… according to this article.

Ya think? Isn’t that sort of obvious?

Excerpt:

Former aviation security officials say the FAA needs to reassess threats inside cockpits and the measures intended to counter them. They say this review is especially urgent because the agency has made insider threats to the cockpit more likely by recently forcing airlines to add a secondary barrier to the cockpit in the form of a metal gate on new planes.

Experts say the added security, while well-intentioned, could backfire following al-Qaeda’s call last month for Islamist pilots to carry out more suicide attacks inside cockpits and for followers to infiltrate the ranks of pilots. Al-Qaeda has reestablished terror training camps in Afghanistan, along with recruiting and propaganda organs, echoing its pre-9/11 potency.

Enhanced security measures designed to lock out threats could merely lock in an attacker. At the same time, the FAA is adding more people to the flight deck under a new training program that lets air traffic controllers sit as passengers in cockpit jump seats to observe operations up close, potentially opening up more security issues with relative “strangers” in the cockpit. All major U.S. carriers have agreed to participate in the program, which will vet controllers at the airport prior to takeoff but won’t screen them in advance for extremist views.

That sounds like a really bad idea.

Oh, and thanks again, Biden, for your withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Back in the 20th century, hijackings were mostly the thing. But they were attempted by outsiders, not insiders. With 9/11, the pattern of takeover changed; it wasn’t a hijacking exactly, it was a pilot substitution by a group of fanatics bent on mass murder and suicide, accent on the “murder” part. One of the results was fortifying of the cockpit. But much like a virus, the incidents have morphed in order to respond to changing defenses, and in recent decades we have the phenomenon of pilots themselves committing the mass murder and suicide.

That’s not to say that there were zero incidents of the kind prior to 9/11. When I researched it just now, I was surprised to find that there had been a few during the 1990s and one in the 1980s. I had heard of one of them before, the EgyptAir crash in 1999:

EgyptAir Flight 990 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off Nantucket, Mass., on Oct. 31, 1999, killing all 217 people on board. Investigators concluded that the most likely explanation was that the co-pilot, Gameel al-Batouti, deliberately brought down the plane, although they sidestepped the question of motive and Egyptian officials have disputed that conclusion.

The flight data recorder showed that he waited for the captain to leave the cockpit and then disengaged the autopilot. As the plane descended, he could be heard saying in Arabic, “I rely on God,” over and over.

For the most part, the motives of these pilots are somewhat unclear although it’s logical to assume that some of them – such as the EgyptAir co-pilot, had something to do with religious fanaticism. However, it could have been something more personal; we’re unlikely to ever know for sure. But seeing this about the EgyptAir co-pilot, if I had to guess I’d say “personal and job-related”:

Investigators learned from another EgyptAir pilot that Al-Batouti was supposedly reprimanded for repeated inappropriate behaviour with female guests at the Hotel Pennsylvania, a New York City hotel often used by EgyptAir crews. Hatem Roushdy, the EgyptAir official said to be responsible for the alleged reprimand, was a passenger on Flight 990. Investigators confirmed that shortly before the flight, Roushdy revoked Al-Batouti’s privilege of flying to the United States and informed him that Flight 990 would be his last on the route.

Revenge?

But these days, with the explicit call from Iran for more Islamist terrorist pilots, the motive of terrorism becomes ever more likely. How to deal with it? Well, there’s this:

“Pilots who have openly espoused and supported terrorists should be grounded as unstable,” said former airline executive Michael Boyd, president of Boyd Group International, an aviation consulting firm, in an interview with RealClearInvestigations.

Seems like a no-brainer, but I guess it actually has to be implemented. One would have thought supporting terrorists had long been a red flag for hiring pilots, but I guess not so much. Same for mental illness, by the way, particularly risks of suicide.