Off-duty pilot allegedly tried to shut off engines on Alaska Airlines flight | Hacker News Reader

Off-duty pilot allegedly tried to shut off engines on Alaska Airlines flight

abcnews.go.com

I was on this flight, I sat in the back and did not witness the initial events however I heard the pilot say we were diverting the flight to PDX and shortly after the jumpseat pilot was led to back of the plane.

I thought he was having a heart attack, or possibly diabetic because the flight attendants were telling him it was "going to be okay" and to "take deep breaths", the guy was acting scared and non-violent.

The flight attendant later announced it was a "medical emergency" which I thought it was weird because they never asked if there was a doctor on board. The pilot later explained that there was a "disturbance in the cockpit and we will likely board a new plane". Finally after we landed he was escorted by police.

Wow. That must have been super unnerving and retrospectively a lot more scary than you must have thought at the moment.

Honestly I kind of feel bad for the guy. He didn’t put up much of a fight and he sounded very shocked and sad at what he did. Now his career is over and as he’s a plane hijacker as far as the law is concerned.

If he really wanted to crash the plane I imagine he would have succeeded.

It kinda makes more sense to me that he was taking something like Ambien and had an episode.

Apparently he was experimenting with mushrooms and had a psychosis.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/us/alaska-airlines-off-du...

The mushroom thing was between 6 months ago and now, its not clear from the affidavit when it was.

In the article it says 48 hours after consumption but it isn't quite a hard statement on when he took it.

I've seen two spur-of-the-moment suicides from up close and it's devastating to everybody involved but these did not put anybody else at risk. But from watching the aftermath it's clear to me that the people involved never really thought about the effect on others much, they just acted. This is indeed super sad. And I get your rationalization but the list of such instances that did succeed is rather longer than I'm comfortable with and the only difference seems to be that those people succeeded where this guy did not. It may have been a very short moment. Scary stuff.

You realize when driving that not only am I responsible for the lives of those in my vehicle and the people on foot, on bikes and mopeds and in and on the other vehicles I interact with in traffic whilst at the same time they are responsible for mine. And I've wondered more than once how many accidents are actually spur of the moment suicides.

I'm glad it was handled well, it could have been a tragedy(an unstable person in the cockpit can do a lot of damage, I imagine).

Was anyone, filming? I can't wait to see it as another example of "shapeshifting" on my "For you" tab in Twitter.

What does that mean?

I assume the "they aren't real" lady (video in the link) but there's been so many crazy/high passenger incidents post pandemic I can't be sure:

https://www.complex.com/life/a/jose-martinez/woman-viral-vid...

'They Live' vibes... she's scared out of her wits. It isn't funny to see people derail like that.

“They Live” as in the movie from 30ish years ago?

Yes, her response is as if she's seen something like the creatures from that movie. I wonder what really happened and why she didn't calm down.

For instance, it could be a hallucination, I've had some pretty weird hallucinations myself in spite of never doing drugs (auditory), they were totally believable and yet impossible and I'm rational enough to realize what is a hallucination and what isn't but if it is visual then it may be a lot harder to get a grip on yourself.

Thanks: i totally get it now. Btw same here, never have done any drugs, but have had lucid dreams if that’s similar to what you describe.

There's a trend is social media where people are posting videos of people freaking out in planes claiming that it's a shapeshifting event. I don't know how much of this is trolling and how much of it is people actually believe in this.

I cant wait to get zero flying news ever again lets get a to b safely please and not get dopamine hits inspiring more online vids

That's super interesting, thanks for sharing!

I presume you did end up boarding a new plane with a new crew? How long did that take?

About 45 mins. New crew and plane but kept our same seats.

That's surprisingly fast! Well done to the airline.

How do you fix the mental health issue with pilots? My understanding is that as soon as you self report you’ve basically jeopardised your career and you’re grounded for a minimum of 6 months while you wait for FAA physicians.

Imagine if eyesight or cardiovascular tests depended on self-reporting.

Imagine if eyesight or cardiovascular tests were as subjective and unreliable as psychological assessments.

That and eyesight test may result in glasses, but not in a wholesale ban from the working population. Wife currently works in an institution that caters to mental disorders and system in US mostly sucks ( at least with regular healthcare, you can argue that it works for the well off ).

It can be a ban from being a pilot though.

Current regulations:

https://www.faa.gov/pilot-mental-fitness

The FAA’s regulations require airline pilots to undergo a medical exam with an Aviation Medical Examiner (AME) every six months to five years, depending on the type of flying they do and their age.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-D...

Mental standards for a first-class airman medical certificate are:

From what I understand as an observer the FAA rules make it basically impossible for a working pilot to seek mental health care (even for an acute issue like a death in the family), because the potential cost to their career is so high. Isolation and self medication at the hotel bar, here we come.

Fundamentally, the issue is that the FAA's model of mental health doesn't try to help pilots in distress keep flying; it tries to identify problems and get them out of the sky. So of course pilots will react to that threat to their livelihood (and way-of-life; there's a lot of personal pride wrapped up in the profession) and avoid honesty. Honesty becomes the self-destructive strategy as long as the FAA is willing to use what is discovered in therapy to clip wings.

It's a real hard corner they're painted into on this because they ultimately don't know what makes a pilot snap and decide to kill a planeload of trusting passengers.

The FAA's model definitely provides disincentives against getting help or a diagnosis, and this applies to mental and physical illnesses. I know that some pilots refuse to go to a physician (outside of the FAA-mandated physicals) because one diagnosis, even if it ends up being a false alarm, could ground them, potentially forever. Spend years getting a private pilot certificate, and/or decades working your way up to the airlines--who's going to risk having their family doctor one day say "hmm, that sounds weird..." when listening to your chest?

Are these easy to cheat? I've found that most diagnoses are easy to produce by first reading the DSM-V criteria and then matching them appropriately to questions asked by doctors. In this case, however, you're trying to avoid diagnosis, which is a slightly different game and seems harder to fake.

These appear to be what they're looking for https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-D...

If you're getting your Adderall not from prescription, they're not going to know till you tell them, but I wonder if they try anything interesting to find you out. I know at least one person who flew but used Adderall daily for work which means that this sort of thing isn't super rigorous.

> you're trying to avoid diagnosis, which is a slightly different game and seems harder to fake.

Even easier. Just answer ever question with what's "normal". If you're shooting for a particular diagnosis, or even a diagnosis in general, you have to actually know what the symptoms are, or else the doctor will notice something odd. If you want no diagnosis, you just have to have a general idea of what most people are like.

Fair enough. I've had to pass immigration and customs before (like everyone) so I suppose the advice of "be cool; act normal" is something everyone already does, so it can't be too hard.

I suppose the root cause is that psychology is still mostly a pseudo science.

> If you're getting your Adderall not from prescription, they're not going to know

Airline pilots are subjected to a lot of drug tests. The upshot is that person won’t be taking the Adderall. Even if they need it.

Interestingly: https://x.com/EvanWatsonNews/status/1716868497815580936?s=20

> The off-duty pilot who attempted to cut off a plane’s engines mid-flight told an officer it was his first time using psychedelic mushrooms, per the federal complaint

Yeah and if they say they've been feeling sad their career is over. What a fantastic system.

One option would be to just treat everyone. Every commercial pilot could have to complete 20 hours of therapy a year, with strict confidentiality so they can be open without jeopardizing their career. Or two mandatory hours per month with a psychologist, or whatever scheme works best.

It's an option, but nobody will be excited about it. There's already a pilot shortage. (20 hours of paid time not flying a plane) x (all the pilots who fly) = a substantial loss of pilot availability. Plus some number of the majority of pilots who are mentally healthy would resent being "forced" to sit through mandatory therapy. They already have to do medicals often enough.

> resent

Fine, step one, work on why you'd resent that.

I'll start.

Because it feels like being punished for the actions of other people to have my finite time in this universe forced into therapy if I'm a pilot who doesn't need it. Three incidents in the past four decades against 110,000 pilots working daily and not crashing planes because they've had a mental breakdown should not justify the pilot having to give up a whole day a year to talk about their feelings.

This is a real challenge for the FAA; they do not like having a variable they can't control, but they also know they don't have a good enough model of mental health to control it yet. I don't envy them the challenge, or they pushback they'll get trying to use their traditional intervention strategies to fix the issue.

