The FAA sent alerts to airlines after the Horizon Air incident saying “a validated jump seat passenger attempted to disable aircraft engines while at cruise altitude by deploying the engine fire suppressions system.”This is what I was looking for. From the title it seems like he just tried to throttle down but he was looking to incapacitate the engines. If he was successful it would have meant the airplane would have been in a glide without power. It seems likely as a pilot he’d know when to do this in a flight too to remove good chances of a safe landing. Truly terrifying!
Great, now jump seats are fucken ruined
I’d think that in the majority of emergency situations, having an extra person who knows what’s going on in the cockpit would be more of a benefit than a risk. Especially given that one of the actual fight crew could decide to go all murder suicide on their flight, and unless the odds of any pilot doing this is greater than 50%, the more people in the cockpit, the more people to fight the bad ones off and take control of the plane and monitor things that would need monitoring in the event that someone successfully disables the engines.
Majority, probably not. Most emergency checklists are going to assume the cockpit crew is the normal count and throwing an extra person is is going to cause more harm than good. The only exception I can think of is UA Flight 232 which while tragic probably would have been worse without someone else in the cockpit.
Yeah, I should have said, “the cases when the extra person is a benefit are probably more common than the cases where the extra person attempts to murder the crew and/or crash the plane”.
This was how I read your previous comment.
I doubt it. Aviation would grind to a halt is pilots and flight attendants can’t commute in jump seats. Besides, this guy was a captain. He could have done the same thing as a pilot, much like the Germanwings flight several years ago.
Grind to a halt? Can’t they just reserve one seat in premium economy or wherever is closest to the cockpit for jump passengers?
That would cost airlines a ton and raise airfare for everyone. As it is the jumpseats are only used when the aircraft if full.
And all for what, pulling someone that will just be in a cockpit later in the day or the next day?
Ah, your second point makes sense. Can’t keep someone that’s in a jumpseat out of the cockpit for long.
But what about their profits?!
Well, he’s fucked. 83 counts of attempted murder will send him into the Stratosphere of jail time. He’s gonna wish he just ate a bullet and fucked off by himself.
Narcissistic AND too much of a pussy to suck a shotgun. Great combo.
Depends on if they run concurrently or sequentially.
No it doesn’t.
0% chance this guy doesn’t get life.
If we gave people who don’t want to be here anymore access to safe, effective, painless, suicide, desperate people wouldn’t have to resort to desperate methods of opportunity that can harm others.
We aren’t willing to be a society. We could not be more clear on that point. Visit one of your local tent cities where we leave defective capital batteries to die of exposure and police harassment if you’re still hazy on this fact. We aren’t willing to help the struggling in anything but empty rhetoric about how, lol, compassionate we consider ourselves. The least we could do is offer an out that doesn’t cause a scene or externalized death. Hell, turn it into an industry let our capitalist owners profit more off of it, win/win.
Inb4 “this bastard tried to kill others, they deserve no mercy!” yeah, when you’re suicidal, you aren’t exactly able to think outside your own pain, even more reason not to continue to let death by gun purchase be the current gold standard of American suicide.
While I agree that most of the talk about helping those struggling is empty I think it’s a bit disingenuous to imply suicide by airplane was the only option available to him. This happened in America were there are almost as many guns as people. Hurting others during a suicide attempt by trying to crash a plane is a choice.
We definitely need better mental health resources but killing 83 other people wasn’t his only option.
As stated, when you’re suicidal, you aren’t really looking beyond your own pain and opportunities to end it. It’s easy for someone who is doing all right to tell someone in white hot anguish what they should have done.
Your response is indemic of the crisis of empathy in this country. It’s easy for a rich person to tell a poor person what they should have done instead of stealing. Our people much prefer the easy way of casting judgment and advocating maximum punitive vengeance so that they can play pretend we live in a black and white, just nation and world, where everyone earned what they have and the suffering did something to deserve it.
The hard thing would trying to understand for what drove one of our people to this madness to begin with, and maybe even help. But that would be extremely un-American. Hoo boy, lets deep fry his ass boy howdy! Gonna get assed raped in prison itellyouwhat that’ll teach him to… value the sanctity of the lives of himself and others?
If he’s not thinking clearly, why he would he choose your proposed suicide method? It’s a more rational choice but like you’ve said this isn’t a decision being made rationally.
The same reason that people like him choose methods that can fail by being inturrupted, by failure of method, or by possibility of permanent disability/disfigurement rather than death.
Certainty.
The offer of going to an office with a guarantee of an end would stop the vast majority of other methods where one must overcome that lack of certainty to make the attempt. Even a gunshot to the head can and does fail, leaving matters significantly worse for the individual.
I’m not saying it would stop everyone, but it would stop a great many of desperate people from buying guns or running into traffic while in a bad place and potentially using it on someone they feel is the cause before themselves, or situations like this.
Some people want to go out loud, but that isn’t the norm. The goal is usually just going out with a minimum of suffering, with the loudness of the act being a symptom of the person’s opportunities for attempts, ie what they can and cannot access.
When I was suicidal many long years ago I researched suicide success rates and gunshot to the head only had about a 90% success rate.
That was way too low for me to feel comfortable with it.
