The aviation arm of the United Nations is poised to push for installing video cameras in airliner cockpits, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The video would supplement black-box voice and flight-data recorders.
Writes Andy Pasztor, “Those efforts have been stoked to some extent by a spate of high-profile crashes in the past year, including a presumed suicide crash by the 27-year-old co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525, who flew his jet into a French mountainside, killing all 150 people aboard.”
Pilots are opposed to this move. They have typically cited privacy concerns, but they now emphasizing cost to the airlines. Pasztor quotes Tim Canoll, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, privacy is not a lead concern with a video system. “When you make a decision to spend money on that system,” he said, “you are foregoing many other systems.”
Few people have much privacy in the workplace, so it’s hard to be difficult to the privacy concerns. But what’s the point? It’s hard to believe a suicidal pilot would be deterred by a video camera. Presumably, the video wouldn’t be streamed off the plane so ground crews could take some sort of action—remotely unlock the cockpit door?
As for spending money on cameras, Wade Schuette, a private pilot commenting on the Journal article, says winglet-mounted cameras looking inward would be more valuable—helping pilots identify engine damage or fires or tail sections that might be inoperative despite cockpit indications to the contrary.