A perhaps less conventional intervention could be using starlink or similar to permit remote takeover of flights that appear to be going rogue. Potentially also addresses some hijacking scenarios (though maybe introduces others).

Then you have to trust a bunch of people on the ground to be sane, in addition to whoever is in the cockpit.

Trusting a bunch of people seems a lot better than trusting a single person. For instance, in this case, the two sane pilots were able to restrain the third and prevent a disaster.

This is just completely untenable in reality, you're going to have multiple people jump in during an emergency (how do they know? will they be monitoring every flight at all times?) and potentially rip the controls away from PIC because they, by committee, decided on the spot that they could do a better job?

And that system to be absolutely safe. Imagine a 9/11 scenario, but with thousands of remotely hijacked planes.

Locking out a conscious crew in the cockpit? Never going to happen, for reasons others have already listed.

The only thing where I could see a remote landing system make sense is during the (very few) cases of crew incapacitation (e.g. Helios 522), but it would almost certainly be done in a way that makes it very apparent and easy to override for the crew actually on board, just like the cockpit door lock operates currently: Require authentication (a PIN code) for unlocking from the cabin-side; give the cockpit crew complete authority to override even that.

That very system has unfortunately contributed to at least one tragedy (Germanwings 9525), but I think the general risk assessment of "bad guy in the cockpit" being significantly less likely than "bad guy trying to compromise the good guys in the cockpit" still makes sense.

Until somebody pulls a circuit breaker...

The same satellite internet provider whose owner micromanages access to in times of crisis based on whatever idea is playing in his head? I'd really prefer starlink to not be a control mechanism for anything until the ownership changes hands. Maybe iridium would be a better choice, if we ever hit the point we'll need it (10+ years with single digit number of passenger fatalities tells me we don't)

Everyone does this. Everyone.

I 100% trust my life better to two human pilots than to the same flight on an aircraft with a remote control system capable of taking over the aircraft's control against the wishes of those in the cockpit.

A reasonable concern, but I'm surprised at the degree of negative reaction to this— for example, who has the last word on control of a manned spacecraft? Obviously they are controllable from the ground, but can the personnel onboard take that back?

I feel like there's at least scope for an interesting discussion on what a takeover could look like and how the process could be abused and/or protected from abuse.

For example, what if it was something that could be requested using a "call for help" mechanism available elsewhere on the craft? Perhaps there could be buttons on opposite sides of the galley that would activate the distress call, so two flight attendants would have to collude for it— that would call the attention of the ground station to a pilot-incident-in-progress who could then receive telemetry and begin to investigate what was going on and go through some kind of clearance process to unlock the final takeover key that would let them disable the cockpit if deemed necessary.

Fair, but these pilot mental health incidents are not that common. We all rightly resented two decades of taking off our shoes in security because of that one shoe bombing attempt.

The trick would be to position it as being about broader spectrum welfare than just a binary determination of whether you're crazy enough to try to kill a plane full of innocent passengers.

Correct. I’m an aviation geek/disaster post mortem junkie and the only incident I’m aware of is Germanwings (obviously) and potentially MH370 depending on which scenario/theory you subscribe to.

There have been a few other incidents that essentially boil down to CRM (crew resource management) issues regarding pilots with clear and obvious personality issues that when combined with the wrong crew members has resulted in loss of life.

Basically, combine someone on the flight deck with seniority who’s an asshole with a junior and impressionable crew member and it can be a problem:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlink_Flight_571...

Either way aviation is remarkably safe generally speaking and I’m not sure I’d put mandatory therapy, etc towards the top of the list in terms of approaches to make flying even safer.

Of course pilots have a tough job and are responsible for hundreds of lives at a time and their needs should be looked after. But the incident rate just isn’t there.

“Aviation regulations are written in blood”.

There is also, allegedly, Chinese Eastern catastrophe from last year: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Eastern_Airlines_Fligh...

EgyptAir flight 990 in 1999 is also suspected to be a suicide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990?wprov=sfla...

Fedex Flight 705 was an attempted hijacking by a suicidal pilot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Express_Flight_705

Don't pilots have a maximum number of hours per year that's way under 2000, leaving a lot of "office time"?

100-120 hours per month, which leaves 30-50 hours per month "office time" to use your term and that can easily be taken up with non flight time required tasks like planning, logs, safety, CE, etc

And training, a lot of training to stay current and up to date on changes.

How much of that so-called "office time" is spent in remote cities waiting for the required crew rest time to complete before making one's next flight?

It wouldn't have a significant impact on the pilot shortage. If you look at the FAA airman statistics [1], there are fewer active pilots today than there were in 2013. Not commercial or airline pilots, but all pilots total. The entire recruiting pipeline has collapsed, even though there are 25% more licensed instructors and double the number of student pilot licenses (starting in 2016, the FAA made them perpetual instead of a 60 month expiration date so that stat is actually meaningless).

There just aren't enough people involved in general aviation at the start of the funnel to feed the demand for commercial and airline pilots later. Changing some HR policies won't move the needle on that.

[1] https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/c...

For the work they do. Huge technical and communications skills requirements. The trust required. And shortages.

Pilots seem to very underpaid and overworked.

I'd think twice about flying on any airline if I thought or new they were anything less than pampered.

> Pilots seem to very underpaid and overworked.

Seems to be a trend these days. The more safety critical the job, the worse conditions and pay are.

Competitive market and passengers view price as the overriding factor when buying a ticket.

passengers view what they can afford, or what they can't afford the least, as the overriding factor when buying a ticket. Passengers who have money don't buy the cheapest flights they can find and care more about leg room, direct flights, and agreeable departure/arrival times. Poor people (the majority of the US) take whatever they can get.

Mostly because passenger have absolutely no way to understand airline pricing. The exact same seat can change price 2x in 24h. With that in mind, it’s almost impossible to know if you are getting more for your money or if you are seeing a product of the algorithm.

All properly competitive markets have thin margins and price being a major competitive factor. The problem isn't with that, but rather with flight staff, as a class, being unable to defend proper salaries and work conditions against the competitive pressures on airlines, and as a result they end up squeezed to near a breaking point.

(I'm no political or labor expert, but to me this feels like a case of the air crews being in need of an union.)

There's a public safety interest in fixing that, but like with other safety-critical jobs, there seems to be no way for that interest to become a force acting on the market. Yes, it would mean slightly more expensive flights, but as it is, the price floor on air travel is too low. Sure, current prices mean flights are available to more people, but that's just subsidizing the poor via having everyone accept a small but growing risk of death.

There certainly are pilots unions in the USA and other countries. I don't know what percentage of commercial pilots are unionized, and I don't know how much real power the unions have. When push comes to shove they may be prohibited from striking, as air travel is an essential service (remember when President Reagan fired the striking PATCO controllers). One difference there is that air controllers are FAA employees and pilots are employees of the airlines.

So, with pilots in short supply generally, and if they had a strong union you'd think that they'd be in a position to command good compensation.

Airline CEOs are making at least three or four million a year.

Strange, the compensation in the executive class is never that heavily squeezed

Because the CEO's pay is peanuts in the context of the financials of a major airline. They spend many multiples of that on one airplane.

Yeah, I imagine paying pilots better would help solve the "shortage" problem and ease the mental health burden as well.

Yes, to an extent. But there is a long delay between raising wages and having a pilot ready to work for an airline. The pipeline takes years. It takes years to earn the necessary licenses and build up enough flight hours.

What would help more in the long run is for airlines to hire untrained candidates and then pay them to go through training. Lots of people would like to become pilots but can't afford to pay for their own training. Some foreign carriers already do this.

The problem is that once they admit that they have suicidal thoughts, you can’t just continue therapy. They shouldn’t keep flying.

Someone having suicidal thoughts does not alone indicate that they're going to attempt suicide, much less attempt suicide by crashing their plane. Unfortunately this relies on the shrink's judgement, which of course isn't remotely reliable.

If you predictably do that then the pilots won't speak truthfully in therapy in the first place.

The only way to get the lesser benefit of therapy is to precommit to not report suicidal thoughts.

The greater benefit of "pilots honestly report their suicidal thoughts and then they are stopped from flying" is simply impossible to achieve, and if you foolishly try to get it anyway then you won't even get the lesser benefit.

Welcome to society since, well, forever.

you didn’t think that strong silent man stereotype came from nowhere, did you?

