The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) yesterday said that it is considering reinstating a rule requiring at least two people to be in the aircraft cockpit at all times during commercial flights, following the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 on Tuesday.
Yu Yi-shi (喻宜式), deputy director of the agency’s flight standards division, said that domestic carriers used to follow the practice of many international carriers, requiring at least two people to stay in the cockpit at all times during flights. He said that under the practice, one of the cabin crew would enter the cockpit if one of the pilots needed to use the restroom or temporarily left the cockpit.
However, he said that airlines upgraded facilities aimed at preventing terrorists from entering the cockpit after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the US. Not only did they make cockpit doors able to withstand strong impacts from the outside, but they also installed security cameras on cockpit doors to monitor the inside of the cockpit, he said.
Because of the new facilities, many airlines gradually canceled the requirement that two crew remain in the cockpit, Yu said, adding that China Airlines (CAL) is the only airline that continues to enforce the requirement.
As the mental health of the Germanwings copilot is under scrutiny, CAL said that its cabin crews are required to have examinations at the Civil Aviation Medical Center at least once a year. It also said that it urges its staff to have counseling sessions with mental health professionals if necessary.
EVA Airways said that pilots can receive counseling from psychiatrists retained by the company and that pilots can utilize 30 days of paid sick leave if they feel stressed or unwell.
The Taoyuan Union of Pilots said that the real cause of the accident remains to be determined.
Even if preliminary results indicate that the copilot might have caused the accident, the union said that there are safety measures that can be instantly activated to enhance safety inside the cockpit.
The public should not be excessively worried or stressed following the Germanwings plane crash, the union said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching