Question:
The FAA required that the cockpit doors on airliners
be locked before take-off on September 11th 2001. How
then did hijackers break into locked cockpits in four
different planes without any of the eight pilots sounding
an alarm over their radios?
Answer:
Cockpit keys were available to the hijackers in the
first-class passenger cabin.
The policy of locking the cockpit door but requiring
that keys be left in the passenger cabin arose out of
safety concerns and is explained in a 1997 FAA/ National
Transportation Safety Board Report A-96-85. After an
incident in 1997 in which locked cockpit doors impeded
flight attendants from telling the pilots about a smouldering
fire, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
found that locked cockpit door presented a hazard because
flight attendants might not be able to use interphone
link to warn the pilots in the cockpits. To remedy this
situation, it asked the FAA to require: " air carriers
should either ensure that each flight attendant has
a cockpit key in his/her possession during the performance
of duties in flight, or that a cockpit key is in a readily
accessible place on the aircraft and flight attendants
are trained in this location during initial and recurrent
training."
So airlines had a choice issuing keys to all flight
attendants, which could be lost, stolen or duplicated,
or to store cockpit keys in designated place in passenger
cabin" convenient to the cockpit."
To avoid the risk of issuing tens of thousands to flight
attendants, major airlines, in accordance with the FAA/NTSB
recommendation, put cockpit keys for the flight attendants
in the first class compartment in containers near cockpit
doors. As a "back-up", also in accordance
with another FAA/ NTSB recommendation, they gave flight
attendants pre- arranged knocking codes to summon the
pilots to open the door.
While these measures gave flight attendants the requisite
access to locked cockpits, it also provided hijackers
with their opportunity. As reconstructed by the FBI,
The September 11th conspirators had made at least a
dozen reconnaissance flights on Boeing airliners in
which they closely observed, and even photographed,
the flight crews procedures in the first class compartment.
One objective of these conspirators could accomplish
would be to pin- pointing the location of the containers
for the cockpit keys and learning the back-up pattern
of knocks.
Once these conspirators accomplished this reconnaissance
mission, the locked cockpit presented no barrier to
hijackers.
Collateral question:
If the US government was concerned Al-Qaeda might attempt
to seize Airliners in July 2001, what sibgle precaution
would have made it far more difficult for the hijackers
to get into locked cockpits?
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