Other notable accidents led to such helpful developments as Cockpit Resource Management (crews working as a cross-checking team at all times), smoke detectors and automatic fire extinguishers in lavatories and cargo-holds, wind-shear detectors, transponders and flame-retardant materials.
To assess performance, observational systems for rating teamwork behaviors in the cockpit have been developed.
The Air Force secretary, James G. Roche, cited such developments as reinforced cockpit doors, increased crew training, the presence of federal marshals on flights and the stringent screening of passengers and baggage as reducing the need to rely so extensively on the air patrols.
Although this effect is seen in studies of everything from product development teams to airplane cockpit crews, managers often can't resist the temptation to rotate people in and out to minimize costs and make scheduling easier.
A call is made for the development of an integrated cockpit architecture that takes better account of human capabilities and allows for new developments to be added to the cockpit in a more seamless manner.
The first major step was the introduction of raised cockpit sides and padding in 1996, a development that has extended now to the cockpit sides having a mandated shape aimed at ensuring the best possible protection in an open racing car while not restricting the driver's view too much.
Notable among these was the Sopwith Salamander, a development of the Sopwith Camel with an armoured cockpit and two machine guns firing downward through the floor at a fixed angle to rake enemy trenches while flying low over them.
In a separate development, the Dutch air safety board said the cockpit voice recorder from flight MH17 had been successfully downloaded and contained "valid data from the flight".
Elizabeth Erickson, the agency's director of aircraft certification, announced on Oct. 11 the development of an arc fault interrupter small enough to fit in a cockpit.
