Off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot charged with attempted murder after trying to stop engines mid-flight

return2ozma@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 395 points –
Off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot charged with attempted murder after trying to stop engines mid-flight
nbcnews.com
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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".