After Germanwings

Reassuring passengers is important, and the two-person flightdeck rule seems to be a low-impact, high-reassurance move. Yet much of the passenger response to the swiftly implemented two-person change has been along the lines of “wait, airlines didn’t have to do that already?”.

A series of public information campaigns from regulators could well assuage some passenger concern. YouTube videos featuring calm, professional safety experts explaining the role of various aspects of aviation safety would be an excellent start, building on existing fear-of-flying training that successfully works on a small classroom basis.

The fact is that suicide by pilot has occurred exceedingly rarely in the recorded history of passenger flight. Pilot Richard de Crespigny of QF32 renown summed it up on Twitter: “Forty years, 591 dead in 11 world jet suicide events, matched in the USA every 1 day (hospital errors) [and] 6 days (gun deaths). ”

Very real questions need to be asked in the context of the jump to the twoperson flightdeck as airlines respond to Germanwings 9525. Calmly, and without tabloid fervour, is tightening pilot mental health screening, adding less extensively screened cabin crew to the flightdeck, and taking flight attendants from the cabin from where threats are more likely to come the right mix of priorities? Other safety work may well be, on the balance of probabilities, more likely to improve safety, save lives and reduce injuries in accidents. Even with the most basic of probability calculations, it seems likely that many

Very real questions need to be asked in the context of the jump to the two-person flightdeck.

of the options currently being discussed by the industry could prove more beneficial than additional flightdeck safeguards.

Options on the table include expanding the size and shape of the standard 180cm, 76kg dummy, the FAA HIII-50th model, based on a notional 50th percentile US male who no longer seems representative of the three in five Australians or seven in ten Americans who respective governmental statistics classify as overweight.

Passengers see the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder of the Germanwings flight on the news and wonder (with some merit) why the exterior of the boxes presented are quite so badly damaged. Statements or leaks from the investigation about the state of the CVR or FDR and the possibility of reduced data access owing to damage raise valid questions about black box survivability. Increased survivability of flight data and cockpit voice recorders, which took a notably long time to be found in the Indonesia AirAsia QZ8501 crash and suffered surprisingly severe damage in the recent Germanwings incident, is also on the table. Automatically jettisonable floating devices are also being discussed.

Streaming of black box data (or a limited subset of it) over the increasingly pervasive inflight connectivity systems is already a reality, with Qatar Airways testing functionality since earlier this year. Stress-testing and rolling out systems, either from an industry impetus via IATA or as a regulatory impetus via ICAO and national bodies, is currently under discussion.

Carriage of lithium batteries, already banned as cargo by Qantas and several other airlines, is another hot topic to add to the prioritisation list, as is the ongoing saga of cabin air safety, especially for flightdeck and cabin crew. Passenger education is key here, especially with the proliferation of personal electronic devices and power bank external batteries to power them.

Increased scrutiny of airside and apron workers, electronic security in the age of aircraft e-enablement, improved weather forecasting plus faster weather communication protocols, deeper baggage scanning and disruptive passengers – all are threats that have equal consequences to suicidal pilots on a flightdeck, and many seem to have an equal or greater likelihood of an incident taking place.