Wizz Air adopts two-person cockpit rule

Hungary-based low-cost airline Wizz Air announced on Friday that it has changed its safety procedures and that from now on two persons will always be present in its airplanes’ cockpits.

“Wizz Air confirms that it has revised its safety procedures related to the airplanes’ cockpits and it introduces a new procedure which stipulates that the cockpit will never be operated by only one person. If one of the pilots leaves the cockpit he or she will be replaced by a flight attendant,” said Daniel De Carvalho, the spokesperson of Wizz Air, adding that this change has already been approved by the Hungarian Civil Air Authority.

Wizz Air is only one of several airlines to adopt the two-person cockpit rule after a Germanwings plane flying from Barcelona to Dusseldorf crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday. It was later revealed that the plane’s co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, allegedly crashed the plane deliberately after he locked the captain out of the cockpit.

Other airlines that have adopted the two-person cockpit rule in the accident’s aftermath include Monarch (UK), easyJet (UK), Virgin Atlantic (UK), Thomas Cook (UK), Air Canada (Canada), Westjet (Canada), Air Transat (Canada), Norwegian Air Shuttle (Norway) and Air Berlin (Germany) according to The Guardian. Ryanair (Ireland), Aer Lingus (Ireland) Jet2 (UK), Flybe (UK) and Porter (Canada) and in general all US airlines already had the rule in place. Lufthansa (Germany) and Air France-KLM Group (France/Netherlands) are among airlines that haven’t announced any plans, according to the same source.

Wizz Air operates in 37 countries and has fleet of 55 Airbus A320 aircrafts. In Romania it operates flights from nine airports including Bucharest.