Posted on 10/04/2001 9:38:13 PM PDT by kattracks
Commercial airline pilots will be asked to suspend air service if they cannot have trained, armed pilots in the cockpits, a New Hampshire pilot said. A resolution that will be circulated among the various councils of the 67,000-member Air Line Pilots Association this month asks federal regulations be changed to allow for the voluntary arming of flight crew members, Robert Giuda, a United Airlines captain of Warren said. “Had we had armed pilots on Sept. 11, we wouldn’t have the horrific tragedy that we’re dealing with at this point,” Giuda said of the four hijacked jetliners. Pilots would first get training in firearms by the FBI and would use their weapons only to defend against an attempted breach of the cockpit, the resolution said. The resolution also calls for federal licensing of pilots to carry concealed weapons and for the government to indemnify air carriers and their employees against the legitimate use of a firearm. If those steps are not carried out, the resolution calls for “a national suspension of air service, at such times and in such manner as is deemed appropriate by the leadership of the Air Line Pilots Association.” “We’re hearing members of Congress say they don’t want a bunch of armed hooligans running around,” said Giuda, a New Hampshire state representative. He said there was “no more professionalized, highly-scrutinized group of people in the world than airline pilots.” The security of the flight deck cannot depend solely on armed sky marshals, he said. Sky marshals can be picked out of a crowd and, if overpowered, would provide a hijacker with a weapon, Giuda said. “It’s time to throw the gauntlet to the mat. We are going to get politicized into unarmed cockpits and then we’ll get shot with the guns the marshals used because they will be taken away from them,” he added. Arming pilots introduces the element of “risk, fear and doubt” into the mind of a potential hijacker, he said.
They have a right not to fly in unsafe conditions. It's called freedom.
They are 10 folks who would be eager to take the place of each of them
Yeah, if you want 500-passenger 747s flown by 23-year-olds who earned their multi-engine commercial pilot ratings flying cargo on fifty-year-old prop planes.
until the public square deemed it prudent.
Right now, judging from ticket sales, the 'public square' doesn't deem it prudent to fly with unarmed pilots.
Well, Mr. editor, numerous news reports have said that it did happen September 11.
There was a fake "pilot" in the cockpit of at least one of the planes that crashed. There were Middle Eastern guest "pilots" on at least 12 planes that were grounded. There have been no reports about whether these men were detained when the planes went back to the gates, but I doubt that they were because at that point no one had connected the attacks to the Middle East.
There have been numerous reports of stolen airline pilot uniforms (Muhammed Atta left two from Lufthansa in his baggage that never made it on the plane)and falsified "pilot licenses" in the possession of the terrorists.
Let me ask you, if faking the persona of an airline pilot to gain admittance to the cockpit was not part of the plot -- why did they need to steal the uniforms, why were Middle Eastern men sitting in those courtesy seats, and why did they have to falsify pilot's licenses?
Do you still doubt that this happened?
BTW, I got on Neal Boortz today and informed him about this Pilot in NH, And got 5 minutes or so to make my points that Pilots should be armed. Check it out anyone who gets delayed Boortz.
You really expect that there are enough people out there of Delta Force/SEAL caliber that are going to take a job for any amount of money where they fly around on airplanes all day. TALK ABOUT MIND-NUMBING WORK and low JOB SATISFACTION.
I say, make sure that either the PILOT or the CO-PILOT is armed, they've got to be there anyway. And, once the bad guys know they have guns, there will be NO MORE HIJACKINGS. So, it won't really matter if the pilots can actually shoot accurately (I think they can) anyway.
It's called a deterrent.
And this guy only needs to be good at one. A much easier task.
But you're once again applying rational deterrence theory to a bunch of crazies. I want someone there who can cap the SOB with a double-tap, for real, no foolin', because a "DETERRENT" only works against people as sane as me and thee.
Unarmed "citizens" who don't value a right because you choose not to exercise that right personally shouldn't express disapproval of the rest of us. I don't see those of us who support the right of pilots to carry their own arms to be hotheads as that response of yours implies.
Your logic is impeccable but allowing pilots to have a handgun could be construed as supporting the Second Amendment. Better is to take risk and shoot the plane in case it is being hijacked.
>> This is the most cogent statement that I have yet encountered on the subject.
Did you forget the >/sarcasm< tag? or are you smoking something you should be sharing?
One important principle of self-defense with a firearm is that you need to keep some distance between yourself and your attacker. Weapons retention when an attacker is practically on top of you is apt to be a dicey proposition at best.
Unfortunately, there's no way to move around in a plane without being scant inches from other people. If a group of terrorists has one member create a disturbance worthy of a sky marshal's attention while other members lay low, the rest of the terrorists will then know who and where the sky marshal is. A second staged disturbance in another part of the plane can then be used to get the sky marshal to go over there, past a couple of terrorists one of whom can attack him while the other trips him. At that point, the only hope is that the number of brave passengers on the plane exceeds the number of rounds of ammo the sky marshal had on him.
If the terrorists take this approach, they might need more than four people per airplane, but they wouldn't even need box cutters. While the odds might favor the sky marshal if the terrorists were unarmed, the terrorists would still have a significant likelihood of success.
The toughest part of an armed pilots' training would probably be drilling in the fact that their first and foremost goal is to keep control of their 100-ton missle, even if knife-wielding terrorists are slaughtering passengers in the cabin (i.e. no matter what the terrorists are doing in the cabin, don't leave the cockpit!)
What sort of honeypot?
Yes, well that's what training is for--to resist such things.
Well, there's still a single-point-of-failure in the pilot and co-pilot; if one of those were a terrorist in disguise he could probably kill the other if they were equally armed or disarmed. If that occurred, the only way to prevent another 100-ton missle attack would be for the passengers on the plane to somehow force their way into the cockpit.
Indeed, one advantage IMHO of arming the pilot and copilot is that if they're armed the cockpit door only needs to be strong enough to ensure that they have time to take a defensive posture before it's breached. Admittedly you could have problems if there are more terrorists than bullets, but by the same token if terrorists do take over the cockpit (or start out there) the ability to break down the cockpit door could save people on the ground if there are more brave passengers than bullets.
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