Airbus A320-200 in the context of "Airbus A319"

A cockpit or flight deck is the area, on the front part of an aircraft, spacecraft, or submersible, from which a pilot controls the vehicle.

The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the controls that enable the pilot to fly the aircraft. In most airliners, a door separates the cockpit from the aircraft cabin. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, all major airlines fortified their cockpits against access by hijackers.

Alitalia - Società Aerea Italiana S.p.A., operating as Alitalia (Italian pronunciation: [aliˈtaːlja]), was an Italian airline which was once the flag carrier and largest airline of Italy. The company had its head office in Fiumicino, in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital. The airline was owned by the Government of Italy as a nationalized business from its founding in 1946 until it was privatized in 2009. However, it struggled with profitability whilst operating as a private company, including failed negotiations to sell to other private parties. The airline entered extraordinary administration in 2017 following many years of financial losses. The Italian government eventually took back ownership of the airline in March 2020.

The airline operated a fleet of Airbus A319-100, Airbus A320-200, Airbus A321-100, Airbus A330-200, and Boeing 777-200ER aircraft to over 34 scheduled domestic, European and intercontinental destinations. The airline operated from its main hub at Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport in Rome. The airline was a full member of the SkyTeam alliance, and it had codeshare agreements with 42 airlines. In 2018, the airline was the twelfth-largest airline in Europe.

Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 was a scheduled international passenger flight operated by Indonesia AirAsia from Surabaya, Java, Indonesia, to Singapore. On 28 December 2014, the Airbus A320-216 flying the route crashed into the Java Sea, killing all 162 of the people on board. When search operations ended in March 2015, only 116 bodies had been recovered. This is the first and only fatal accident involving Indonesia AirAsia.

In December 2015, the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT or NTSC) released a report concluding that a non-critical malfunction in the rudder control system prompted the captain to perform a non-standard reset of the on-board flight control computers. Control of the aircraft was subsequently lost, resulting in a stall and uncontrolled descent into the sea. Miscommunication between the two pilots was cited as a contributing factor.