Pilots in a cockpit.
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On Wednesday, the FAA proposed adding a second barrier between flight crew and passengers.
The proposal comes after a spike in unruly passenger incidents.
Some flight attendants say this summer’s mass cancellations have led to aggressive passengers.
The Federal Aviation Administration has proposed requiring airlines to install a second flight deck barrier on all commercial flights to better protect airline crews and prevent passenger violence.
The additional door has been in the works since 2018, when Congress passed requiring the FAA to implement rules governing secondary cockpit doors by October 2019, according to Travel Weekly.
However, the agency has been long out of compliance, and the Air Line Pilots Association has been pushing for the FAA to take action, calling the rule “long overdue” in August 2021.
“Flight crews keep us safe when we travel to visit loved ones, explore new places and conduct business,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. “They, too, deserve to be protected, and this rulemaking is an important step forward.”
Secondary cockpit door mockup from ALPA.a
ALPA
Flight disruptions caused by passengers hit an all-time high in early 2021 as crew members were tasked with enforcing the federal mask mandate on flights. Unruly passenger incidents briefly spiked again over Memorial Day weekend when over 4,500 flights were canceled or delayed.
While dangerous passenger behavior has dropped by nearly 60 percent since last year’s record highs, some flight attendants fear this summer’s mass flight cancellations will lead to another wave of aggression towards crew members.
“It becomes like a bomb,” one Air Canada flight attendant told Insider. “You cannot expect people to act normally anymore because you don’t know what kind of hell they’ve been through before they got onto the airplane or before they got onto into the airport.”
History of the Cockpit Door
In January 2022, just months after the 9/11 attacks in which terrorists took control of four commercial jetliners, the FAA implemented a new standard for cockpit doors on aircraft.
The agency said the move was made to better protect the cockpit from “intrusion and small arms fire or fragmentation devices, such as grenades.”
The FAA also outlined regulations that required airlines to redesign doors so that they cannot be opened without the pilot’s permission and can only be opened from inside the cockpit.
The FAA estimated in 2002 that the upgraded cockpit door would cost airlines between $12,000 and $17,000 each, or between $92.3 million and $120.7 million over a 10-year period. By April 2003, all airlines had completed the new FAA requirement to reinforce the flight deck doors on their entire fleets, per NPR.
Prior to 9/11, the flight deck door would lock but could typically be accessed by flight attendants with a key, according to the Los Angeles Times. However, that override has since been removed.
Today, the cockpit system keeps the door locked unless opened by a pilot or requested by the flight attendant, which is via a keypad on some jets, like the Airbus A320, per the LA Times. But, pilots can deny the request from within the flight deck, according to the BBC.
Moreover, if the cockpit door needs to be opened to let pilots use the restroom or receive meals, the flight attendants will use galley carts to block the entrance.
“The manufacturers—Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, Bombardier—they were pretty quick to come up with designs that would meet the federal standards,” retired commercial airline pilot John Cox told Popular Science in 2021. “It was an industry-wide cooperation.”