You're not wrong. But for this to work, the therapists' notes must be forever sealed regardless of circumstance. The first time a pilot darts their plane into a mountainside, and the investigation reveals that they told their therapist about their suicidal thoughts, this precommitment policy will vanish. The therapist will be blamed for 174 deaths. The FAA will apologize for allowing pilots who express ideation to keep flying. Etc.

It's similar to telling your doctor about illicit drug use. Don't do it unless you really trust your doctor to (a) not take adverse implications from the disclosure and (b) not write it down anywhere. Chances of both (a) and (b) are tiny. So, just lie about illegal drugs when asked. Do your own work on making sure to avoid interactions between prescribed drugs and recreational ones.

> If you predictably do that then the pilots won't speak truthfully in therapy in the first place.

Why do you think anonymous therapy isn't a thing? There has to be a reason, I wonder what it is...

Aren't therapists supposed to make an exception to the doctor/patient confidentiality when the patient is taking about wanting to kill himself and take a plane full of people with him?

Doctor-patient relationships normally preclude health care people from sharing such information.

This was (and still) a major issue flagged after the Germanwings suicide/crash.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-crash-germany-conf...

How would we assess whether the scheme works? What are the metrics?

I've seen meta studies that suggest talk therapy reduces suicide risk by about 25-percent.

That's obviously significant, especially in terms of the cost of a down airliner, but I'm also a bit dubious that it's the most effective here. It seems like screening could be more effective in preventing needless death, even if there are some controversial false positives.

I’m dubious of being able to measure that claim.

Only by the highest standards in psychology research, n=33 undergraduates

n=33 ain't bad. That means you will have data on 33 Calibri participants, and you get 33 more Arial participants as well.

What specific screening protocol would be used? Have the sensitivity and specificity been quantified? How repeatable are the results for the same patient population across different practitioners?

Therapy can often create problems ex nihilio if there isn't something obvious to handle e.g.: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000579672...

> eight-session DBT skills-training intervention (‘WISE Teens) (n = 563) or class-as-per-usual (n = 508). On average, the ‘WISE Teens’ intervention did not improve outcomes with significant deteriorations or null effects observed across outcomes relative to class-as-per-usual immediately post-intervention. The largest deteriorations were observed for depressive (d = −0.22; 95% CI = −0.35, −0.08) and anxiety symptoms (d = −0.28; 95%CI - = −0.41, −0.14

"ex nihilo" means "outta nowhere" for the normies like me.

This was probably the first time I saw the phrase used for something besides referring to the Minecraft mod that's used for skyblock packs.

That study was done on early adolescents. How generalizable are those results to adult, white-collar workers?

many adults have experienced the same. or say they have, in my experience. as to if it’s denial vs reality? good luck untangling the biases in any attempt to figure that out!

‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ vs a world with a large segment of mental disorders basically resulting from someone having an existential need for something to not be broken (and no tools or time/resources to fix it).

It’s a sort of placebo effect. Diagnosing someone can create or amplify the effects of the diagnosis.

Any treatment has iatrogenic potential, even therapy.

The commonly accepted rate of iatrogenic harm from therapy is 5%[1]. The six listed mechanisms don't involve diagnosis.

1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-...

My purely anecdotal experience—my [then] wife began seeing a therapist to help with her seasonal depression. She didn’t work, and spent a lot of time on social media. Her therapist encouraged her to ‘choose you, put yourself first, etc’, this encouragement gave way to her early midlife crisis, infidelity, divorce, substance abuse, and her losing custody of our young children.

Therapy can very helpful to many people. I also think therapy can be equally detrimental, (or more-so) to many people. Therapists are people doing a job. Some people are bad at their jobs. A patient implicitly trusting a therapist giving harmful advice can have far reaching, long lasting consequences.

I had a similar experience. Things were bad before but therapy increased my wife's (now separated) bad behaviors and instilled her with a newfound confidence that doesn't really fit her life situation.

It also led to MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) and playing God for the therapist.

Edit: then again, don’t out the therapist. I don’t want anyone getting sued for libel. The world has enough problems.

We need some kind of screening for these high-stress PTSD inducing roles ... a Voight-Kampff test. Or limit the number of years one can be in these roles.

Won’t someone think of the shareholders???

> with strict confidentiality so they can be open without jeopardizing their career.

I'd go a step farther, make it anonymous by design so that real name and identity are never disclosed. That way it builds the confidentiality into the system instead of just giving the illusion of it

but... this is probably never going to happen (at least at scale), it isn't profitable enough

but a good historical analogy would be those confession booths in churches. except, instead of going to the local one the confessor goes to one that's far away enough

Ultimately this is the consistent problem with the way we deal with mental health problems in general. The solution is to not let it get to crisis levels by proactively addressing problems the same way we deal with physical issues. Imagine if when someone sprained their ankle we demanded they keep walking on it until it rips, and only then do we try to do something about it (ineptly, of course).

How do you get anyone to take an action that jeopardizes their career? By making their survival not depend upon their career.

That may sound glib, but I don't mean it to be. If there's a pilot that is hiding their mental health issues because they'll otherwise risk destitution, that's a problem that's solved by a social safety net. Such a safety net would also solve many other social ills, like people stuck with abusive employers, and so on.

A lot of pilots like flying planes. A lot of pilots also enjoy ancillary aspects of their career like seeing the world or, notoriously, sex with flight attendants. Telling pilots that, if they open up to a therapist, they can just live on the dole afterwards, is cold comfort.

Sure but if a pilot is contemplating suicide I’m not sure they’re enjoying a whole lot of anything, ancillary to their career or not.

From what I have read in biographies on suicidal people in bands and performers, who show similar traits, they can/do enjoy things... it's just they are constantly looking for "more" and can't really get the easy fulfillment they used to, since it's hard to outperform their career highs.

I imagine it's similar with some pilots.

> sex with flight attendants

I can't tell whether that is a stereotype or not.

If you're competent enough to be a pilot you're competent enough to make money other ways so it's not destitution. The issue is losing the level of income they make (more than any safety net could pay) and a loss of purpose since most commercial pilots are pilots to the core. Not to mention status and social standing.

Also: at least in the U.S., being an airline pilot is one of those career decisions that only really starts to pay off financially/lifestyle-wise later in your career. The pay and conditions of (say) mainline 777 captain vs. regional ERJ first-officer are very, very different and almost everything is seniority-based.

> If you're competent enough to be a pilot you're competent enough to make money other ways

I believe an experienced commercial pilot makes around 200K? If I’m 50 have no professional skills except being a commercial airline pilot, what kind of work do I qualify for that has comparable pay?

> The issue is losing the level of income they make (more than any safety net could pay)

Why can’t this be solved by a tool like insurance? It only needs to cover something like like 80% of the career earnings of people who would be removed for mental health reasons up to the mandatory retirement age of 67, minus early retirement benefits if any.

Unless they are a huge number of pilots that would be removed for mental reasons, it seems affordable to me.

I acknowledged they probably couldn't get the same pay in my post... A social safety net has the same problem. My point was they could retool and have above average skills to lean complex machinery, handle stress, make decisions, ect. I don't think risk of destitution is three major issue.

I agree insurance is probably the best way, but even that doesn't help with the purpose and social status part, which I think are the largest factors. Plus if the insurance covers career advancement losses the incentives become really adverse, if it doesn't there's still massive economic losses.

I think any solution would also need a way to get back in. No need to lose everything because you had a bad time once.

>Plus if the insurance covers career advancement losses the incentives become really adverse.

Fair concern, I think we can screen for people faking it for money. Also, in these situations the payout is usually somewhat less than you would earn working.

I get that the end of a career you worked your life for is really hard, but unfortunately it's not an uncommon experience and being a pilot is not a right. A payout for a significant portion of your future earnings is far more than most get in that situation.

How about just not making their career be harmed by taking actions that solve real problems and actually improve the business and industry?

I like what you're saying, but I'm not sure that's entirely workable regarding edge cases.

If a pilot fantasizes about crashing planes and killing people, and tells someone about this, I'm not sure I want there to be a way for them to keep their career. Sure lets treat them, get them better, but putting them back in a plane? Is it worth the risk?

You put people like that back in planes, and well, eventually one got the keys that shouldn't have. I can imagine TV reporting after a suicide crash "well... we knew they used to fantasize about crashing planes full of people, but they said they were better now and we didn't want to damage their career so we put them back in the captains seat". Help them, retrain them for another job, but don't give them the keys to the plane.

