Airlines rushing to change cockpit policy

Since the tragic September 11 attacks in New York and Washington in 2001, strict procedures to lock the cockpit door have been in place to prevent attackers taking control of an aircraft.

But what happens when the danger is on the inside?

In the aftermath of the Germanwings Flight4U9525 crash earlier this week, a number of airlines have vowed to change their policies to ensure such an incident is prevented in the future.

Airlines in Canada, Norway and the UK have dived headfirst into discussions to change their policy to ensure that two people are in the cockpit at all times.

Canada has ordered its airlines, including Air Canada, Westjet and charter airline Air Transat, to post two people in the cockpits of passenger planes, in addition to Norwegian Air Shuttle, major German airlines including Lufthansa and Air Berlin, Easyjet, Monarch Airlines, Virgin and Thomas Cook, according to the BBC.

Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt’s emergency directive was mandatory and effective immediately, she said on Thursday.

“If you’re carrying passengers, this is going to apply to you,” she said outside the House of Commons, according to AFP.

“You have to have two crew members in the flight deck at all times.”

Raitt explained that the second person could be a flight attendant if the pilot or co-pilot needed to exit the cockpit during flight.

The announcement came after several Canadian airlines had already put in place new policies requiring two crew members in the cockpit in response to the tragedy on Tuesday.

Norwegian Air Shuttles’ flight operations director Thomas Hesthammer also said Norwegian’s new measures were expected to be enforced as of Friday.

“We have been discussing this for a long time but this development has accelerated things,” he said.

But Lufthansa said that no matter how good the security, ultimately nothing could stop a rogue pilot.

“The cockpit is equipped with an armoured door,” a spokesperson for Germanwings confirmed, following the crash that killed 150 passengers and crew.

“There is a video surveillance system that allows someone who wants to enter the cockpit to be identified. Only a pilot inside can unlock the door.”

Systems that lock a cockpit door have existed since the 1980s, but following September 11, many US airlines adopted the policy of having two people in the cockpit at all times.

Unlike many US carriers, however, European companies generally do not require two people in the cockpit at all times, with Lufthansa one of the airlines that previously had not implemented such a protocol.

Germanwings planes require an access code to open the door but the airline, which is owned by Lufthansa, did not wish to give details “for security reasons” nor say whether a crow-bar or similar device was available to force the door open, according to AFP.

A Lufthansa spokesperson confirmed the cockpit door could only be unlocked “from inside the cockpit by pressing a button.”

The changes follow reports that confirm the co-pilot of the Germanwings plane deliberately flew the plane into the ground, after locking the pilot out of the cockpit.

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