You probably heard about the guy breaking into the cockpit of a flight earlier this week. Edward Coburn was charged Tuesday with interfering with a flight crew, a federal felony. He is being held without bond.
Even with all the preparations the crew had made in advance, the situation became critical within a split second, according to Dean Weber, the pilot of the airliner. "We thought we were better prepared than we were." Yeah, right.
If there's good news about the incident, here it is:
Coburn's father had warned flight attendants that his son was "mentally and physically unstable" and potentially violent.
Armed with this information, prior to the flight, Weber and co-pilot Vince Belser discussed what they'd do if there was trouble out of this passenger.
As a defense, they instructed flight attendants to block the cockpit door with a food cart. An off-duty pilot, J.C. Crowley, was asked to keep an eye on the guy.
At about 150 miles from Chicago a flight attendant passed on a warning that Coburn appeared ready to "go nuts."
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Here's the bad news, and if you have to fly, it's really bad, imo:
With all of this advance warning/information about a single passenger that everybody knew about -- the father's warning, the pre-flight battle plan between the pilot and co-pilot, the eyes of flight attendants and an off-duty pilot watching -- with all of this, the man was still able to break into the cockpit!! I mean... are you kiddin' me????
What I wanna know is, what happens when the average looking Joe Blow who's REALLY up to no good, I mean somebody with a real plan, saunters onto a flight, somebody no one's watching because no one's aware of him/her? If every precaution can be taken and a guy can still make it to the cockpit, I mean... we got real problems, here.
"They scrambled two fighters, got the plane on the ground and took care of this man," said Capt. Tom Bloom, chairman of the Chicago chapter of the Allied Pilots Association. "The system worked."
Oh really?