Benja455 wrote:sinus211 wrote:rayjax82 wrote:Thats pretty easy to fix. My shop uses our employee badges as access badges for entry. Shouldn't be hard to set something similar up.
Easy in theory, but problematic. What if a hijacker catches the captain on shit break and gets his badge? Now said hijacker has access to the cockpit and the locking door is pointless. IMO pilots need a lav in the cockpit area.
Steve, get crackin!
This! Steve, drop everything else and get on this!
Yeah . . . could happen, we'll see.
The biggest problem, of course, is space. EVERY DAMNED INCH on an airplane like that is accounted for. Cockpit's too small, you say, and you want it an inch longer? NO WAY. Not enough legroom, everyone needs one more inch? Not gonna happen unless the airline can justify the loss of seats and revenue.
9/11 caused enough of an uproar that the government and industry justified the enormous expense of retrofitting the entire fleet with secure, bulletproof doors. (Yes, it's a lot harder than it sounds.) Will the Germanwings incident (combined with a few similar incidents in the past) be enough of a push to integrate a lavatory into the cockpit? I think it's unlikely, but possible.
On most commercial airplanes there is a lavatory right next to the flight deck door. Let's say we move the door back, and make that lavatory a part of the flight deck, for flight crew use only. Then, we need to add ANOTHER lavatory for the passengers to use. Adding that lav means the loss of one triple seat, roughly speaking, and that's a big revenue hit for the airline.
We'll see how it goes . . . I suspect the answer will be a procedural one. For example, require a flight attendant to go into the flight deck so there are always two people there.