No one can second-guess what happened to EgyptAir flight MS804 the latest bruise to civil aviation. The only thing one can say is that aircraft like the A320 do not stop flying midair unless someone interferes with the crew or the controls. Accidents take place on landing and take off…not at cruising altitudes. The odds on both engines flaming out simultaneously are less than you being hit by lightning.
It is natural to look at the flight deck crew first to see if pilot error and the human factor played a role. We always do that because often enough in most countries that is the easiest way out of maintenance and security glitches and government responsibility. After all, what can we do if the pilot made a mess of things, that’s a global risk.
No, it isn’t. This is a cop out and very unfair. Pilots do not crash their planes. They do their best to get out of a crisis situation. In this case with no Mayday warning or indication of malfunction one can assume the aircraft entered a catastrophic frame...that means the crew were incapacitated and unable to even hit 7700, which is the emergency code. Every nation on planet needs to wake up to the fact that you do not need the caricatures of the 1970s with bandanas and weapons as guides to upping airport and aircraft safety. Aircraft can be taken with ease with a hatpin or a pen or a serving knife and fork. I am not trivializing things but people who are ready to die don’t need guns, they have options ranging from non-combatant hostages to mere threats. We will all be intimidated.
And let’s be brutally honest. Aviation has a weak and vulnerable underbelly. An aircraft moves from competent airports to inept airports to farcical airports. There are more red-starred airports (dangerous and inefficient) on the aerial map than orange (adequate).
That gives us a very good idea of how easy it is to duck security. There is only one defense left and that is for nations who have multi-laterals to share information and data on the thousands of “suspicious” individuals who are on their lists but often kept secret. Unless there is a global “no fly” list and a real-time sharing of information aided by the presence of profilers at airports and computers on a 24/7 “Be On The Lookout” trawling of all passengers and catering, cleaning and ground crews with access to aircraft there will invariably be someone who will wriggle through our relatively pathetic safety nets. It can be done if only political hostility did not come in the way. Aviation is without frontiers and, yet, all those who are involved in it continue to work for most part in their watertight compartments, unwilling or under orders not to share intelligence with other blocs, which may be politically inimical to them.
Does it make sense to fly to these “hostile” territories but allow the safety parameters to be held at ransom because of political demands? Yet carriers do it every day. Profiling may come off us ugly and racist and prejudiced. It is a tag that has been abused but it is our only friend. Ask the next of kin on that ill-fated flight how they feel if people at Paris had allowed a motley number of individuals from different countries where terrorism is rife to get on board and not noticed a pattern…why should they?
The time is coming when we will need to “watch” for the signs; drug lords, psychotics, alcoholics, terrorists, ex-cons with a history of violence, same difference. Air security has to go high-tech…not with stopping liquids and lighters in handbags but by adding to that sanitizing process a new dimension of electronic and professional surveillance across the board. Aircrew and airlines know they are vulnerable. Time to do something serious about it. We don’t want more victims like Flight 804.
It is natural to look at the flight deck crew first to see if pilot error and the human factor played a role. We always do that because often enough in most countries that is the easiest way out of maintenance and security glitches and government responsibility. After all, what can we do if the pilot made a mess of things, that’s a global risk.
No, it isn’t. This is a cop out and very unfair. Pilots do not crash their planes. They do their best to get out of a crisis situation. In this case with no Mayday warning or indication of malfunction one can assume the aircraft entered a catastrophic frame...that means the crew were incapacitated and unable to even hit 7700, which is the emergency code. Every nation on planet needs to wake up to the fact that you do not need the caricatures of the 1970s with bandanas and weapons as guides to upping airport and aircraft safety. Aircraft can be taken with ease with a hatpin or a pen or a serving knife and fork. I am not trivializing things but people who are ready to die don’t need guns, they have options ranging from non-combatant hostages to mere threats. We will all be intimidated.
And let’s be brutally honest. Aviation has a weak and vulnerable underbelly. An aircraft moves from competent airports to inept airports to farcical airports. There are more red-starred airports (dangerous and inefficient) on the aerial map than orange (adequate).
That gives us a very good idea of how easy it is to duck security. There is only one defense left and that is for nations who have multi-laterals to share information and data on the thousands of “suspicious” individuals who are on their lists but often kept secret. Unless there is a global “no fly” list and a real-time sharing of information aided by the presence of profilers at airports and computers on a 24/7 “Be On The Lookout” trawling of all passengers and catering, cleaning and ground crews with access to aircraft there will invariably be someone who will wriggle through our relatively pathetic safety nets. It can be done if only political hostility did not come in the way. Aviation is without frontiers and, yet, all those who are involved in it continue to work for most part in their watertight compartments, unwilling or under orders not to share intelligence with other blocs, which may be politically inimical to them.
Does it make sense to fly to these “hostile” territories but allow the safety parameters to be held at ransom because of political demands? Yet carriers do it every day. Profiling may come off us ugly and racist and prejudiced. It is a tag that has been abused but it is our only friend. Ask the next of kin on that ill-fated flight how they feel if people at Paris had allowed a motley number of individuals from different countries where terrorism is rife to get on board and not noticed a pattern…why should they?
The time is coming when we will need to “watch” for the signs; drug lords, psychotics, alcoholics, terrorists, ex-cons with a history of violence, same difference. Air security has to go high-tech…not with stopping liquids and lighters in handbags but by adding to that sanitizing process a new dimension of electronic and professional surveillance across the board. Aircrew and airlines know they are vulnerable. Time to do something serious about it. We don’t want more victims like Flight 804.
