I’m also with nobbi. While it doesn’t hurt to have one of the cabin crew take the seat of a pilot who temporarily leaves the flight deck, it doesn’t help much either if the other pilot is set on crashing the aircraft. Also, I do believe that Mooney Driver’s fears about airline pilots losing the public trust are exaggerated.
But the locked door policy should be reevaluated, as should a lot of the air transport security measures. While many of the security procedures are undoubtedly justified, other are dubious and many are obviously bogus serving only drive costs and annoy passengers.
I also think regarding mental health, practitioners that are private need to submit info to medical department of the FAA or to DOT if they have a patient whose occupation is ferrying around paying passengers…
Here in Germany you are not required to tell your practitioner what your professional occupation is.
Here in Germany you are not required to tell your practitioner what your professional occupation is.
Here in the UK you would be strongly advised not to tell an optician that you are a pilot of any kind. They go into an anally retarded mode.
Airborne,
Helios was different in the way that there was no resistance from inside the Flight Deck. I don´t think it was ever explained properly why it took that FA so long to get inside, but in theory he should have been able to open the door. I won´t say how here, even though it´s been all over the net how these doors work.
One theory I heard was that the door was obstructed from the inside because the captain was slumped against it. But nobody there kept the other out on purpose.
Here in the UK you would be strongly advised not to tell an optician that you are a pilot of any kind. They go into an anally retarded mode.
Why?? I told mine when I needed an update on my specially-made aviation glasses and the whole shop there couldn’t have been more helpful.
On a different note: I do think having a hostie in the cockpit during a break by one of the pilots helps prevent situations like the Germanwings one. You don’t kill yourself (and murder 150 others!!!) while having a bit of chit-chat. AFAIK, this has been FAA policy for quite some time now, btw (got that from Pprune, didn’t check the FARs, though).
It depends on whether you want glasses made to a prescription which is right for what you want but maybe not the most recent. They won’t touch it.
They also won’t touch making glasses which are, ahem, “imaginative” e.g. if your distance figures are just -0.50 then making up glasses to -0.25 will still give you excellent distance vision (with -0.50, you can marginally get a Class 1 without wearing glasses) while enabling you to read the panel, whereas with glasses made to the full prescription of -0.50 you won’t be able to read the instruments. And bifocals can be tricky if you want to fly tight circuits, because of where your left eye needs to be looking.
Another solution, illegal of course but one which works spectacularly well, is to get the dominant eye done for the full distance figure and the other eye done for the instrument panel, and then reading inserts at the bottom done for the kneeboard. This works very well and takes no getting used to if your distance figure is within about 0.50 of your instrument panel figure. You may then need a cheap pair of (non-tinted) bifocals for passing the medical… they can also be used for driving at night.
I had a comical situation with a top-end optician who refused to hand over the 300 quid glasses they just made. They scrapped them and gave me a refund.
While we are talking about glasses, don’t forget the internet purchase option ;)
I have found a number of mail order shops which are very good but need a prescription within the last 12 months, too. I have used one for a number of bifocals for a number of friends/family who does that – but he does bifocals for e.g. Randolph frames for 45 quid 
Peter, have you not got Photoshop?
OK, I get it 
