Off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot charged with attempted murder after trying to stop engines mid-flight
Flight 2059 from Everett, Washington, was bound for San Francisco when it was diverted to Portland, where Joseph David Emerson was booked on 83 counts of attempted murder.
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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?!
I'm not so sure about that. The only thing more important that security to airline companies is "money". Having to charter flights or wait for availability of their own flights to move staff around would be CRAZY expensive. I have full faith that airlines will look the other way on this one to avoid that cost to the companies.
Maybe they'll just start putting them in cabin seats like the rest of us.
They already do that. However, if all the passenger seats are full (which isn't uncommon) there is usually at least 1 but sometimes multiple jump seats on aircraft that allow airlines to move around pilots and other crew members to different airports. Airlines usually let other airlines fly their competitors staff because they also reciprocate when they need it.
Restricting the crew seats to just unsold passenger seats will likely have a huge impact to operations and ALL the different airlines' bottom lines.
They could just not sell every single seat in the main cabin.
They could just not sell every single seat in the main cabin.
I'll go back to my first point: The only thing more important that security to airline companies is “money”.
Your suggestion is that the airlines lose money on sale of seats because they're keeping some seats empty on every flight on the off chance the airline (or one of their competitor airlines) needs to get a pilot or flight crew member to another airport. That would lose the airlines money. They wont' do that.