That's the nice thing about lists. The government says you're on it, and that's that. No proof required. No means to defend yourself or prove your innocence. Nope, you're on the list, and now we're going to bully everyone and cut you out of all the conveniences of modern life. Those who don't co-operate, well, you wouldn't want to be "aiding a terrorist" now would you?

The "free" world has gone insane, and I despair when I see a whole new generation growing up that doesn't seem to have a problem at all with this modus operandi.

Compared to downtown Hong Kong, Japan is mostly uninhabited country. Everything is relative.

What this means is that coastal areas where tsunamis are likely are off limits to certain types of development. Farm land would be a great application for this area, for example, but not so good for high rises, nuclear plants, and hospitals. The actual impact force of the tsunami is far, far smaller than the flood area (which can be relatively easily dealt with). You're talking about the major restrictions covering a fraction of 1% of the land area.

I see a future full of kids facing jail time and their parents facing 6 figure fines. These drones will have cameras and radio links.

And if they make an error, they can just amend the rules, just like I did in that topic line.

I'd rather the FAA take a proactive, and active, role in creating rules which allow operations and enforce existing damage and nuisance laws. Letting the FAA "take it's time" is like telling ID that there's no rush on getting Duke Nukem Forever out as long as they do it right.

They're not going to be flying UAVs continuously. If Amazon gets the autopilot right, everything except the final approach and landing at the delivery location will be automated. A bank of "pilots" could easily cover 25-30+ drones each, given a 30 minute flight time from the distro center to the delivery and a 2 minute land/deliver/relaunch sequence. Distro centers would have automated guidance and pads that wouldn't require piloting. It would be far more human-cost efficient than truck delivery which requires the "pilot" to actively travel with the vehicle (weight limitations notwithstanding). That's 200 deliveries a day per person - twice what a UPS/FedEx driver does.

It's 2015. We are surrounded with selfish bastards. I wouldn't be surprised if after investigating the wreck the copilot was taking selfies right before the crash.

They will never solve the problem, because they will always be one step behind. Every safeguard is a vector for abuse, and every limitation can be circumvented if there are humans involved at any point. And humans are designing and operating the system.

It's already the safest (per passenger or traveller mile) way to travel in the world.

Producing the alarm sound when the autopilot is turned off, which would have been heard on the recording.

Agreed. The problem is how do you prevent someone unauthorized from getting hold of this "foolproof" entry method into the cockpit by any number of means, including the low tech solution...

No. You are trying to explain a mechanical failure of a door right at the moment when the aircraft suddenly starts descending into mountains all the while during which the copilot also does nothing to try to correct this unscheduled descent and also ignores air traffic control. Seriously if it has wings and floats on the water and looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. Your version requires many, many things to go wrong at once. The simple answer is, of course, only one thing went wrong - the co-pilot locked the door and set the plane to descend. Occam's razor, and all that.

Adding fuel to this theory is that the co-pilot was detatched and monosyllabic when receiving the briefing about landing in Dusseldorf - he had already made up his mind that he wasn't going to reach Dusseldorf. If the pilot wasn't going to go to the bathroom he probably was planning on killing the pilot anyway.

You're thinking of a wave not a tsunami. Think about rapids in a river, and the standing waves you get over those rocks that are much higher than the surrounding water. A tsunami has a waveLENGTH of several km at least. That is a LOT of volume of water that is going to move up and over the wall.

No. You've never seen what happens to a wave when it hits a wall? All that energy has to go somewhere and if it can't move laterally it will move vertically. How's this for 0.51 meters? That's just a normal wave, not one with a wavelength of > 1 km like a tsunami.

No and no. This is a "feel good" project so that politicians can convince people they are doing something effective while not actually addressing the problem at all. In the meantime I'm sure that the politician's cousin/uncle/brother-in-law who surprisingly "won" the bid for construction is very happy. Politics as usual.

You could not build any critical infrastructure within a set distance from the coast, and no habitable buildings within a second less restrictive distance. This is basic risk mitigation. You don't build critical facilities on a fault line, you shouldn't build one in the direct path of a (potential) tsunami. Go look at the USGS website, or any of a number of wind zone maps. All this stuff has data and is plotted out for the US - all you have to do is set your risk factor (50 years for hurricane/snow, 500 for earthquake in the US) and note your exceptions.