James Metcalfe
Every single part of airline security was altered forever by the effects of September 11, 2001, with the uptick in airport security checks being perhaps the most obvious. One other serious change however was the installation of the cockpit being able to lock from the inside, presumably to keep would-be intruders out. However, even this security feature has been used to wreak terror upon dozens. Locking his co-pilot out of the cockpit, a suicidal German pilot hijacked his own plane and crashed it in the French Alps in 2015. Where this gets chilling is that about two months prior to this incident, a fellow pilot named Jan Cochret had an eerie prediction that the well-intentioned security system could ultimately prove worse for the pilot than any bad guy. As he put it, “I seriously wonder who’s sitting next to me … I hope I never find myself in the situation where I go to the toilet and return to find a cockpit door that won’t open.”
