[driftdiver]

I actually agree with him. Passengers have shown they will step in and take control of any situation if needed.

Pilots should have guns. Air marshals are easy to spot and any serious terrorist would take them out first.

[antiunion person]

Passengers wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell if trained terrorists took over control of an aircraft. Pilots need to be allowed to carry firearms in the cockpit and air marshals are needed to man the planes. For anyone who has ever flown, did you notice how attentive passengers are when the flight attendants were giving instructions? People are in their own little world until someone waves a gun around and they go into hysterics.
The airlines need to have trained personnel to handle any and all situations. Why pilots are not allowed to carry is beyond me. Most, if not all, pilots are retired military or reservists and they are certainly well trained in the handling of firearms.
Just because Duncan gets to fly on his own private jet, does not give him the right to make flying more dangerous for the rest of us. I wonder what airline company brought him off to make this charge?

[DBrow]

Pilots are locked behind their new security doors. For an armed pilot to respond to an emergency in the cabin requiring a gun, he’d have to unlock that armored door and open it, which could be the entire reason for the cabin ruckus.

His logic is saying that we don’t need an armed person in the cabin because nothing has happened is loony. Maybe things don’t happen just because there is deadly force?

If a bank has never been robbed, why post a guard? Or have a vault, for that matter.

[doc1019]

If you can spot an Air Marshal … he/she ain’t one. Trust me on that one.

[Syntyr]

“Air marshals are easy to spot and any serious terrorist would take them out first.”

I don’t fly a lot, probably 5 or 6 times a year. In the past couple of years i have spotted hree of them on seperate flights. One was so lazy he made no attempt to conceal his weapon. He sat in the seat to the back of the plan just in front of the bathrooms. He was paying less attention to the passengers and more in his book he was reading. All it would have taken was a can of soda or my laptop power supply and bonk on the head as I was coming out of the rest room and viola I would have been armed!

[PhiloBedo]

Dittos! The problem with getting rid of Air Marshals is, it makes sense and is too simple a solution.