seized medical documents from the home of Andreas Lubitz that indicate "an existing illness and appropriate medical treatment."

Prosecutor Ralf Herrenbrueck said in a statement Friday that torn-up sick notes for the day of the crash "support the current preliminary assessment that the deceased hid his illness from his employer and colleagues."

He said the search of Lubitz's home revealed no suicide note or evidence of any political or religious motivation for his actions.

The prosecutor did not elaborate on what type of illness they believe Lubitz was hiding, but reports in the German press suggested the young man could have suffered a "serious depressive episode" during his training.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/germanwings-co-pilot-andreas-lubitz-hid-illness-reports-of-depression/

[DE.]

Snapped? He is a mass murderer - his name should be shamed as one of the biggest serial killers to ever walk this planet.

In what world does snapped have positive connotations, as you seem to be suggesting here?

[Audax]

9-11 freaked everyone out, so stricter measures came about and so some think, led to an incident like this GermanWings flight.

A leading aviation security expert has condemned the rules on cockpit access as a “knee-jerk reaction to the events of 9/11” – which, he says, enabled the Germanwings co-pilot to commit the mass murder of the 149 other people on Flight 4U 9525.

Philip Baum, the editor of Aviation Security International magazine, said: “From the moment it became apparent that the Germanwings flight had made a controlled descent… with no Mayday, one feared that either pilot suicide or a hijack was the cause. The ill-thought reinforced cockpit door has had catastrophic consequences.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/andreas-lubitz-kneejerk-reaction-to-911-enabled-mass-murder-10137173.html

Good cases make bad law.

Read more at the link.

[Tris]

I think it’s really important to put everything on this subject into context.

I have struggled with a fear of flying for many years, triggered by an engine catching fire during a Buzz Air flight to Lyon about 15 years ago. Whilst fellow passengers received smelling salts from the crew as we circled the M25 to dump fuel (for 2 hours), I and my two seat mates shared a litre of Smirnoff with no mixer. We eventually landed safely back at Stansted.

9-11 was not long after, and although I flew regularly for work I was finding it increasingly testing.

For some Rovers focus, I did fly to Sofia in 2002 (Lufthansa) and Istanbul in 2003 (Germanwings, followed by a 10 hour road trip to Ankara).

The final straw for me was the failed liquid bomb plot in 2006. I did a Dennis Bergkamp and stopped flying.

Regarding Rovers, that meant when we played Krakow in October 2006, we (me and future Mrs T) arrived by train, after a 2 day journey via Brussels and Berlin, and post match 2 more days to get home (at least we saw Chris Samba as a Hertha sub on the way back).

Leverkusen in Feb 2007, again train via Brussels. Even my future father-in-law humoured my fear of flying on this occasion.

To bring the subject back to this Germanwings accident.

During 2014, I took 30 scheduled flights.

Over time, to reverse the fear problem, I had done two things –

(1) subscribe to the regular Virgin Atlantic “Flying Without Fear” emails.

(2) make my own decisions about what I considered to be safe, and reject what I didn’t.

(2) meant that when I started flying again, I basically restricted myself to Virgin and BA. My "first" flight was Heathrow to New York for personal reasons, and it helped to break my problem because the reason to go was greater than the reason to be scared of the flight.

After that, I continued to build up my confidence by reading the Virgin “Flying Without Fear” emails and blog. I agree with their premise that sensational mainstream media doesn’t help anyone who has a flying fear - and the blanket coverage this week proves that. 10 minutes per 30 minute bulletin. Air disasters are big news, but normal disasters are not.

It is so disproportional - eg there were 1,901 UK road deaths in 2011, but the only media coverage I can remember was due to some rugby club fireworks near the M5 – 7 fatalities.

The Air France Airbus A330 which crashed between Rio and Paris in 2009 was my first big “setback” since staring to fly again. I followed all the news, and eventually read the full final report on the crash.

My personal decision – whilst the pitot tube information caused problems because of ice at high altitude - was that the Air France pilots (3 of them) were either in the wrong place on the plane, or didn’t react to the circumstances … … so I crossed AF off my list of safe carriers for now. Faster reactions or better trained pilots might (/should) have prevented that disaster.

Tomorrow we will fly with Easyjet from Manchester to Basel, on an Airbus A320, and next week we will fly back from Zurich to Heathrow with BA on an A320, and then on to Manchester on an A319.