In real life I keep reading about an increase in "near collisions" on runways caused by low performing air traffic controllers that keep getting shuffled around instead of being fired (having their career harmed).

If people with known mental issues can't get guns, why would we give them the keys to a large airplane full of people?

First off, people with known mental issues (depression, ADHD or suicidal thoughts) actually can legally purchase / possess guns, silencers, machineguns and grenade launchers (assuming they have the proper paperwork/taxes paid). They only become a prohibited possessor when they are adjudicated mentally defective (a legal process) or have been institutionalized at a mental hospital.

Secondly, issues like this aren't a 0 or 1, they are on a scale. Someone can be depressed without being suicidal and someone can be suicidal without being homicidal. Someone can have ADHD without being a danger to passengers.

The FAA treats all mental issues effectively as the same thing, which results in pilots being barred from flying. Someone feeling down for a month or two after their wife dying after 30 years of marriage gets the same treatment as someone who ideates killing a plane full of passengers.

I was friends with a long-haul pilot that had cancer, and he joked that FAA recertification process was worse than the chemo.

Jumping to mental health already? On what basis?

Ill go out on a limb and guess the trying to kill everyone part.

Mass murder seems more the MO of a political protestor.

I see where you are coming from, but equating mental illness with violent is problematic. The mentally ill are more likely to be victims than perpetrators. They may be over-represented in the judicial system, as a consequence of post-Reagan shift to using jails and prisons to deal with people that formerly would have been under the care of mental health professionals.

The following was written in the context of mass shootings, but I believe it applies to this incident and other "trying to kill everyone" incidents.

"Four assumptions frequently arise in the aftermath of mass shootings in the United States: (1) that mental illness causes gun violence, (2) that psychiatric diagnosis can predict gun crime, (3) that shootings represent the deranged acts of mentally ill loners, and (4) that gun control "won't prevent" another Newtown (Connecticut school mass shooting). Each of these statements is certainly true in particular instances. Yet, as we show, notions of mental illness that emerge in relation to mass shootings frequently reflect larger cultural stereotypes and anxieties about matters such as race/ethnicity, social class, and politics. These issues become obscured when mass shootings come to stand in for all gun crime, and when "mentally ill" ceases to be a medical designation and becomes a sign of violent threat." <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25496006/>

edit: not the place to discuss this.

> Attempting to murder a bunch of people isn't a mental health issue in the traditional sense

> need to be in hospital

It clearly is a mental health issue.

Whether it's a disqualifying, treatable, etc is a valid argument but it is certainly a mental health issue.

Well, no. People commit murder all the time despite being in sound mental being. You could argue that to commit murder requires you to have mental health issues, but that's not always true.

But in this scenario and many others there are strong distinctions between people who commit suicide, people who commit murder-suicide and people who commit mass murder-suicide. Understanding that distinction is important because one is a risk to themselves only and another is a risk to others around them.

The flaw is of course we bucket all of them the same way for pilots, which leads to the last two stewing and hiding.

"Mental health issue" = pathological thinking

> there are strong distinctions between people who commit suicide, people who commit murder-suicide and people who commit mass murder-suicide

Sure.

Who are the people committing murder all the time despite being in sound mental being?

Here's one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing

The degrees of accepted violence is cultural. Plenty of people kill out of anger but anger does not make one insane. Unless you defined criminal behavior as mental illness.

Also I believe you're misunderstanding what was said, people as a whole, as in humanity, commit all kinds of atrocities. Mental illness is not required to be cruel or callous.

Is every soldier mentally ill simply because they are capable of killing on command?

Murder is an unlawful killing. What a soldier does in a declared war is not unlawful (in general, at least when within the rules of engagement).

I was essentially quoting the person i was replying to

When someone does it with sound mental state, it's usually called "killing" and not "murder."

I.e. she shot and killed her attempted rapist.

The problem pilots face as pointed out by OP is that pilots facing minor depression who seek treatment face massive repercussions to their career/income, potentially completely losing their career, so instead of treating minor mental health issues they go un-treated (or self medicated) until they're massive mental health issues.

Mass murder is not the natural conclusion of minor (or even major) untreated mental health issues.

unfortunately however, untreated depression increases the rates of suicide

In the abstract that's right, but pilot suicide is a well-documented cause of some fatal passenger plane crashes. I doubt the impetus is unique to pilots, but the means is.

> A pilot's access to a plane feels relevant to suicide (because it's an obvious way to kill yourself) but there's lots of ways to kill yourself that don't involve mass murder: a pilot is able to put a bullet in their head

You've given me a shitty idea that might work some of the time: We give every airline pilot a pistol. This way if they ever feel the urge to kill themselves they can do it in a hotel room instead of with the airplane. It ensures that the most convenient way for a pilot to die isn't crashing their plane. It will probably slightly increase the number of pilots who kill themselves, but decrease the number who do it by crashing their plane.

...hey, I did say it was a shitty idea.

> as soon as you self report you’ve basically jeopardised your career and you’re grounded for a minimum of 6 months while you wait for FAA physicians

That's best case scenario.

For mild depression, you will probably only be out of a job for only several months.

For ADHD, you will be out of a job forever. (Commercial airlines, banner towing, freight on Alaskan puddle jumpers...anything)

- Yours truly, the Good Guys at the FAA

Holy crap, ADHD is disqualifying? That's a little surprising, given it's a relatively common diagnosis. Is that due to a side-effect of medication, or simply an inability to juggle the mental demands of being a pilot?

If it were side effects, that would be surprising given that the air force provides those same medications to pilots as a performance booster.

Military pilots are only provided performance boosters in special circumstances, not as a general daily event. Such circumstances include long ocean crossings when flying as the only pilot, or in extended combat tempo operations where constant sixteen+ hour days can wear you down. Even when provided such medications it is under the direct care of a flight surgeon who is usually embedded in the flying unit and knows in depth the medical history of each of those pilots. Additionally, pilots are tested in advance of their reactions to such medications so there's less of a surprise when the need for them arises. They're also only issued by the relevant medical authority and voluntarily taken or not taken as the situation dictates.

IIRC, the medication and the diagnosis are each individual disqualifiers.

> That's a little surprising

Not if you're familiar with the FAA.

> Is that due to

It's due to a condition called CYA.

I’m not officially diagnosed with ADHD but I’m fairly certain I have it, and believe me I would not trust myself to fly a plane —at least not a commercial airliner, the number of things to keep track of simultaneously is frightening to me.

You can't even get treatment with drugs for mental health – even for a PPL. e.g. There's only three old depression drugs that are even considered and those come with all kinds FAA caveats and conditions. IMO, there's the stigma, and then there's the FAA discouraging treatment and reporting entirely.

It's changing, though. There was an FAA rep at OSH'23 that held a forum and admitted they're not prepared to handle an entire generation of young pilots that were exposed to ADHD medications as children. He's working to change the system but it's going to be a while.

There have been some small changes here and there. One example is the fast-track change to ADHD history. From first glances you can skip the CogscreenAE if you've been off the meds for 4 years and pass some other criteria.

https://www.faa.gov/ame_guide/media/ADHD_fast_track_eval_gen...

> wait for FAA physicians

Could be worse, like waiting on the FWS.

Kill collars. If two or three other crew provide the instructions, they could disable another crew

Okay. Look. Now you've just introduced an aggravating social factor into the crew population.

This is not a recipe for a mentally healthy subpopulation.

It’s the opposite of standard catch 22. You have to be crazy to self report… if you are not crazy, you don’t have to self report.

As it happens, this is very close to the original Catch 22: only crazy pilots would voluntarily fly missions during war, and crazy pilots are not allowed to fly, but if you realize that it's crazy to fly, you're obviously not crazy and thus have to fly.

When the pilot unions where strong they had early pensions for medical reasons, for this very reason.

I'm grounded for life by the FAA due to a history of mental illness.

Here's what I would accept: a stipulation/restriction on my medical regarding how often I go to therapy, when, and maybe even giving the therapist power to ground me temporarily.

But it would have to apply to only people like me with that restriction.

And that's for a history of depression. I don't really deal with clinical depression now.

Instead, the FAA wanted me on antidepressants, with all of their side effects, and I could not justify that. My wife has never known me on antidepressants (we met over a year after I got off), and I don't know how it would affect my marriage.

But constant therapy and checks? Yeah, I would take that in a heartbeat. I even grounded myself one day after a night where I had to deal with external problems; I wanted to be safe.

