US officials said Wednesday they’ll require latest airline planes to have a second barrier to make it harder for passengers to interrupt into the cockpit when the most important door is open.
The Federal Aviation Administration rule will apply to business planes made after mid-2025.
The rule will affect airlines that operate scheduled flights, but not charter operators.
There isn’t a provision requiring airlines to retrofit current planes.
Officials called the rule a vital step to provide pilots more protection.
“No pilot should must worry about an intrusion on the flight deck,” said David Boulter, the FAA’s acting associate administrator for safety.
The cockpit is more vulnerable to attackers when the door is opened for pilots to take a toilet break or get their meals.
A secondary barrier is meant “to slow such an attack long enough in order that an open flightdeck door could be closed and locked before an attacker could reach the flightdeck,” the FAA said within the rule, published within the Federal Register.
The FAA estimated that every secondary barrier will cost $35,000 to purchase and install.
Congress directed the FAA in 2018 to require secondary barriers to cockpits, however the agency didn’t issue a proposal until last August, after it received recommendations from aircraft makers and pilot groups.
Pilot unions asked the FAA to increase the requirement for secondary barriers to all airline planes, including older ones.
They said covering latest planes only would create a known security gap.
Nonetheless, industry trade group Airlines for America and United Airlines argued that current security steps are effective.
They asked that secondary barriers be required only on future forms of planes — meaning that latest copies of FAA-approved planes similar to Boeing 737 Max and Airbus A320 jets wouldn’t need secondary barriers, even in the event that they were built after mid-2025.
The FAA said Congress was clear that the requirement should apply to all latest planes.
Pilot groups also asked for the rule to take effect in a single yr, while the airline industry, Boeing and Airbus asked for 3 years to comply.
The FAA said two years was plenty — aircraft makers got less time to strengthen cockpit doors after the September 2001 terror attacks.
The FAA said Delta Air Lines and United have voluntarily added secondary barriers to a few of their planes.
