Many of us know that embarrassing feeling you get when you lock yourself out of your car.
Now imagine you did the same thing — except you are on a plane, it is mid-flight, and you are the pilot, locked out of the cockpit after making a quick stop to the washroom.
The very thing happened onboard an Air Canada Jazz flight on Saturday, and the company confirmed Tuesday it is conducting an internal investigation into the incident that took place on the Bombardier CRJ-100 carrying as many as 50 passengers from Ottawa to Winnipeg.
For roughly 10 minutes, passengers described seeing the pilot bang on the door and communicating with the cockpit through an internal telephone, but being unable to open the cabin door.
Eventually, the crew forced the door open by taking the door off its hinges completely, and the pilot safely landed the plane — although in the event that the pilot was unable to access the cockpit, the First Officer is trained to land the aircraft.
If this happened in the US, Homeland Insecurity would brag about the strength of the cockpit door.
It would only be better if he was locked in the bathroom. It is alarming that they could force the door open. I thought that they were supposed to be reinforced to prevent forcable entry.
#1, shhhhh, icksnay on the inforcedray!
Typically the hinges on the door are inside the cockpit, so it isn’t unexpected that they were able to get it forced open with the help of the copilot ( who was still inside ).
A flight attendant remained in the cockpit with the First Officer.
wink, wink … nudge, nudge 🙂
Enbarrassing for all involved. But, at least the soundtrack was jazz.
Once upon a time, (1970’s) all Boeing cockpit doors could be opened with a vehicle key from a very popular line of automotive products. A copy of said key was hidden in a location in the forward galley.
I worked for a major American carrier at the time, and we had several of those automotive products in use at our base. More than once I had to get into the cockpit and just grabbed the hidden one, or if it was missing, one from a vehicle ignition.
Only being ambiguous because it would be ironic but unsurprising if things hadn’t changed…
It said in the article that the door was “locked or stuck” – I don’t know why they’d say it was locked – seems to me that the co-pilot or flight attendant could simply unlock the door if it was locked – I find it hard to believe that the airlines would make a door that can’t be unlocked by their staff from either side.
**Correction – that can’t be unlocked from one side or the other – the only thing would be if the only way to unlock the door was by the pilot from the inside, but that seems unlikely (he would have left his key with the co-pilot in that situation)
As per #4, methinks the flight attendant and First Officer were just “testing” out the “cock”pit. Must’ve been and interesting tiem for the first couple of rows of passengers.
I thought this was a big deal …. until they told us the copilot was in there.
I thought the name of my favorite NBA team (the Utah Jazz) was out of place, but a plane that flies from Ottawa to Winni? At least my team used to play in New Orleans.
Oh, for crying out loud… the First Officer is as much a pilot as the Captain and knows how land the aircraft all by himself. The difference is that the Captain, usually is more experienced and is the guy in charge and always has the final word. Even if the captain had been definitely locked out, what would have been the problem?
Didn’t this happen in that Airplane movie? 🙂
A commercial plane called a “Bombardier”?
Except that it’s not bom-ba-DEER, it’s bom-bar-deeEH, a surname. Bombardier, from Québec, was the guy who developed the snowmobile. The company later diversified into things like subway trains and airplanes.
The Officer couldn’t open the door? Couldn’t get the key under the door or something like that (if it is the case that only the captain can use the magic key)? I don’t get this. It reminds me of the guy who locked his keys in the car and then started to panic because he couldn’t get his family out…
Yes – Bombardier makes all sorts of transportation stuff only because its heavily subsidised by the Canadian government – “we can make planes too!” – its kinda sad, they aren’t really that good …
I didn’t think it it could even happen, something else to worry about when flying,
http://737throttle.com