A former airline safety inspector says if a commercial pilot wants to commit suicide by crashing his jet, there's little anybody can do to stop him.
"If somebody's intent on committing suicide or whatever and they [are locked] in the cockpit, it's very, very difficult to prevent it," John Goglia, a 50-year air safety veteran, told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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His chilling opinion came as authorities probing the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 said the co-pilot locked himself alone in the cockpit and aimed the jet to slam into an Alpine mountain, killing all 150 aboard.
Goglia, who served on the NTSB and is founder of Safe-Skies.com, pointed to the 1990 disaster involving EgyptAir Flight 990 from Los Angeles to Cairo, which crashed into the Atlantic, killing all 217 passengers.
"The first officer was trying to commit suicide and the captain … was struggling with the controls, but it didn't matter. They crashed anyway," he said.
"Commercial airplanes are not designed to be flown in unusual altitudes as a normal course of flight.
"If the first officer or one of the pilots were to put in a situation that [the aircraft] is not designed to fly effectively in, you may lose the airplane no matter what you do."
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