I haven’t seen or heard from him in months but the last time we discussed this particular topic he claimed that during their hundreds of scenarios that took place all around the U.S. – not a single armed pilot was ever able to *draw* a weapon, much less use it to prevent the takeover.
He said it was pathetic. That they could take it over at will, repeatedly, and that due to their ability to do it they ended up changing the “rules” of the trials so that the pilots involved in the test scenarios literally knew which “flights” would or would not be one during which an attempt to take over the cockpit would occur. Even so, they could still take control of the cockpit.
He claimed it was a waste of time and money. Not just the arming/training, but designing a training program that can’t work due to fundamental limitations as well as testing it. He knows people working for competitors that were doing the same type of thing and implied that they had similar results.
In his opinion a successful plan to prevent unauthorized entry would have one or more armed marshals in the passenger compartment where (for their purposes) a takeover attempt would originate – vastly more effective, according to him.
He also claimed that in one report they recommended a few things (not involving arming pilots) that would all but guarantee never having an unauthorized entry, but that the pilot unions were dead-set against them. (Whatever they were – he didn’t say). His view towards the end was that the entire issue was a politicking power grab by APSA-types. I’d ping him over to address it himself, but he got banned at some point (probably over this very issue) and lost interest…
But whatever. If it is a big waste of money I’m surprised they’ve waited this long to ramp up their arming drive. Or maybe someone’s figured out how to make things “work.” I suppose that’s possible. But then I’m also familiar with some of the limitations they face and they’re pretty much insurmountable, IMO.