IOW, the FAA treats me like a problem; I would love if they treated me as a professional, and I would respond in kind, by being the kind of professional they want.

> How do you fix the mental health issue with pilots?

Have the ability for someone on the ground to take over if there is a suspicion of this. Remove the pilot’s ability to disable key systems like in the past examples.

The Seattle Times adds a detail that isn't in other articles: the off duty pilot had successfully shut off fuel flow using the same handles:

----

To activate they must reach up and pull the handle down and turn it to lock it in place. Pulling the handle cuts electrical and hydraulic power to the engine and closes the fuel line.

Turning the handle then releases a pressurized bottle of fire-suppressing halon gas.

Alaska Air spokesperson Alexa Rudin said via email that “fortunately some residual fuel remains in the line, and the quick reaction of our crew to reset the handles restored fuel flow and prevented fuel starvation.”

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/alask...

I'm not surprised he was successful (in pulling the fire handle -- not in taking down the aircraft). They are designed to be quick (but deliberate), because, if you're pulling one (or god forbid two) you're already in a serious situation where you have 50 other things going on. He probably was done before they even realized what he was doing.

Fortunate that they were able to restore fuel flow before the engine was starved for fuel, but, it would have very unlikely been a catastrophic situation had they lost both engines. Modern airliners are designed to restart their engines in flight through various means and can glide for many many miles from cruise altitude giving the crew ample time to do an orderly restart. See: Gimli Glider.

I say this not to excuse or minimize his actions but to emphasize to nervous flyers (like myself) exactly how redundant and safe modern aircraft are and how well trained modern crews are.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZWjSUDTpOg

There are quite a few of these instances, a Germanwings pilot, this one and MH370 is suspected to be a suicide case as well, and many more (see Wikipedia page linked below). There may well be more than that where the truth will never come out.

Pilots are not immune to suicidal ideation, the problem is that they have a unique combination of responsibility, means and opportunity. Roughly 4% of all adults consider suicide at some point in their lives and this isn't any different for pilots.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot

The FedEx spear gun one always stands out to me too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Express_Flight_705

The story, in particular the Mayday episode of it, is really harrowing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxDxwXE_Tv0

Holy crap just reading the wikipedia page has my heart pounding. The sheer evil of planning to murder three of your co-workers so your ex-wife can pocket the insurance money.

For anyone not yet motivated to watch the above: as I recall the sentence "bloody footprints on the ceiling" is involved.

Learned something new today, I'm surprised it's as low as 4%. Guess that explains some of the comments here.

I was actually surprised it was as high as 4%.

It's interesting to square with ~13% of adults taking antidepressants. Though sure, depression can be more than (and even exclude) suicidal thoughts. (From https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db377.htm )

That's scary high. Those aren't candy, and that's prescription based so a doctor must have evaluated the patient and seen fit to prescribe these.

Already on VASAviation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbU6E6VJx30

The fact that these pilots always (seemingly) remain cool as a cucumber, despite the fact that someone just tried to murder them and 82 other people, always amazes me.

They probably got the shakes after they landed. When your life depends on getting a job done, adrenaline kicks in and you get it done. Plus flying is a very standardized, checklist-oriented task. They can fall back to their routines as a distraction from what just happened.

It's absolutely incredible.

You can listen to pilots moments before they are about to die and they are nearly universally calm and collected.

I like to remember that when things are figuratively on fire.

They’re both selected and trained for that quality, as are the rest of the flight crew.

When asked by ATC, the pilots mention the threat level escalated to a 4 (at 2:39).

I wasn't familiar with this scale so I looked it up, it's from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO):

    Level 1 — Disruptive behavior (verbal)
    Level 2 — Physically abusive behavior
    Level 3 — Life-threatening behavior (or display of a weapon)
    Level 4 — Attempted or actual breach of the flight crew compartment

Interesting with this incident, it was "technically" -- in the most pedantic sense of the word -- not a level four.

The guy never breached the cockpit, he was already IN the cockpit!

Scary stuff, fortunately he was both deranged and incompetent.

> The guy never breached the cockpit, he was already IN the cockpit!

IMHO breaching the cockpit by physically forcing the door and breaching it by deception are essentially the same in the end.

Thankfully this ended as well as it could have and might help in preventing something similar in the future.

I think they are using this list in the most practical sense possible rather than wordsmithing and if you look at it as a multiple-choice set then that's the answer that fits best. They would have used the same code if it was either one of the pilots that went mad.

As a European pilot I'm always so surprised by the unprofessional incident handling of American ATC. Seriously, this crew is shaken up, someone in the cockpit interfered with the flight. Now they're making an unplanned approach and landing. Meaning lots of work, briefing, checklists, communicating with the company. They're busy. Why is ATC asking them three times what gate they're going to. Never heard that in Europe. Let ground figure it out, direct them to an available gate that works for law enforcement...

And even crazier to ask two times what the previous threat level has been, "for our report", what?? Write your report when we're on the ground. Figure it out yourself. Absolutely no need for those questions during flight.

They needed the gate number in order to direct law enforcement to the correct gate to arrest the guy.

They should have better methods of obtaining that information, but, I doubt they do.

They did need that information and I don't think it's a poor reflection of that controller.

Sure. But in other places ATC would arrange a gate, request law enforcement to that gate, then have ground control direct the aircraft to that gate after landing. No need for the crew to discuss and relay gate assignment to ATC while in the air.

After seeing where those handles were, how in the hell did the crazy pilot fail to pull them before getting kicked out of the cockpit by pilots who were presumably strapped in when he officially flew off the handle? Did he do the old "in 30 seconds I'm going to execute my evil master plan" villain announcement trope from the movies while twirling his mustache?

Based on a comment below: He succeeded, but it's reversible and the engine doesn't even go out immediately. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37992730

That's scary, now let me add to that. Imagine if he was one of the pilots allowed to carry firearms on the plane.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43377461

He was commuting to be crew on a 737 flight. No need for a weapon to kill a lot of people when you are at the controls of the plane.

When you’re a passenger in the jump seat, not being able to shoot the pilots made it more difficult to kill said people.

the pilot and first officer subdued him. if he had a gun he could have shot them both first and been successful.

The point being made is that he could've just crashed his next own flight.

From what I understand these things can happen on the spur of the moment without any logic to it.

He's a 737 pilot, he could wait until he's jumpseating on a widebody plane and strike then.

we're all assuming this pilot wanted to crash "any" plane. do we know that? what if he were trying to murder someone on this plane ?

> All this, and not an extra cent in their wages.

> "There's not much we can do for them apart from say 'thank you'," says Sarandrea. "We send them a certificate of appreciation every five years. When they retire, we give them a memento."

You could... pay them more for the extra risk they take? Very American brain movr, don't pay more for higher risk, and then proudly state it. Patriotism at its finest.

After the Germanwings disaster[0] and the near miss here, I wonder if it is time to re-evaluate the reinforced cockpit doors. Basically, every single passenger on an airplane knows that if someone is trying to attack the doors or otherwise hijack the plane, you have to stop them no matter what. Even if the hijackers have guns or knives, you still have a better chance trying to fight them.

On the other hand, a single pilot behind a reinforced cockpit door can bring down the entire aircraft.

0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

Agreed. The difficulty of the trade-off to me indicates that we are near the optimum in aviation security (at least concerning cockpit doors).

Unlike Germanwings, this incident thankfully didn’t involve a single pilot behind a cockpit door. Most airlines banned such a scenario after Germanwings. Here, the flight deck was occupied fully and the two on-duty pilots were able to overpower the assailant successfully.

Even without reinforced doors, blowing the fire bottles on all engines or nose-downing the aircraft at the end of the runway will bring down an aircraft if a pilot is intent on suicide, despite there being another pilot right next to you.

> After the Germanwings disaster[0] and the near miss here, I wonder if it is time to re-evaluate the reinforced cockpit doors.

And while we're at it, a host of other aviation "security" rules as well, particularly the liquids rule, the insanity of confiscating nail clippers, or the power-trips that TSA or its sometimes just as nuts European counterparts pull off.

> . . . the insanity of confiscating nail clippers . . . .

I fly with those all the time, never had them confiscated.

This is tangentially addressed in one of my favorite articles of all time, talking about the importance of strong encryption without backdoors: https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-colors-3177...

The point being, there is no perfect trade off, but that this one is much better than the alternative. In this case, I think most airlines have moved to the incrementally better trade off of ensuring at least two people in the cockpit at all times.

