In favor of remote controllers taking over "distressed" aircraft?

I already saw this in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. I can just see some terrorist getting a job as an aircraft controler and doing what I do when I play MS Flight Simulator: crashing into everything in sight.

You couldn't include any type of 'flip to activate' switch, because when someone is in trouble they couldn't flip it. You couldn't have a local override, or the terrorists would just turn it off. If you preform some kind of encription on the data stream, great. The problem is that keys which are too difficult to break by a brute force attack in any reasonable amount of time today will be vunerable in the future. The life cycle of a plane & therefore an encryption scheme as well is much shorter than the next faster generation of computers.

It's a bad idea that could cause as many problems as it solves. The only reason they'd do it would be to counter consumer fear over the short term.

 

I'm all for it, but I'd rather have Ted Striker.

 

<i>"OK, Billy, here we are in the control tower. This is where I sit and communicate with the pilots while they are in the air"

"OOOH, Daddy, what's that big red button!"

"Oh, that's the button that allows us to control the flight of the plane from down here"

"COOL! Let me try.......Hey, daddy, watch me make the plane to a loop-de-loop! WHEEE!!"

"ha ha ha! Oh, Billy, you're such a smart boy!"</i>

yeah, that's a great idea

 

It's the same problem with almost every safety mechanism you put in: if you can use it to counter terrorists, there is the potential for the terrorist to get control of it and use it for even greater effect. It applies to guards, guns, reinforced doors, even the order to shoot down hijacked planes.