How safe are cockpits? Aviation experts weigh in after security scare on board Horizon Air flight

The attempt by an off-duty pilot to shut down the engines of a U.S. airliner in midflight highlights the threat that insiders pose to aviation safety with their ability to go where passengers are prohibited. He said air travel won’t function — “it will come to a grinding halt” — if off-duty pilots can’t use the jump seat to commute to work. “We have to trust personnel to a certain extent, or the system doesn’t work.” Loffi, the Oklahoma State professor, said banning pilots from the jump seat would be silly because a pilot intent on crashing the plane could simply wait until their turn to operate a flight. And it’s just so hard to predict this kind of behavior.” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the FAA will look into “any safety considerations” that come out of investigations of the Horizon Air incident. The airline indicated it was talking to the pilots’ union “regarding his employment status.” On Tuesday, Emerson was being held in the Multnomah County, Oregon, jail on one federal count of interfering with a flight crew and 83 state counts of attempted murder, a felony, 83 counts of misdemeanor reckless endangerment, and one count of endangering an aircraft, a felony.