In these days of increased security and safety, airlines all have stringent procedures about access to the cockpit. Flight and cabin members have to follow set guidelines, which differ from airline to airline when entering or leaving the cockpit. On many short-haul flights the cockpit door will remain locked from before take-off until after the aircraft has safely reached its parking gate, although sometimes there is a need for a pilot to leave the comfort of their cockpit office, more than likely to answer a call of nature. These would seem a natural occurrence, but earlier this month, thanks to a faulty lavatory lock it resulted in a full terrorist alert.
The Delta Air Lines flight DL6132 was travelling from Asheville, North Carolina, to New York City when the pilot decided to make a quick visit to the bathroom before the aircraft landed at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. However, when he tried to leave the lavatory he discovered that he was unable to open the door, which due to a faulty lock had jammed closed. In an attempt to make his colleague in the flightdeck aware of his predicament, he called out to a passenger to pass an instruction to the First Officer that he was trapped.
Unfortunately, his attempts to defuse any issue actually flamed the circumstances. The passenger apparently had a thick foreign accident and upon hearing him outside the cockpit door, the First Officer naturally went on the defensive, not buying the passenger’s story and alerting Air Traffic Control to the situation.
“The captain has disappeared in the back and, uh, I have someone with a thick foreign accent trying to access the cockpit right now. What I’m being told is he’s stuck in the lav. Someone with a thick foreign accent is giving me a password to access the cockpit, and I’m not about to let him in,” newspapers report the First Officer has saying to ATC.
Not willing to take any chances themselves, controllers on the ground ordered the aircraft, operated by Delta Air Lines’ regional partner Chautauqua Airlines, to make an emergency landing. However, before the jet made its approach the pilot was able to free himself, return to the cockpit and advise ATC that there was no security threat.
The moral of the story, I guess, is to make sure you visit the toilets before you board the aircraft, something that many more of us will be considering if airlines such as Ryanair ever did introduce a charge to use the lavatory.
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