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Just so I've got this straight.
If both the pilot and the copilot are spontaneously incapacitated I either have to ride the plane to the ground or figure out how to enter the cockpit from outside the plane while in flight so that I have a chance of landing the thing? |
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Well sir... I don't like it. |
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It's been considered, and it won't be implemented for
several reasons. |
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1. Structural: Putting holes in fuselages for doors is to be
avoided if possible. Door holes have to be heavily reinforced
and the doors themselves are fairly heavy. In this regard,
you'd have to put a couple right next to each other. In order
to fit a door in the cockpit, you're going to have to expand
the cockpit length significantly. Pilots would be absolutely
fine with that, but the airlines would be losing revenue-
generating volume and mass within the aircraft. |
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2. Safety: There are many scenarios here, but ultimately the
Captain is responsible for the whole aircraft, passengers and
crew. There are plenty of times when one of the cockpit
crew might want to take a walk into the cabin. The obvious
one is that there's a suspected problem with a flight control.
This might be a faulty sensor or light, but a walk down the
aircraft to take a look at the wing's trailing edge for
example, might put both pilot's minds at ease. |
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As the person responsible, the Captain may want to get a
closer look at other potential safety issues, a medical
emergency etc. to make a decision on a divert etc. |
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Are we making the cockpit a separate pressure vessel?
because that's got its own issues. |
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There's no problem that can't be solved with enough of someone else's time and money. |
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I'd just like to point out that if you remove the door between the passenger area and the cockpit, then it becomes easier for passengers to enter the cockpit, not harder. |
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I think the idea is that the cockpit door is replaced by
cockpit wall. |
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This is another issue, of course. The cockpit door is already
something of an interesting compromise. It has to be sturdy
enough to keep out would-be attackers, but also a sacrificial
structural element should there be a cockpit
depressurization event. In the case of a cockpit window
blow out, most cocpit door/frame arrangements are
designed to fail in such a way as to allow the pressure in the
rest of the aircraft to escape without failing
catasptrophically or in such a way as to further trouble the
pilots who already have a very sudden increase in workload
to deal with. |
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If you wanted to wall off the cockpit, you'd still need blow-
out panels, or, build a pressure bulkhead. These are usually
hemispherical for structural efficiency, but this would take
up a lot of space, naturally, since both the cabin and the
cockpit would have to be pressurized and then you'd need 2
hemispherical bulkheads, this would then present the
possibility of a failure in one of the two pressure vessels
independently. Because you have 2 pressure vessels, the
chances of failure of one of them doubles, and the much
smaller cockpit vessel is a real problem, since it will
depressurize very quickly given its volume, and the
consequences of this are likely catastrophic. |
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The solution is simple. Remove airline pilots and cockpits.
Can drones fly
at 30k feet reliably through bumps and bad weather? It would
be an interesting study. |
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The hijackers will pose as pilots and then they can
fly the plane wherever they want to. [-] |
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@pocmloc: Dang! You are so right...Need to edit
title. |
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@bs0u: A “wall” with “holes”. |
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I may have a real fish boner with this one. Seemed
plausible anyway. |
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—as it turns out the better solution may be “Add
Extra Cockpit Doors” *rolling eyes* (link) |
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//The solution is simple. Remove airline pilots and
cockpits.// |
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You'll get buy-in from the airlines on that one at least. They
already like the idea of going down to one pilot, and using
low qualification pilots to look after the aircraft in the
cruise. |
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The missions that drones (we'll use a Predator as out
example) fly is the reason the same techniques can't be
used for airliners. Drones are semi-expendable. That's their
core value. Cheap enough to risk in dangerous areas, and if
we're accepting risk, why not use that to add other value,
like having the pilots 1000's miles away. If we're accepting
risk, then redundancy can be cut and so can pilot/drone
response lag toleranced. Drones are lost surprisingly often,
they sometimes just fly out of control, dangerous weather,
or a simple gusty crosswind that can't be managed
remotely. Thing is, it doesn't matter. They're so cheap
compared to manned aircraft, just throw up another one. |
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