[Toenex]

Unless of course as an employee he had access to one.

[h4b4n3r0]

Well, require that only pilots have access to the key then.

[pjc50]

.. which they will promptly hand over to the engineers for maintenance purposes, just as people do with their car keys.

[h4b4n3r0]

Create a “valet key” which lets the engineer to do what he/she needs to do but doesn’t allow to take off.

[adrinavarro]

And mechanics.

[cookingrobot]

Or let air traffic control diasable any plane while it’s taxiing.

[Twisell]

I’m not sure having a remote control kill switch on an airplane is the kind of backdoor that improve security (if any backdoor can, which I’d doubt).

[speedplane]

The current "kill switch" technology for rouge airplanes is an F-18 with a few Sidewinders.

[iforgotpassword]

Sounds a lot safer to me and sufficient as well.

[bufferoverflow]

That's dangerous. Imagine this remote control gets hacked and planes start getting disabled in mid air, or even while trying to take off.

An hard to copy ignition key makes a lot more sense.