The airline industry will have to put together a new set of procedures to cover the event of a pilot getting stuck in the toilet. A Delta Airlines flight from Asheville, North Caroline to New York City was the scene of a security alert yesterday. While the pilot was in the lavatory, the door latch became stuck. Unable to alert a flight attendant, the pilot asked a passenger to go to the cockpit and use a secret code to alert the co-pilot. The co-pilot did not believe what he heard and called ground control.
The plane landed safely and no one was charged in the incident. http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Pilot-Locked-in-Bathroom-Chatauqua-Airlines-Asheville-LaGuardia-134052053.html -via The Daily What
“The captain has disappeared in the back and, uh, I have someone with a thick foreign accent trying to access the cockpit right now…,” the co-pilot reported.
“What I’m being told is he’s stuck in the lav,” the co-pilot continued. “Someone with a thick foreign accent is giving me a password to access the cockpit, and I’m not about to let him in.”
Not willing to take any chances themselves, air controllers on the ground ordered the plane, operated by regional carrier Chautauqua Airlines, to make an emergency landing.
Before the co-pilot was forced to make that emergency landing, however, the pilot was able to open the bathroom door, and calm his anxious colleagues.
The plane landed safely and no one was charged in the incident. http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Pilot-Locked-in-Bathroom-Chatauqua-Airlines-Asheville-LaGuardia-134052053.html -via The Daily What
Why wouldn't he have asked the passenger to alert one of the flight attendants, rather than go to the cockpit? How would the passenger get to the cockpit without passing a flight attendant?
First of all because there are about 30 pages of FAA regulations on who is allowed to enter the flight deck, and secondly because the copilot couldn't have done anything about it anyway, since he couldn't have left his seat (being the only pilot at the controls and all).