When the news came out on Tuesday morning, I didn’t think I’d be going anywhere. I needed to know the cause, I needed to understand the reasons. I didn’t trust the A320, in fact I didn’t trust anything to do with air travel. I was back to 2006.

As the shocking information has developed, I have felt sick, I have cried and I have looked at train times to Switzerland.

But the reasons I’ll get on EZY1811 tomorrow are these:

- I've spent nearly 10 years re-training my own brain that air travel is very safe

- The accident was on Tuesday, by Wednesday they had the box, by Thursday they had the reason, by Friday Easyjet (and others) had new policy on “2 crew in the cockpit”. This is the only industry in the world which is truly agile for safety

- therefore despite this terrible tragic event, my confidence in flying to Basel tomorrow is just re-enforced - the industry works instantly to safeguard against every unimaginable twist of fate

I’m sorry for the long post, but I do hope it might perhaps help anyone else with a fear of flying, if I can help please pm me.

[Tris]

Not if O'Leary only pays them half as much.

Just to be clear about this - to correct inaccuracies -

it's not a 2 pilot rule, it's 2 crew

O'Leary runs Ryanair and not Easyjet

Ryanair already had a 2 crew rule before this weeks events, as did FlyBe and Jet2

All USA based airlines also had a 2 crew rule since re-enforced doors after 9-11 (perhaps begs a question for the EU airlines ...)

Easyjet were quick to react to introduce it from yesterday (Friday) along with many other European carriers

It now looks like global airline policy

[Tom]

Great post Tris. (Which are too few and far between now can you not come back and highlight some hypocrisies, mine if need be)

It's great you have managed your fear, otherwise you would have to be content with only going skiing every other week or so

[Stuart]

Good post Tris.

[DE.]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Tris. I'm sure there are many who can identify with you.

You're absolutely right that the media sensationalism over plane crashes causes a false shift in perception, making people think air travel is inherently unsafe. It really isn't. Incidents like this are extremely rare, but when they do happen they dominate the front pages for weeks on end. Suddenly papers report on practically every crash in memory and every fault reported across the globe for the next couple of weeks.

No matter what form of travel you take, there is risk involved. You're always relying on other humans not harming you.

As a pedestrian, you're assuming a person won't run up to you and stab you. You're relying on drivers not suddenly swerving onto the pavement and hitting you.

Riding a bus, train, taxi, etc... you're putting your faith in the driver not crashing the vehicle, or another person smashing into that vehicle and causing it to crash.

Air travel is one of the safest forms of travel available. The difference is when something does go wrong the death toll tends to be a lot higher in single instances than the majority of other accidents. Despite that, air crashes still account for far less deaths than motor travel, and perhaps most other forms of transport, including walking. Life isn't safe. You can be sitting in your house or at work and have an explosion suddenly kill you. That's just how it is.

I can completely understand the fear of flying - going that high into the air in what is essentially just a metal tube filled with mechanics and electronics is not natural. But then, neither is getting into a metal box with wheels and accelerating to speeds far beyond what we're capable of through walking.

[thenodrog]

Flying is like sitting in church. 1 hour feels like 2. I must say I've never done long haul and don't particularly ever want to but for short european hops I recommend extra legroom (airline seats can be claustrophobic), noise cancelling headphones, a good film on the ipad, a couple of glasses of red wine and don't sit next to the window.

[thenodrog]

Just to be clear about this - to correct inaccuracies -

it's not a 2 pilot rule, it's 2 crew

O'Leary runs Ryanair and not Easyjet

My mistake.... but it was meant to be a joke.

Just as an aside I don't think a stewardess replacing the pilot could necessarily have stopped a male pilot intent on doing what he did.

[DE.]

My mistake.... but it was meant to be a joke.

Just as an aside I don't think a stewardess replacing the pilot could necessarily have stopped a male pilot intent on doing what he did.

As I said previously, if a pilot wants to crash a plane, they will do it - whether there's 2 or 20 people in the cockpit. More people will make it more difficult for a pilot to deliberately crash at cruise altitude (which is very, very rare anyway) but at take off or landing it would only take seconds to put the plane into an uncontrollable dive.

The important thing is to make it as safe as possible before the pilot steps into the cockpit, rather than afterwards.

