What is that door for?

Transcript

1. After September 2001, airlines rebuilt the cockpit door to keep attackers out.
2. On 30 September, on flydubai flight 1073,
3. the attack started on the pilots' side of that door.
4. It was a Boeing 737 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, with 172 people on board, the airline says.
5. Over northwest Saudi Arabia, at 34,000 feet,
6. the plane's own radio signal shows it starting to fall.
7. In about a minute and a half, it dropped more than 17,000 feet.
8. The UAE's attorney-general says the co-pilot attacked
9. the captain inside the cockpit with the emergency axe,
10. and tried to take control.
11. Nobody has said who was flying during the dive.
12. The co-pilot's own account has come out only through unnamed officials.
13. The captain says he was lying on the floor, injured,
14. and made "one last push to open the door from inside."
15. Passengers, and two flydubai pilots on board, got in.
16. About 85 minutes after the fall began, the plane landed in Tabuk.
17. What is that door for?
18. Since 2003, international rules have said it must resist forced entry,
19. and lock from either pilot's seat.
20. In 2015, that lock kept a captain out.
21. On a Germanwings flight, the captain stepped out.
22. The Germanwings co-pilot, alone, locked the door,
23. and flew the plane into the French Alps.
24. 150 people died.
25. The captain could not get back in.
26. Europe's air safety agency then asked airlines to keep
27. two people in the cockpit at all times.
28. The next year, it softened that.
29. This May, it brought it back.
30. It is still only advice.
31. That advice is about a pilot left alone.
32. On flight 1073, both pilots were in the cockpit.
33. Nobody was alone.
34. The French investigators of that crash wrote:
35. "A door cannot address a risk that could be present from both sides."
36. On flight 1073, help was outside that door.
37. The captain says he opened it.
38. Passengers tell it differently.
39. Help got in.
40. All 11 of those investigators'
41. recommendations were about pilots' medical fitness.
42. Flight 1073 raises a different question.
43. AP and ABC News report that Oman Air had taken him off flying duties,
44. over concerns about extremist views.
45. What flydubai knew about that when it hired him has not been made public.
46. flydubai says it cannot comment beyond its statements.
47. The UAE's aviation regulator says the public
48. will get its findings "once they are issued."