On The Nation: Lisa Owen interviews Andrew Charlton

Lisa Owen: Good evening to you, Andrew. Thanks for joining us.

Andrew Charlton: Good morning.

Should this two-person rule be standard practice for all airlines, do you think?

That’s a really complicated question. We built the two-person rule to address situations other than this situation. We also built the incredibly secure cockpit rule to address a completely different situation as well. The incredibly secure cockpit that we’ve made was in response to the 9/11 issues. What we decided was we needed to keep the cockpit as the last possible place where the good guys could be. We then acknowledged that perhaps sometimes there might be a medical issue, and so in some countries, but let me say, until yesterday by no means in all countries, it was felt that it might be helpful to have a second person in the cockpit. But no one had built the rule to address the problem that we saw this week, which was, well, I’d call inconceivable, except it actually happened. But no one had thought that that was a situation we needed to address. As we speak, right now there are 3000 aeroplanes in the sky. Today 12,000 aeroplanes flew over Europe. It’s an incredibly safe system, and the events that happened this week are most, most, most unusual. Have we made the system safer by having two people in the cockpit at all times? Perhaps marginally, but it also depends on the second person, the flight attendant, who goes into the cockpit appreciating what the pilot or the captain or the first officer is doing and is also able to intervene to stop them in the event that something terrible has happened. It’s a long shot, but then this was a long shot too.

So what about this overriding of the systems there? There’s some suggestion that he did override a system that would have allowed the other pilot to get back into the room using a safety code on the cockpit door?

Correct. He hit the five-minute delay button on the unlocking the door. There’s a lock on the outside, but it can be overridden by the people in the cockpit. Again, that was a security issue brought in to address the situation when the people outside the cockpit aren’t the good guys – they’re the terrorists – and the people inside the cockpit are the good guys. So we’ve got the reverse of that in this situation.

So is there any way of overhauling that system? Is there any way of having someone else who could unlock that cockpit door?

I think there are two issues there. The first one is could it be done from someone else inside the aeroplane, and that’s a fairly complex set of circumstances where that might happen, and it again puts the override back in the part of the aeroplane we think is full of the bad guys. Sorry, most of our customers, most of our passengers aren’t bad guys at all. They’re wonderful people, but you know what I mean in the context. Alternatively, it’s on the ground, and it’s impossible to see how it could have worked in this situation without effectively putting a third pilot monitoring every single flight all the time so as to be able to intervene.

You mentioned upping of security after 9/11. In some ways, did doing that, trying to make the plane safer by upping security, making the cockpit a place where people couldn’t get into, hasn’t this just created a whole other set of problems?

Well, it’s created a set of problems in this circumstance, in this really unusual and rare circumstance, but on the other hand, I think it was probably, frankly, the single most effective and certainly most cost-effective and most efficient way of making the aviation system much safer from the sort of situation of the terrorists. So we could make aviation 100% safer tomorrow; no person will ever die again in an aviation accident if we simply ban flying. It’s as simple as that. But that’s clearly not an appropriate response. So we have to find a response which is balanced and reasonable and addresses the issues. We have to be very careful that we don’t all just simply react in a kneejerk way – in an understandable way at some levels. I mean, everybody now needs to feel— feels as if they need to be seen to be doing something. But I think we have to be very careful and very measured about the way we do this.

What about pilot screening? Is there enough of that given that we have a situation here where it appears that this co-pilot had even a sick note for the day that he was flying, and they have had some mental health issues?

Pilots— it’s difficult to think of a profession that is observed more frequently than pilots; perhaps with the honourable exception of your own, of course. Pilots are tested before they start training. They're tested when they graduate. They have medical tests and other checks every six months or 12 months depending on the airline, where their performance at the job is tested, and any testing, any screening, is going to require a certain amount of frankness, and a certain amount of honesty, I suspect. I'm no psychologist, but I can't help but think that if someone's determined to lie, bald-facedly lie, they're going to be able to get around some, or a lot, of the screening. One of the strongest aspects that we have in aviation is a very strong culture where if there are any concerns at all, people report those concerns about it— Sorry, I should start that again. If you have concerns about another of the people with whom you're working, you report those concerns. Traditionally, that has been an issue about depression—

But basically what you're saying— Andrew, basically what you're saying is that this was a very rare occurrence that perhaps nothing could have been done other than what was done to try and avoid it?

It would have been a remarkably lucky— It would have been a remarkable coincidence if we had done screening on the day, and we had realised this was the day that this man would not only become suicidal, but he would actually become a mass murderer, and he flew down to Barcelona from Dusseldorf with a very experienced captain beside him, who was perfectly prepared to turn around and fly back to Dusseldorf and wasn't concerned about his state. He was able to hide it from him, or perhaps it was at a point where suddenly something switched, but, again, it's a very complex psychological test that would pick that up and pick it up in a timely manner.

You're a former legal officer for Qantas. What are the legal implications for this airline now, do you think?

Well, again— I'm a lawyer, so on the one hand, and then the other hand. The first part of that question is that under the Montreal Convention of 1999, Lufthansa is required to pay compensation on effectively a strict liability basis to all of the passengers, or the families of the passengers on a physical-harm basis with no limit and no cap, and, no doubt, once all the other personal and human issues are sorted, Lufthansa in an appropriate time, and no doubt an appropriate manner, will approach those people, and will make those payments. Lufthansa shares have gone off by 5% in the last three days. This is a subsidiary airline owned 100% by Lufthansa, but Lufthansa are a strong airline, and it's an extraordinarily well led airline, and I'm certainly confident that it's not going to be a disaster for Lufthansa in the economics sense — It's clearly a disaster, please don't get me wrong — but for Lufthansa, I think they will survive this. They will become stronger as a result of this.

Do you think that this is going to revive speculation about MH370 and what happened with that flight?

Yes, frankly it does, and that's in part because we just don't know what happened with MH370, and while we don't know, it's possible this is the exactly same set of circumstances. I have to say in all honesty this isn't the first this has happened either, but again this has happened about five times in the last 25 years, and that's a lot of flying in between — a lot of flying.

Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Andrew Charlton, from Geneva, thank you.

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ENDS

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