[Audax]

As I said previously, if a pilot wants to crash a plane, they will do it - whether there's 2 or 20 people in the cockpit. More people will make it more difficult for a pilot to deliberately crash at cruise altitude (which is very, very rare anyway) but at take off or landing it would only take seconds to put the plane into an uncontrollable dive.

The important thing is to make it as safe as possible before the pilot steps into the cockpit, rather than afterwards.

But this pilot, Andreas Lubitz at the same time, could have done this probably a number of times before but only chose to do it alone and with that long glide into the mountain.

I thought there was something where the co-pilots controls could be turned off, none-the-less, per your scenario, that seems indeed, to possibly be less comforting when one thinks about it.

But I understand what you are saying, I don't mean to be argumentative.

Andreas locks the other pilot out, the doors on now, are very solid. It makes me wonder a bit about in those minutes, if they could have used a battering ram or something. Well, this security setup will now be looked into more.

[ABBEY]

you think they would have some sort of porta loo in the cockpit.

[DE.]

But this pilot, Andreas Lubitz at the same time, could have done this probably a number of times before but only chose to do it alone and with that long glide into the mountain.

I thought there was something where the co-pilots controls could be turned off, none-the-less, per your scenario, that seems indeed, to possibly be less comforting when one thinks about it.

But I understand what you are saying, I don't mean to be argumentative.

Andreas locks the other pilot out, the doors on now, are very solid. It makes me wonder a bit about in those minutes, if they could have used a battering ram or something. Well, this security setup will now be looked into more.

It's difficult to say. If Lubitz had known he could not crash the plane at cruise due to security measures being in place to stop him, what would he have done instead? It's possible he would have just given up on the idea entirely. Or, if he was determined to crash a flight, he may have done it at a different time, when the plane is at its most vulnerable - essentially at take off or landing.

It's impossible to say for certain, but assuming he had a pre-planned desire to take down a jet, he would have found a way to do it.

Unfortunately in this instance I don't think the crew would have been able to break into the cockpit even if they'd had another 30 minutes to try. The doors are made to be essentially impenetrable, to keep out threats under any circumstance. As soon as those doors locked, everybody on that flight was at the mercy of Lubitz, and there was sadly nothing they could do about it.

[thenodrog]

you think they would have some sort of porta loo in the cockpit.

Be like someone farting in a lift.

With all these playstation drones about how long will planes actually need Pilots?

[Audax]

So this Andreas broke up with a girlfriend they are saying now. Hate hearing this, I mean, broken love is the cause of many suicides. Sad.

[Andyblue2]

They should have a special phone in another part of the plane with hotline to emergency service and they should in theory be able to lock the controls and fly the plane.

[yoda]

They should have a special phone in another part of the plane with hotline to emergency service and they should in theory be able to lock the controls and fly the plane.

With Dick Tracy on the other end

[DE.]

They should have a special phone in another part of the plane with hotline to emergency service and they should in theory be able to lock the controls and fly the plane.

The technology to remotely control planes from the ground has existed since 2006, but hasn't been rolled out because they're scared it'll get hacked, apparently.

[Tom]

Be like someone farting in a lift.

With all these playstation drones about how long will planes actually need Pilots?

Easily doable now but there are bandwidth issues, thousands of planes flying with massive amounts of data:

There is also the issue that it would be easier for madmen / terrorists to storm data centres with guns and start making planes drop from the sky.

This is truly awful but could have happened no matter what safety measures were in place, if a madman drives a bus into a wall then it doesn't mean bus drivers need stricter measures, I'm glad the 2 man rule is being introduced more mind you.

[Steve Kean's Hypnotoad]

22nd person dies from the Libya museum attack. Absolutely horrific the humanitarian and cultural damage being caused by Islamic extremists at present.

[thenodrog]

What a crazy world isn't it? When people are being hounded because of expressing their personal opinion in a perfectly acceptable manner it represents the thin end of a rather unpleasant wedge.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/03/28/roger-moore-idris-elba-james-bond-english_n_6960700.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cuk-ws-bb%7Cdl6%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D340042

I shouldn't be surprised if it isn't all dreamt up by that chap's agent under the category free publicity because tbh until 5 minutes ago I'd never heard even of idris elba and now the producers have been painted into a corner and likely will not dare not overlook him. Very clever if so.

So whats next for the PC crazies? A black Santa? A black Robin Hood perhaps? It's all as loony as me auditioning for the role of Sabu the Elephant Boy.