Side note: Anyone in the greater area north of Seattle, Paine Field is a breath of fresh air compared to SeaTac.

Small airports rock if they fly direct to where you want to go.

I’ll take a layover out of a small airport. Security is sooooo much easier.

Depending on details they also can rock if they don't have direct flights.

My local airport only has 2 direct flight destinations, both of which are major hubs. So almost all trips have a layover. We're located a 2-4 hour drive from 4 much larger airports. By the time you factor in our tiny airport never having a security wait and the 10 minute drive to get there, it takes a lot of layover time to match driving to a bigger city and arriving there 2 hours early. By the time you factor in gas, parking, etc - the price is about the same too (that is tickets cost more, but overall trip cost is equalish).

Definitely worth it for everyone to look at though - just because the flight itself may be cheaper from a bigger airport doesn't mean the overall trip cost will be less, and the small airport experience is generally much nicer than the large airport one for ticketing and security.

Cheap flights, expensive parking. Paine Field doesn’t have massive garages like SeaTac. I’ve taken the flight from the article and my airfare was lower than my parking costs for just a weekend trip.

Ubers are expensive but only ~20% more than SeaTac with a Cap Hill starting point.

All things considered, Paine Field is my first choice airport for the area.

SeaTac can go directly from Capitol Hill via the rail and not worry about traffic. Can't do that with Paine Field.

Light rail is a huge boon for SeaTac, that's for sure.

Security and the whole "get to the gate" process is just so easy at Paine Field that it's hard to go back if your flight works out there.

No lounges is a downside though.

There's a bus from the free park and ride. It's quick and easy, especially with an Orca card. There's a little bit of walk from the bus station but you're about to sit for a bunch of time so it's probably a bonus.

AVHerald page. Will get updated as more information becomes available: http://avherald.com/h?article=510218dd&opt=0

Can you restart the engines after the fire extinguish handles are pulled?

If just pulled, on most types you can push them back in and that would reconnect hydraulics and generators etc. A restart should be possible.

If you push and then twist to discharge the fire bottles I'm not sure you can restart, given that the discharge could cause damage.

Sure, if you have enough altitude after you start the APU and reset the engines. The extinguishers contain halon or something equivalent, which will be cleared out when you spin up the engine.

But I doubt there's a procedure for it. If you have enough altitude to restart, you have enough altitude for an emergency landing. It's better to follow the checklist and land on a runway with no engines, where emergency equipment is available. Rather than getting creative and crashing in a field because you failed to restart them.

It's much safer to land with engines running than dead stick. The crew is going to try to get the engines running if at all possible.

> It's better to follow the checklist

Indeed it is. The checklist will have you attempt a restart.

Landing a jet without engines means landing a jet without hydraulics, which is difficult. The emergency power from the Ram Air Turbine (drops from under the plane when engines fail to maintain some hydraulic pressure) runs out when the plane is about to land/crash as its airspeed is relatively low- then the hydraulics are barely working and you don’t have “power steering” anymore.

In past incidents, pilots plot a course for a glide landing, and then work to get the engines started.

The scary part is that he could very well have had this mental episode while in full control of his own aircraft, and at that point no one could have done anything to stop him.

Anyone have any knowledge of what would have happened had he successfully pulled the fire extinguisher handles? I have to imagine it would still be recoverable? Though I do understand that you’d be having to deal with recovering the engines at the same time as dealing with a hostile individual in the cockpit.

Depends what stage of flight they were in. The engines will shut off as the extinguishing system is activated, so if they were shortly after takeoff, they might not have enough time or enough energy to do an emergency landing back at the airport.

In a worst-case scenario, your plane becomes a glider (see some famous fuel-starvation incidents which result in flare-out).

I suspect the jets have restart procedures available and can "flush" the fire extinguisher "juice" out.

At FL360 (36,000') the plane has a glide ratio of 20:1; so they would have been able to glide 136 miles.

the only problem is that if there is no running jet engine, there is no more oxygen (produced from bleed air) and the oxygen masks last for 10-20 minutes...

The APU would still be able, to an extent, to provide pressurisation even if both engines are disabled.

I would guess that the cockpit has a longer supply and perhaps they could descend faster to a safely survivable altitude. You’ll be able to pick up speed doing so and so a lot of that energy for gliding is still available, though some extra would be wasted due to the higher speed and longer time spent in higher pressure atmosphere.

According to discussion about this on avherald.com, yes the engine can be restarted after the fire suppression handle is reset.

https://avherald.com/h?article=510218dd&opt=0

It’s strange that he did this when in the jump seat, and with other crew members present.

Post 9/11, it is more common to wait for pilots to wait for the other pilot to use the restroom, then lock the anti-hijacking door. At that point, there’s effectively unlimited time to down / hijack the plane.

it is, but I suppose it points to not being premeditated

For this reason US airlines are required to have a minimum of two crew members inside the cockpit at all times. When a working pilot needs to use the restroom a flight attendant will temporarily take their place inside the cockpit.

If you sit up front its not unusual to see them go through this dance which involves barricading the front galley area with drink carts first.

I wish barricading the front galley with a cart was mandatory practice. It would've saved me the embarrassment of a suspected hijack by me.

I remember one time on Delta sitting upfront in first and needing to use the bathroom immediately after waking up from a short snooze.

A flight attendant was standing in front of the galley and started barking at me that I needed to sit down when I started to get up. Baffled by this, I checked the seatbelt light, which was off, and tried to explain that I needed to go the restroom, only for her to repeat that I needed to sit down.

Only afterward, after I saw the pilot sneek out of the bathroom, did I put two and two together.

I understand the need to be vigilant, as well as the fact that you don't want to indicate an opportunity for malice by telling passengers that the pilot is outside of the cockpit.

So I’m sure there's no easy way of dealing with this. But blocking the way with a cart will have many, myself included, unconsciously waiting for the cart to be out of the way. Whatever the case, I don't think barking orders is the smartest thing to do, as it risks escalating the situation by evoking a response of equal weight.

A simple solution may be the “bathroom availability” lights that I’ve seen on some planes. If the bathroom is occupied and everyone in the main cabin can see it, they’re less-likely to get up to go to the bathroom, especially considering the aisle is only wide enough for one person.

Of course the pilot should be able to flip the status to “occupied” before they even get up, that way no one gets up as the pilot is making their way out, and it kind of gives them priority (which they should have anyway for obvious reasons).

An even simpler solution would be: “hi there’s a pilot in the restroom currently, can I please have you sit down until they are finished”

The stress in this situation was caused by the flight attendant escalating the situation.

I’m tired of people citing “mental health” issues as a way to soften any wrong doing by people who should otherwise be thought of as murderers with criminal intentions and no regard for human life. These people should be locked up and kept far away from civilized society, not sympathized.

Plenty of people with mental issues get through life without wanting to kill others off. And a lot of people who want to kill others don’t even have mental health issues, they’re just evil or apathetic.

I don't think that's the intent.

I think the intent is to analyze it in a way to avoid other potentially harmful incidents.

psychopaths often have brain abnormalities, both in terms of activation (seen from fMRI studies) and actual physical white matter structure. [0]

psychopaths are also evil. it's a personality disorder. it's not separable from the self like depression or schizophrenia, it's a disease of the self. we're just learning the physical aspects that lead to what we condemn.

0. https://www.med.wisc.edu/news-and-events/2011/november/psych...

Without motive, this is just speculation. But, mental health / stability of pilots is not an easy thing to track, as the GermanWings crash taught us[0].

[0] https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-madness-in-our-metho...

Do you figure an airplane counts as a “dangerous weapon” for the purposes of the sentence enhancement at the end of 49 U.S.C. 46504?

>Federal officials allege Joseph David Emerson tried to shut down the engines in midflight and had to be subdued by the two pilots.

Why couldn't he? Does it take a long time to press the button, do you need several people to press it at once...?

I think First Officer can override the decision in these situations

No. There are two fire handles in the overhead panel, one for each engine (and a similar one for the APU on some types). You pull it, that immediately shuts off fuel, hydraulics, generators etc on that engine. Twist it to discharge the fire extinguishers on that engine. No override, no extra steps.

In case of an engine fire the procedure is to put a hand on the handle, the other pilot checks and confirms, and then you pull it.

Even if he could shut down the engines, the plane doesn’t fall immediately from the sky. They would have plenty of time to turn them on again.

