After airline risk assessments found that requiring two crewmembers in the cockpit at all times during flights “introduced unintended consequential risks,” Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has advised that carriers should decide on their own whether to maintain the practice.
In a CASA Briefing published online in late July, the agency said, “Operators should take an operational approach to maintaining the so-called ‘two in the cockpit’ practice.” CASA also said that such an approach is in line with the position taken by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which revised its post-Germanwings guidance to carriers two years ago.
On March 24, 2015, the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525, operated with an Airbus A320 with 144 passengers and five crew on board, intentionally crashed the airplane in the French Alps during a scheduled flight from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, Germany. In its final report on the accident, the French Bure…
