Recommendations re A320 Germanwings Ignore More Effective Remedy

WASHINGTON - March 13, 2016 - PRLog -- French authorities who investigated the Germanwings plane tragedy, in which a co-pilot deliberately crashed the aircraft after locking the pilot out of the cockpit, have recommended rules for better reporting of mental health issues to prevent a possible re-occurrence.

        But the recommendation ignores an approach which may be even more effective, and which relies on simple well-tested design improvements rather than the many uncertainties related to the reporting of mental problems, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, a former MIT engineer and inventor.

        Banzhaf, who is widely credited with creating a variety of  novel legal theories or causes of action which have been successful in diverse areas such as smoking, obesity, government corruption, women's rights, environmental protection, and many other areas, has even suggested that Germanwings' failure to incorporate such protections may provide the basis for a negligence action against it for causing the crash, and may even permit a law suit against the airplane maker where the damages could be much higher.

        Incidents where one aviator deliberately crashes an airplane are well known and therefore obviously foreseeable.  Indeed, the U.S. rule requiring that one person can never be left alone in the cockpit is designed to prevent exactly what apparently happened over France when the pilot briefly left the cockpit.

        But even if that rule had been followed by Germanwings, it might not have prevented a determined co-pilot from taking over the plane while the pilot was outside the cockpit.

        Although, under the American safety rule, a flight attendant must take the pilot's place in the cockpit if he leaves, it is certainly reasonably foreseeable that a flight attendant - especially a small female one - might not be able to stop a suicidal much larger and stronger male co-pilot from crashing a plane.

        The A320 is designed so that the crew can unlock the cockpit door from outside by entering a code on a nearby pad.  But a deranged co-pilot alone in the cockpit can easily defeat any attempt to unlock the door by simply pushing a switch in the cockpit to a position which cuts out the mechanism the other crew members could use from outside the cockpit.

        Thus some might think that removing that switch might effectively deal with a suicidal pilot or co-pilot alone in the cockpit, or there with only a smaller crew member whom he can easily overpower.

         However, there may be times when it is appropriate or even necessary for the pilot and co-pilot together to defeat or otherwise override the crew's code-unlocking mechanism for the cockpit door.

        So simply eliminating this cockpit switch might be counter productive.  But there seems to be little purpose in ever permitting a solo occupant of the cockpit to lock out the crew if he there by himself.

        Thus, if there were a simple and well-known mechanism which would permit two aviators to jointly securely lock the cabin, but one which would not let a single aviator do so on his own, it would appear that such a mechanism would prevent scenarios like the A320 incident without relying solely upon better mental health reporting.

        In other words, especially when hundreds of lives are at stake, it's much better to have a backup.  Airlines should not put all their eggs (in this case, the lives of all the passengers) in one basket (relying on better reporting by doctors) but rather also have a mechanical backup system, says Banzhaf.

        Fortunately, such a mechanism is well known, and is used in somewhat similar circumstances - e.g., to prevent one deranged individual from launching a nuclear missile.

        Launching a nuclear missile, notes Banzhaf, usually requires having two individuals take the same action almost simultaneously in such a way that one person could not do it by himself.

        Typically, two or more officers on a nuclear submarine or land-based missile-launch facility must each perform an action (e.g., turn a key) at the same time to permit a launch to take place.

        The same principle of required dual action - and the same protection against a single rogue wrongdoer - could easily have been incorporated into the A320 cockpit switch design, so that turning off the crew's code-unlocking mechanism could be done only if two recessed buttons on opposite sides of the cockpit control panel were pushed at the same time - making it impossible for one person to disable the mechanism alone.

        Such a simple cabin redesign should also be recommended by anyone hoping to learn from the A320 tragedy, and to prevent anything like it in the future, says Banzhaf.

        Moreover, in a lawsuit against Germanwings, or also against the plane's manufacturer, it could be argued that both should reasonably have foreseen that one member of the flight crew might try to crash the plane by himself - especially since it has happened before - and had a simple mechanism such as the one described above installed and in operation at the time, argues Banzhaf.

        The very highest legal duty of care applies with passenger aircraft where the lives of hundreds of passengers can be endangered by a single suicidal member of the flight crew, especially since psychiatry cannot always detect mental instability and suicidal tendencies beforehand, says Banzhaf.

JOHN F. BANZHAF III, B.S.E.E., J.D., Sc.D.
Professor of Public Interest Law
George Washington University Law School,
FAMRI Dr. William Cahan Distinguished Professor,
Fellow, World Technology Network,
Founder, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
2000 H Street, NW, Wash, DC 20052, USA
(202) 994-7229 // (703) 527-8418
http://banzhaf.net/  jbanzhaf@law.gwu.edu  @profbanzhaf