[Havisham]

I'm not willing to pay for 5,000 air marshall flights/day. It's just preposterous on it's face. And we'd be leaving ourselves open to a much bigger threat: terrorist infilitration of air marshall ranks. Pilots are by far the smaller security risk. Let it be known they may be armed. Besides, the coming attacks won't be on planes. Easier targets of vulnerability exist and we all know what they are.

[Search4Truth]

"Easier targets of vulnerability exist and we all know what they are. "

The airlines would be a perfect target to hit again. It work so well the first time, and they are still vulnerable. We know the terrorsist are willing to die in the attempt. And the terrorist goals to detroy confidence would make hitting the airlines again an effective move. We would be under estimating these terrorist again, if we did not think that they would strike again in the same way.

[Havisham]

To all who say the hijackers will wrestle guns from pilots -it's not their modus operandi to take any risk of failure. I agree with those who reason that if the hijackers' objective is to crash the plane into high value targets, they won't even buy a ticket if the pilot is armed.

[RobFromGa]

And we'd be leaving ourselves open to a much bigger threat: terrorist infilitration of air marshall ranks.

Or an ever bigger threat IMHO, hijackers impersonating air marshalls. They are undercover and the crew doesn't know who they are. What does a crew person do if they see an armed passenger? Assume they are air marshalls? What if they aren't?