BTW, big rig trucks and trains have also been retrofitted with kill switches. There are no Class 8 rigs now rolling in North America that have not been retrofitted — IF they are used to haul tricky stuff. The Feds keep expanding the cargoes that they deem tricky/ too sensitive.

These kill switches are also now embedded in all new automobiles. It is for this reason that police departments across America have changed their tack: high speed pursuits are now universally frowned upon.

BTW, the kill switches generally don’t drop the engine down to zero — they limit the speed enough to make pursuit a snap.

The scheme devised expressly mentioned that such over-rides would ONLY be possible with the assistance of the National Command Authority. Obviously the digital keys required to jump into command would be highly classified, and never available at any control tower.

As you might guess, the technology that permits UAVs and safe landings makes this entirely possible, practical and actually pretty cheap.

As Snowden has fulsomely revealed, there’s a TON of hacking doing on — under the hood — WITHOUT announcing the specifics to the public.

Any software scheme — for aircraft — would be invoked solely by the sovereign authorities. So civil liability issues are non-existent.

Behind the scenes, digital upgrades are happening all the time.

After films like “Executive Decision” and realities like 9-11 the Feds are not going to just sit on their hands while the fanatics work to a new atrocity scheme.

MH-370 is yet another alert: the authorities EVERYWHERE were / still are concerned that it was being hijacked for the sole purpose of a delayed jihad — under false colors.

Now that fly-by-wire is the state of the art, the ability to digitally take over a hostage aircraft is too great to pass up.

Lastly, the ability of jihadis to locate and remove the kill switches is largely abated because the logic is in firmware in the bowels of the very computers required to make the aircraft fly in the first place. It’s persistent and can’t be coded around.

Just how sneaky that can be was revealed by the blabby Russians not that many weeks ago.

After countless hours of testing and research, Moscow figured out that it’s impossible to get rid of double-secret firmware coding. You can hack away to your hearts content — and achieve absolutely nothing.

BTW, any furtive hacking of the air craft software is going to send it immediately into trouble-fault — and digital complaint.

As Snowden could tell you, the Feds have got amazing digital capabilities that they’re not telling of.

And with each atrocity, these digital defenses just get more robust.

Nothing’s perfect. The goal is to totally frustrate AQ’s dream of a stratospheric Pearl Harbor. For those with long memories, AQ first wanted to destroy ELEVEN jumbo jets at the same time.

Crashing the occasional jet doesn’t quite get AQ’s war of civilizations going.

&&&

The Internet face of the co-pilot is larded with Muslim iconography.

So the real new rule is: don’t fly with a Muslim in the cockpit.

ISLAMIC STATE PRAISES GERMAN CO-PILOT AND MASS MURDERER—
Another Facebook page was set up=> Support for Andrew Lubitz, hero of the Islamic State.
(The Facebook page has since been taken down)”

ob. cit.

It was JIHAD.

I was hoping otherwise.

Ricki, the A320 will not exceed its maximum speed (VMO/MMO). If the pilot programmed the auto pilot or manually pushed the joystick full down, it would go to MMO (maximum Mach) and hold that speed. It would transition to VMO as the two speeds converged at about 13,000ft or so. It would not exceed those speeds under any circumstances.

If this copilot had disconnected the autopilot the CVR would have picked up an oral tone at that moment. There has been no mention of that, but we have not had a complete analysis either.

Despite all of the competing theories, it sounds as though the French have got this right; unless significant further information is found.

Over the past 40 years or so there have been the seven known or suspected pilot suicides. Interestingly, almost all of these were in cultures that attach no stigma to suicide.

In this case, the A320 was descending rapidly, but not unduly so. The airspeed never became excessive. If the co-pilot wanted to crash the plane, why didn’t he simply point the nose at the ground? That doesn’t seem to have been the case here.

I remember an incident many years ago where a Boeing 727 exceeded Mach 1 in an unplanned dive. That crew was able to regain control and landed safely. This plane never went anywhere near that fast.

My understanding is that it is a French prosecutor who is charging that the co-pilot deliberately crashed the plane. You know the saying “if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. I’d assume that a prosecutor is predisposed to suspect criminal activity.

That said, the evidence so far does indeed seem to point to the co-pilot, especially the part about the locked door.