Way better is to give the air crew the ability to turn control over to a ground crew in an emergency. Make it irrevocable unless the ground crew willingly relinquished control back to the air team. Disable the cockpit controls entirely. And automate the turnover so that if the aircraft behaved erratically, the option would be taken out of manual hands.
Wouldn't that capability necessarily make aircraft vulnerable to hacking?
And...when an ATC operator goes equally nuts, or the facility is overrun by terrorists, or the uplink gets hacked, then we have exactly the same situation except the person killing everyone on board isn’t actually on the plane.
Face it, people, there is no ultimate solution to the problem of evil people deciding to kill a lot of other people. You can’t eradicate moral depravity by implementing more technology.
That, and make it where the ground crew can either secure or open the cockpit door.
hell, I say but biosensors into the controls. If someone who isn’t flight crew takes control without ground crews permission, seal the cockpit, fill it with a gas that will immobilize the occupants, and land the plane remotely. Have it so that if the systems that connect the ground crews with the air crews are lost, the plane will land itself at a particular predetermined GPS point.
The ultimate hacker bait?