I remember it well. Rode an Air France flight once, across the Alps, in the cockpit. A friend of mine sat in the jump seat of a 747 landing at LHR.
I don’t understand what a “secondary barrier” can do that a door cannot - yet this new requirement is for a device to be used when the door is open? So what does that mean? A gate? As stated, closing the door seems like the most effective option.
Why? Because someone on the ground somehow knows better?
Thomas Boyle, well said. GA is being crippled by dated regulations in addition to many other aspects. It pretty rediculous that i can depart beside an experimental that has better safety, and better equipment that i can have, and have hit brickwalls trying to get some of it because of regulations, or requirements that are so costly, it just wont happen. Common sense has been removed from the equation. The regulations arent keeping my safe; they’re keeping be from being safer.
Due to drug testing and other recent FAR changes local sightseeing rides that used to be given by a local operator under pt91 at a small airport are no longer legal. Most operators who have a pt 61 flight school operation sell that kind of airplane ride as an introductory flight instruction ride. Doing the occasional sightseeing ride without being part of a drug testing program has been illegal since the 1990’s.
Check 91.147.
Because, as was mentioned earlier, pilots have to open the door in order to go to the bathroom. As I understand it, the pilot has to first notify a flight attendant. The attendant will then position a drink cart in the aisle to block any passengers from coming forward. Then the pilot can leave and go into the bathroom. Presumably a second door will take the place of the drink cart (which is on wheels and easily pushed out of the way).
Boeing has already patented a method to do this. Flight deck crew getting hijacked hits a code/switch and the ground crew takes over and the flight deck controls are “disconnected” or isolated from the airplane.
Fly EL AL, sit in Business, and you will see this in action. They have such barrier for years. When a pilot needs to leave the cockpit, the access from the galley to the cockpit (and the toilet next to it) is blocked. Only then the cockpit door is open.
Why a door needs to cost 35k? Why not… Everything on aviation is ridiculously expensive.
Trial lawyers ruined GA, though the FAA helped. They found that juries would award ten times the compensation for a death in an airplane compared to the same person’s death in an automobile. Deep pockets law made manufacturers pay, even where the pilot was in error. Liability insurance went from low single digit thousands per aircraft to a hundred thousand, more than doubling the cost of the average aircraft. Demand tanked, further increasing unit costs as fixed cost were spread across fewer units.
20k annual unit production in the 60s became low hundreds annually in the 70s, with prices ten times the average worker salary instead of two. Every manufacturer either went bankrupt or sold out to a larger company, who then refocused production on the more expensive turbine aircraft. Lack of funds made FAA certification costs unmanageable, so nearly every piston aircraft you see now was made in the 60s.