Well fortunately we’re going to have the opportunity to find out what he really was thinking, this time. Until that’s released to the public, you don’t know any more about it than the people you’re shouting down. Since he chose such a specific method, and not on his own plane which would have been easier, there’s reason to suspect it was a targeted attack on others. Being willing to die in the attempt is a step away from being suicidal. Would that all attempts at mass carnage were resolved with all lives saved, like this one.
Never been suicidal eh?
That’s a bold assumption since you know nothing about me. It’s also incorrect, I’ve just never tried to murder a bunch of other people too. Most people who commit suicide don’t try to pair it with mass murder.
This America, buy a gun.
Or find a bridge.
Or Google the “best” ways and pick one.
This is something different. Either wannabe mass shooter who didn’t think he had the skills to get the body count he wanted, or he wanted his name to stick around longer than the 30 secs that the names of shooters do these days, or he was mad at his employer and wanted to hurt them…or…
Point is, he didn’t just want to kill himself, he wanted to do it while causing a standout mass casualty event.
Edit: I do want to add that it’s at least possible he had an immediate acute psychiatric issue e.g. Schizophrenic break and thought the plane was full of aliens, or something along those lines.
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What’s your point? That mistakes happen? That some people are too unfamiliar with guns, or stupid, to kill themselves properly, so the solution is… crashing a commercial airliner?
No way he would have become a transport pilot with such psychological issues.
I agree that it’s most likely he just wanted to kill a lot of people, along with himself.
But, late-onset schizophrenia is a thing and it appears in men during their 40s. I’m sure there are plenty of other psychological issues that either only appear later in life, or that some people are able to mask/hide. My point was that it’s a possible explanation, not that it was the most likely one.
Edit: Looks like “acute psychiatric event” might be the most plausible explanation, at least according the FBI’s current publicly available understanding of the incident.
“Defective Capital Batteries”. That’s good
Seriously, fuck the FAA.
They just recently allowed pilots to take anti-depressants … except they’re older medications that all have frequent unpleasant side effects like “inability to have an orgasm”. ADHD – tough shit, can’t take those meds and keep your license. Any medication that “has an effect on the central nervous system” is banned apart from a short list.
All it does is encourage pilots to lie or forgo treating their very treatable conditions.
As someone with ADHD… What the fuck? Driving without my meds is much more dangerous because EVERY sensory input is jumping into my attention span. Much easier to focus on important things while on meds
It used to be you could have never been diagnosed with ADHD – but don’t worry! Now the rules say you just can’t currently have ADHD or have taken medication for it in the past 4 years.
And yes, these rules also apply to private pilot licenses. That being said, how may professional pilots do you think have mild/moderate ADHD and have to “suck it up” because they want to keep their jobs?
Makes complete sense, especially considering you can have a pacemaker and still get cleared by an AME to fly.
Oh man, guess that anyone with ADHD should just try not having it if they want to be a pilot!
I want to believe that the rule is there to not bar people who were incorrectly diagnosed in the past but… I wouldn’t put it past them to believe ADHD can be “cured” or “gotten over”
I don’t want to agree with you, but I do.
I chose staring down ugly truths over the bliss of ignorance a long time ago. It’s my core value, and I understand why most don’t, it isn’t a pleasant way to think or live.
In a second notification, the FAA clarified that the security event is not connected to current world events.
I’m curious about how they determined this.
Skin tone, probably.
Yea, that’s what the world needs; More pointless hate and racism. :(
Edgy…
Has anyone said anything about a motive yet? I haven’t seen anyone say why they think he tried to do it.
I’d say depression, suicidal ideation, possibly just wanted to end it all. Or maybe they sat him between literally every baby on the flight.
Unless I am misremembering, they had what they thought was a pretty firm link between the suicide-by-piloting crash in Europe and a pilot’s relationship/divorce.
I mean, “intentional pilot crashing” is probably not in the top ten list of causes of air fatalities, but I wonder if they should have an additional level of screening because of the possibility of job stresses and responsibilities clashing with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Probably a Trump supporter and there was a brown person on board.
Has anyone said anything about a motive yet?
Surely, you can’t be serious!
I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley
I’m speculating he was doing it for the lolz. I have no source. Some people are just dicks and do dickish things for fun. If he wanted to die, he could do it when he was piloting his own plane.
Can you imagine if he successfully stopped the engines and the pilots safely glided to a landing?
They’d have had a fight on their hands probably. FedEx 705 all over again:
Okay, I imagined it. What next?
Now, rotate a cow in your mind.
X, Y or Z axis?
Rotating is too much work. It’ll be right side up in the end anyway so I didn’t do it. Now what?
Cool right? Those pilots are heroes.
I’m pretty sure all commercial airplanes have to be able to do this. And I’m even more sure that a gliding landing is part of their aircraft certification training
Yea. Planes can glide. Airline checkrides don’t typically include gliding.
All aircraft can glide, of course. They also have a ram air turbine to power control surfaces even with engine or APU power. And it has been done before such as Air Canada Flight 143 (the famous Gimli Glider), and Air Transat Flight 236 (the Azores glider)
But you can generally at best go 12 times your altitude, so even at cruise altitude, you need somewhere within 60 miles or so to put down. It certainly would have been far harder to put down unpowered.