Discharging the fire bottle into the engine complicates things a bit.

That depends a lot on the flight phase. Losing all engine power seconds after take-off is very often not recoverable.

I would hope that the button would not be responsive if the plane is literally midflight, or have some failsafes to prevent exactly this kind of situation.

Obviously I'm not a pilot but I can't imagine many scenarios where a commercial flight would want to actively shutdown the engines with just a simple command while midair. But I'm willing to be corrected if thats not the case.

> I can't imagine many scenarios where a commercial flight would want to actively shutdown the engines with just a simple command while midair.

The scenario has already been mentioned elsewhere in this thread: an engine fire. If the engine is actually on fire, you want the flight crew to shut it down as quickly as possible, because the plane could be seconds away from a jet fuel explosion.

The engine shutdown is there in case of engine fires. Gliding without engine power is a bad situation, but being on fire is worse.

And usually it's just one engine that's malfunctioning, so you shut that one down and fly to the nearest airport on the remaining engine.

I know nothing about airplanes, but surely it would be a multi-step process involving override modes, power-down phases, klaxons, red blinking lights, warning messages, physically separate switches, and so forth?

Two steps: Pull the fire handle, then turn the fire handle.

It's a valid question if that is safe enough. Once you release the fire suppressant into the engine, I think engine restart becomes impossible.

On the 175, pulling the handle cuts fuel, hydraulics, and bleed air. Turning the fire handle discharges a bottle. Turning it the other way discharges the other bottle. It has been reported that in the Sim turning the handle back re-establishes fuel, hydraulics and bleed air, and engine restart is theoretically possible, however it's never really been done in the air before. I don't think it's documented anywhere what really can occur - since once you've established that the engine is on fire you aren't in any scenario going to try to bring it back online afterwards.

Do it for both engines. Yikes. That's a lot of workload.

It turns out there was enough fuel in the lines to keep the engines running until his action could be reversed after subduing him.

Not in the article but what was the int? To actually kill everyone?

Too soon to know. Could be another undiagnosed mental issue.

It seems like he was on his way to be on duty in a 737 [0], so if he wanted to crash a plane, he'd probably been more successful a couple hours later.

But who knows, people have episodes. It sounded to me like they had a fight, but no details so pure speculation.

0. https://abcnews.go.com/US/alaska-airlines-flight-diverted-af...

Somewhere buried in the reporting he had said he thought he was asleep and wanted to wake up.

He had been up for 40 hours without sleep at that point, so he was definitely messed up.

No idea what you do about this but it’s one of my biggest fears when flying. Fortunately you have two pilots but I don’t like seeing one step out to use the restroom ever.

A flight attendant has to get in the cockpit if one goes to the restroom, they cannot be left alone.

*In the US

In Europe, EASA recommends this since the Germanwings accident but it's not an actual rule, each company decides what they want to do.

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/74912/what-is-t...

Yikes. This is the flight I take home from visiting family usually multiple times per year. Love PAE as an airport.

Why was he in the cockpit? I thought non-flight crew (attendants and pilots) were given regular passenger seats?

Often off-duty pilots get some seat in the cockpit. I guess if they’re moving around for the company they can get an actual seat (edit: not so here, says they were en route to work for the airline, but maybe if you’re “commuting” from home it’s different). Not sure how it works if they just want to fly somewhere for free (would they just have to go in uniform or verboten in any way in the cockpit like that?)

Other than the safety issue, if this person causes that program to end, every pilot is going to have it out for them even moreso (but hard to imagine it being any worse than it is).

If this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Express_Flight_705 didn't end deadheading, this event won't. Whether the airlines are looking for an excuse to end deadheading I don't know.

I doubt they’re trying to end deadheading as a whole (no idea about putting deadheaders in jump seats - though I assume not since those are non-revenue seats). If the airlines think there’s a pilot shortage now, just wait until they can only hire pilots from operational hubs. Deadheading is an essential part of getting pilots and attendants to where they’re supposed to be at the start of their work days.

> just wait until they can only hire pilots from operational hubs.

Doubly not going to be happy if they have to live in bases in California and pay income taxes there instead of commuting in from no-income-tax states like Washington.

Can deadhead in a regular seat on a passenger plane. Invite them in if needed only. Airlines won’t like the loss of a revenue seat.

The doors&locks are really good now. So good you can even lock out your co-pilot while they stop in the bathroom… (an argument in favour of having a 3rd deadheading pilot next to the others)

From that link:

In response to the incident and the circumstances of the co-pilot's involvement, aviation authorities in some countries implemented new regulations that require the presence of two authorised personnel in the cockpit at all times.

So if a pilot has to visit the lavatory, a flight attendant or some other qualified person has to replace the pilot on the flight deck (not in actual duty of course, just not leaving a single person alone there).

I was looking for the page on deadheading which was linked from your page and usefully gives a list of when deadheads have been helpful and when they gave been malicious: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadheading_(employee).

It's hard to see a policy solution for this: if you're an authorized passenger for that seat you'd also be eligible to fly a plane and wreck it when you're not a passenger. There's no material reduction in risk (other than in this isolated instance) to the change.

More importantly, if you have at least the chance of catching someone like this (assuming it's all correct) when they're in the jump seat vs in the pilot's seat, it reduces risk slightly.

It depends.

> In airplanes, jump seats—which are officially termed auxiliary crew stations—can be located in the flight deck. In cockpits, jump seats are provided for individuals who are not operating the aircraft. These might include trainee pilots, off-duty crew members in transition to another airport (see deadheading), government officials (such as Federal Aviation Administration staff), or airline staff.

> Some airplanes do not have jump seats in the cockpit, while others have one or two.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_seat

From the article

> Alaska Airlines said the off-duty pilot was sitting in the flight deck jump seat -- which is in the cockpit

Commuting pilots will often sit in the flight deck if there is no room in the back.

This is the reason. The airlines do it so they don't lose a revenue seat in the passenger area. Allowing the deadheading crew to ride in the jumpseats (which never earn revenue) they can still sell all their passenger seats.

And this flight was probably completely or almost completely full.

Based on airline, cities, and time, you can guess this is Alaska Airlines flight 2059. From there, it's easy to confirm it was diverted to Portland. Both these sites show it was diverted to Portland yesterday:

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/as2059

https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/ASA2059

So, it is an Embraer 175. The airline and SeatGuru have seat maps:

https://www.alaskaair.com/content/travel-info/our-aircraft/e...

https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Alaska_Airlines/Alaska_Air...

Those only show 76 passenger seats, so the numbers don't quite add up, but the point is it's a smaller passenger jet.

Tangent: why don't the numbers add up? Could be they reconfigured the seats and added a row. Could be reported wrong. Could be children under 2 who don't require a seat. (See https://www.alaskaair.com/content/travel-info/policies/trave... .)

It's common to have a few lap infants in the plane, so you could have 76 passengers, 3 lap infants, 4 crew, 1 crazy jumpseater. We often fly with 80+ people on board.

Source: I am a E175 pilot.

Pilots need to be allowed in the cockpit during flight, for very obvious reasons. The fact that he was off-duty doesn't really change the security calculation. It might as well have been an on-duty pilot that had pulled this stunt.

I am just grateful that it didn't turn into a disaster.

If the pilot and copilot are in the cockpit, and a third off-duty pilot is traveling, what is the "very obvious" reason he needs to be in the cockpit?

Makes life easier if one of the pilots needs to visit the loo or eat something, as long as the third pilot is type rated. And besides that, it can also be useful in the case of a serious incident to have a third capable person at hand to run checklists, communicate with engineering, navigation or whatever else.

It's not obvious that he needs to be in the cockpit, rather it's obvious that there is no security threat to allowing a pilot to occupy the jump seat. The trust they're given to fly the plane is a superset of the trust required to be in the cockpit at all.

In addition to training etc, yes there are positives to having a certificated third person for "crew resource management". They are expected to observe and speak up if the PIC and SIC miss something, and to help in an emergency. In UA232 for example, a third pilot was instrumental in saving lives; it took six hands to make the airport.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232

That's a helluva read.

I recommend watching the Blancolirio channel on YouTube, Juan is a 777 pilot and has I think hundreds of episodes on crashes and near crashes that have occurred. Third pilots have saved countless lives.

