Doing the Double Shuffle on Doors

The president of the Air Canada Pilots Association was on record as recommending that Air Canada install a double-door flight deck system on its aircraft. However in an explanatory note of what the boss really meant to say, Serge Beaulieu, national spokesman for the pilots association, claims that Luc Grignon was expressing a personalized sentiment and that Air Canada's pilots appear to be "quite happy with the (single) armoured, locked door that we now have.....although the best system might well be the double doors".

Israel's national airline El-Al is the only airline that is using a system of double doors to prevent passengers from accessing the cockpit, Beaulieu said. "They have been doing it for a couple of years."

After a Turkish Airlines flight was hijacked last October, the Air Canada pilots union reminded its 3,200 members to observe cockpit-safety protocols, Beaulieu said. However he wouldn't elaborate further upon that for security reasons. The union is not asking Air Canada to go to the expense of retrofitting its planes with double doors, Beaulieu said. "The union's position is that it would prefer aircraft manufacturers install an air-lock style double-door security system in the future".

At present neither Airbus nor Boeing plan to incorporate the airlock system in their new designs.