Posted on 01/09/2024 1:34:04 PM PST by billorites
After an emergency exit-sized hole opened in the side of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 at 16,000 feet, a separate chaotic episode erupted when the cockpit door mysteriously flew open.
That meant the pilots were subjected to the deafening wind and noise from the back of the plane—and also made the cockpit accessible to anyone inclined to try to force their way in.
What the flight crew didn’t know at the time, federal investigators said Monday, was that it was supposed to happen that way.
What the flight crew didn’t know at the time, federal investigators said Monday, was that it was supposed to happen that way. Boeing had designed the cockpit door to open during a rapid decompression incident, they said. The company just hadn’t said so in the manual.
Even veteran aviation-safety experts and former regulators said they weren’t aware of this design feature. Some said it appears to expose a security flaw that now must be addressed.
“There was a lot of energy put into getting those doors secured so they only open from the pilots’ side,” said Ray White, a former regional director of the Transportation Security Administration. “To find out that they blow out in an emergency, boy that is a vulnerability.”
The aircraft’s cockpit is designed to open in circumstances akin to that experienced Friday night by the Alaska Airlines jet , according to the National Transportation Safety Board. The agency’s chair, Jennifer Homendy, said in a briefing Monday that Boeing is going to make changes to the manual, with the expectation that they would translate into procedures and information for the flight attendants and the cockpit crew.
Boeing declined comment.
After the 9/11 attacks, officials with regulators including the TSA and Federal Aviation Administration worked with aircraft manufacturers to determine how to secure cockpits
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Who the hell was responsible for signing off that assembly inspection?
When I worked at Lockheed on the L1011 and S3 Viking, every single part and assembly was individually inspected and stamped with the inspector’s initials.
Well, that’s nice to let our enemies know about aircraft vulnerabilities.
Dumba$$es.
Ok...
So now everyone knows how to bypass cockpit security doors. Great.
Blast from the past(Actually happened more than once before they fixed the problem):
On June 12, 1972, the left rear cargo door of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 operating the flight blew open and broke off en route between Detroit and Buffalo above Windsor, Ontario; the accident is thus sometimes referred to as the Windsor incident, although according to the NTSB it is an accident, not an incident.
U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators found the cargo door design to be dangerously flawed, as the door could be closed without the locking mechanism fully engaged, and this condition was not apparent from visual inspection of the door nor from the cargo-door indicator in the cockpit.
small set of suspects...
As a computer programmer, all bugs are really undocumented features.
In nuclear power plant construction, every single welding rod is tracked.
Too many side issues but if the aircraft has that kind of a problem I would not be surprised.
As an engineer, all unknowns are unverified assumptions.
The blown out door was found in a physics teacher’s back yard in suburban Portland, and two cell phones still working have also been found nearby.
>>All three of the visible bolts are loose. The hidden fourth bolt probably is too.
Clearances look tight. They might be inconvenient to tighten, except by hand.
Was it wise to broadcast this to the entire Muslim world?
The only reason why the cockpit doors are designed to open on rapid depressurization is because the FAA told them to.
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