The insane thing about the Lion Air Flight 610 crash is in the same plane a day before it was avoided because the 3rd pilot who didn't have to follow any particular checklist realized there was a trim stabilizer issue and had the pilots turn it off.

Now, I have no idea why that plane flew again the next day at all. But it did with two pilots and all 189 aboard were killed.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/20/asia/lion-air-third-pilot-int...

BlandDuck said the pilot needs to be allowed to be in the cockpit, not that the pilot needed to be in the cockpit

Airlines need to move pilots without planes from place to place and can't always get them a regular cabin seat so it's clear sometimes they'll need to be in one of the jump seats. Most of those in the main cabin are already dedicated to flight attendants so it's just down to the cockpit jump seat. As pilots they're already in the ultimate position if they wanted to do anything malicious with a plane so it's not really an additional security problem to have them up there.

And just like that, special issuance for mental health will become that much more impossible.

Which in the long run causes more issues since nobody when a career in aviation will ever seek professional help.

Do we have any word yet on motive?

Any info on whether this guy was married or had a family? The other guy that crashed the plane from seatac didn't. just wanted to see if there was a correlation.

Shouldn't pilots, as a matter of course, have to undergo regular emotional checkips to ensure they're emotionally stable?

Painfully, as I understand it, it is the other way around. Pilots can’t see psychiatrists/therapists because if they get diagnosed with anything they lose their license.

That's really harsh.

Is there a special insurance to protect income for pilots in case they are diagnosed for mental health?

Similar to how surgeons can get their hands ensured. (Not sure if this surgeon piece is even true, or just an idea that goes around)

Mental breakdown or attempted terror attack. These days anything is possible.

I wonder if drugs were involved.

Well, that was a good guess: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/alaska-air-pilot-in-aborte...

At this point my guess would be the pilots who let him in did know about him consuming mushrooms and still let him in the cockpit. So basically they are almost just as responsible, or at least must be investigated as such.

Back in the days when you could go into the cockpit for a chat, the pilots turned the engines of our 747 off (well, idle) over the middle of the Atlantic to show my brother and I how the autopilot worked.

747's have an interesting feature called "drive disconnect", which mechanically disconnects the engine accessories like electrical generators and hydraulic pumps.

If you're APU isn't running and you hit the disconnect on all four engines you have no electrical or hydraulic power and there is no way to fix it in the air!

https://www.angelfire.com/ct3/ctenning/electrical_essays/747...

> The pilots control module for the electrical power generation system is in the pilots overhead panel (P5, Figure 3). There are four drive disconnect switches at the bottom of the module. These are guarded switches. Lifting the guard and pressing the switch will cause the IDG shaft to mechanically disconnect from the engine gearbox. This would only be done in the event of an overheated IDG or low IDG oil pressure. Once disconnected, the IDG cannot be reconnected in flight.

You can't get the IDG's back but couldn't you still start the APU using battery power? Also, the disconnect seems to be only for the IDG's, wouldn't that still leave you with bleed air and hydraulics?

Also a quirk of the 747: you cannot start the APU in flight!

(duplicated from non-main thread)

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

why-do-we-even-have-that-button.gif

Engine fires.

When an engine catches fire, you need to extinguish it. These are usually very large overhead red handles (or black handles with red illumination) that, when pulled, will shut off the fuel supply to that engine and flood it with extinguishing agents. This reliably kills the engine, with the hope of preventing the spread of fire.

Seems like it should be a "insert two keys" kind of thing then. And/or just one button plus some kind of automated system that won't let you do it unless there's some sensor confirmation that it's necessary.

Also, I wonder why we don't have electric planes. Sure, batteries aren't there yet. But we could have a jet turbine used as a generator (actually done quite often as a portable ground-based power source, it's really cool), a series of batteries to store the power temporarily, and electric fans to move the plane forward.

> Seems like it should be a "insert two keys" kind of thing then.

So if the plane's engine is actually on fire, you want to lengthen the process the flight crew has to go through to extinguish it?

Remember that "engine fire" actually means "plane could be seconds away from a jet fuel explosion".

Or just an engine explosion. These happen more often than you'd think, but they are usually contained; engines are built to try their best to withstand such events.

A notable recent exception was QF32. This incident came very close to ruining Qantas' zero-passenger-fatalities-on-a-jet-aircraft-ever streak. It started as an oil leak in engine #2, due to an oil pipe that was manufactured incorrectly. This then lead to an engine fire, and shortly after that, a turbine disc explosively disintegrated, launching three high-velocity fragments radially outward from the engine, severely damaging the aircraft, before the crew could even react to the fire.

Possibly, or possibly it would have a tiny effect in the event of a real emergency, and would completely stop what was attempted here. I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it, so I assume that it was dismissed for good reason.

I hereby nominate this comment for the HN hall of fame.

* Prescribing dangerous alternatives? Check.

* Suggesting technologies that don't work? Check.

* Using "just" to underscore to the simply nature of the topic? Check.

Ha, my trap has been sprung

The whole point is that pilots are highly trusted and assumed to be good actors, re engineering this would be next to impossible.

As for electric planes, there's work going on but there are a bunch of issues.

Also, I wonder why we don't have electric planes.

You know, you're right. Electrical fires have NEVER brought down an aircraft. :/

Electric planes would come with their own set of problems, but if it's an improvement, a win is a win.

There are two handles. One over the shoulder of the captain, and one over the shoulder of the first officer.

In case your engine catches on fire.

I'm confused why a pilot on a deadhead flight[0] was in the cockpit in the first place?

The one (and perhaps only) significant safety change to air travel after 9/11 was the decision to keep the cockpit doors locked (and unopenable except from the inside) and to forbid passengers inside the cockpit between takeoff and landing.

[0] https://abcnews.go.com/US/alaska-airlines-flight-diverted-af...

From the article: "When the jump seat, a third seat in the cockpit, is occupied, it’s often filled by an off-duty pilot, but the seat can be used by other airline employees or federal safety inspectors."

Maybe these rules will change a bit going forward.

This doesn't seem to be a safety issue you can plug by not allowing them in the cockpit off duty if you allow them in the cockpit on duty.

Is it really a safety issue having another pilot from the same airline in the cockpit? Does allowing a third pilot in the cockpit increase the chance of having a mentally unstable pilot in the cockpit, or decrease? What if it was the on-duty copilot that tried to down the plane?

It's done thousands of times every day. Not just the same airline, nearly all airlines are part of the CASS system, which authorizes this.

There are multiple examples of an additional crew member (an "off duty" pilot on the jumpseat is a crew member by the rules) being helpful in an emergency situation.

Maybe that is a good thing? What if one of the "on duty" pilots tried to crash the plane? Then the off duty pilot can step in. Better to have 2 sane adults against 1.

There is no significant increase in risk by putting pilots, who are already controlling a plane when on duty, in a jump seat when they're off-duty.

There might even be a slight benefit to it, via the deadheading pilot being able to passively observe another crew at work, as well as being able to possibly support the crew in case they start making poor decisions.

I've listened to a couple of flight incident investigations, and it doesn't seem to be uncommon for experienced deadheading pilots to offer helpful suggestions in case of trouble.

There is a sharing agreement in place between pretty much all air carriers that allows off duty airline pilots to ride on the jumpseat to commute to work, if there isn't space available in the cabin. It's quite common for instance for American Airlines pilots to ride on the jumpseat on say, Delta, to get to work. There's a whole host of unwritten rules and etiquette around the practice, but for all intents and purposes any airline pilot can ride on the jump seat of any airline to get to work.

One plausible reason as some have mentioned below is some mental health episode... my question is why do 83 people have to die because someone in a priviledged position can't handle their issues? The answer is they shouldn't. Just like the mentally unstable or those with violent histories shouldn't have access to guns folks who need this kind of help shouldn't have the lives of people in their hands.

You're not wrong, but the issue one runs into is that if that's the approach the FAA takes to solving the issue, pilots will react predictably: they'll self-defend their careers and be extremely untruthful in mental health analysis screenings.

So, "problem solved" as long as nobody believes anything self-reported in those screenings isn't lies-on-lies.

It pretty much is the approach the FAA takes. It's extremely difficult to get a private pilot's license if you have a history of ADHD, never mind more severe mental illness, never mind again a commercial license.

The question here isn't if this pilot should have been suspended or if a 6 time murderer should be allowed to buy a gun, it's how to deal with that AND prevent people who aren't going to take their own life much less the lives of others from having their jobs and rights taken away.

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