one that's routinely within reach of maintenance workers or other airport and airline staff between flights
You already trust them (as well as the pilots) every time with your flight.
one that's routinely within reach of maintenance workers or other airport and airline staff between flights
You already trust them (as well as the pilots) every time with your flight.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/06/avalon-airp...
That trust was what led to this incident where someone just walked into the airplane dressed as a maintainence worker and nobody stopped him.
Also pilot suicide isn't something new and the aviation world has tried to come up with several regulations to ensure it doesn't happen even though we completely trust pilots on a normalative basis.
> Also pilot suicide isn't something new and the aviation world has tried to come up with several regulations to ensure it doesn't happen
As AI171 has shown, turning the engines off on rotation does it reliably and there’s nothing that the other pilot or regulations can do to prevent it.
I mean yeah that's why we cannot just "trust". And yes, in that case, there was nothing that could be done but its a case of mental illness and we can look into how regulations and airlines handle mental health issues in pilots. There are regulations for this across all airlines, they failed in this case. So yes, at that moment in time, there is nothing you can do if the other pilot freaking turns off the engine as you begin to climb but there is absolutely things you can do to the best of your ability to ensure such a person shouldn't be allowed to fly / be in that situation in the first person.
You conveniently left out the part where he walked through a hole in the airport fence.
Airfields are expected to be secure areas. If you can walk through a hole in a fence there's issues.
Remember a guy stole an entire airplane a few years ago (RIP Sky King). Airplanes don't have ignition keys.
I shared the link to the entire article so not sure how I left that out. And yes, there was a hole in the airport fence but he got so far because people trust these workers but that can be abused. And in that case (sky king), the guy was actually a maintainence worker who stole the plane. So just saying its okay to be vulnerable just because we trust all actors around the vulnerability, especially when its as easy as a freaking hole to abuse that trust is not a strong argument. RIP Sky King.
Is that the legend who managed to do a loop-the-loop?
You know it is.
Are these the same maintenance workers that have access to even more sensitive parts of the airplane like the avionics compartment and its miles of wiring?
Wait until they find out your mechanic has unfettered access to your car's OBD port when you hand them the keys. They could install a COIN SIZED device on the CAN bus and you'd never know.
Some people do this voluntarily in exchange for a discount on their insurance.
There's literally millions of people driving newfangled EVs where the car manufacturer has full remote access to their vehicle and can upload software however and whenever they like.
I forgot only the nefarious ones wear yellow reflective vests and earmuffs.
There's literally millions of people driving newfangled EVs where the car manufacturer has full remote access to their vehicle and can upload software however and whenever they like.
This part has been beyond baffling to me. The last thing I want, is to hit the brakes in my car, and suddenly they're less/more sensitive, due to an update the night before, and it really does matter especially on snow/ice. And such updates happen.
I also don't want a perfectly good, 100% working car to suddenly degrade in experience because "Wups! Sorry! Last update broke <whatever>, we'll update within the month to fix!". It's just pure, unbridled dumb.
I recently bought a car, and the dealer tried to sell me an extended warranty. What? It's under a full warranty right now, and yes, my region has very strong warranty and anti-lemon laws. But my point is, they kept saying "there's a lot of complex and expensive electronics in this car, you're going to need an extended warranty".
Um, what? Hello? You just explained that the car breaks down a lot because it's complex? So complex that there are more frequent, highly expensive issues?
How is that a plus?
If a car is "too complex" to roll out the assembly line, without needing updates to modules on a monthly basis for years, it's the opposite of positive. I've had multiple BCM(body control module) updates, updates to every single module in the car. There shouldn't be enough code to cause issues here, it should be simple, simple, simple.
But it's not.
It's complex and difficult to make bug free.
And that makes me oh so very comfortable as I drive down the road.
Last time I bought a car the dealer couldn't enable the Internet features because I said my phone was broken. He looked at me puzzled but I said I could but the car some other day if that was a problem...
A dealer will never let a buying customer leave, so 3 years later my car still can't connect to the Internet.
This. The same thing works with some banks.
You also aren’t given a choice. If you decline, “don’t drive it”. Well, I want the car, not the connection. I could probably pull the sim I suppose.
You really think a car dealer is going to let you just walk away over some trivial thing instead of fixing it for you?
But you bought the car
> This part has been beyond baffling to me. The last thing I want
Most people don't think about it when buying a car, or they have no practical way to evaluate it. So it is one of these things you probably need to fix with legislation, except the legislators love the idea too because sensor-rich, always-online cars give them more tools to police the society.
I don't really know what to do with that, short of going neo-Luddite. People often see the excesses of ad tech as a failure of capitalism, but in a sense, we're seeing a tech-driven failure mode for free, democratic societies. In a world where your online presence is tied to your identity and always under the watchful eye of a large language model, and where you can't move from A to B without leaving a digital trail, it's not gonna be fun if you become a thorn in the government's side.