http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/18/international/worldspecial/18PILO.html
> ?th
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> Airline Pilots Set to Carry Firearms
> By PHILIP SHENON
>
>
> LYNCO, Ga., April 17 – After a graduation ceremony this weekend, a group
> of pilots from several of the nation’s largest airlines will return home
> with a special gift from the federal government: a .40-caliber
> semiautomatic handgun that, beginning next week, they can carry into the
> cockpits of their planes.
>
> The 46 pilots, most of them gray-haired veterans of the airline industry
> who volunteered to travel to southern Georgia this week for the first
> federal training class for armed pilots, say they cannot wait to get
> back into the sky – this time, armed to protect their passengers from
> the threat of terrorist hijackers.
>
> “When the cockpit door is closed, you really don’t know what’s going to
> be on the other side,” said one of the pilots in training here in the
> government’s Federal Flight Deck Officer program, which is being
> organized by the Transportation Security Administration.
>
> “The idea is to protect the flight deck at all costs,” the pilot said.
>
> Another of the students, a 14-year veteran of the industry who like her
> classmates was not allowed to give her name or identify her employer,
> said that “it’s a different world now” and that she needed a gun “to
> defend my passengers, to defend my cockpit.”
>
>
> The many other federal aviation precautions taken since the suicide
> hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001, had been useful, including the
> reinforcement of cockpit doors, she said, “but it’s not enough.”
>
> Assuming they all complete the weeklong course of weapons and
> counterterrorism training required by Congress when it decided last year
> to allow pilots to carry guns, these 43 men and 3 women will be back in
> their cockpits with guns when they return to work as early as next week.
> They will be followed by tens of thousands more airline pilots who are
> expected to seek the special gun permits in years to come.
>
> But before they get the right to carry firearms onboard, they must prove
> themselves this week to instructors like Don Garron, who teaches
> judo-like defense techniques. He pitted teams of the T-shirted pilots
> against each other this afternoon – “good guys, bad guys” – and asked
> them to wrestle with red plastic knives and toy guns.
>
> “Try to stab your partner,” he barked at a classroom of about 20 of the
> pilots, a collection of mostly middle-aged men, some in good physical
> shape, others pot-bellied and sweating heavily as they picked themselves
> up off blue plastic mats set across the floor.
>
> “I want you to shove the knife into their gut,” Mr. Garron yelled,
> urging the pilots to pretend that an attacker had tried to raid a
> cockpit. “They’re in the cabin, they’re in the flight deck!”
>
> Officials here of the Transportation Security Administration, which had
> initially joined with the airline industry in opposing the idea of
> arming pilots, say they have come to believe that weapons in the cockpit
> could bolster safety.
>
> “This is a new level of security,” said John K. Moran, deputy assistant
> administrator for law enforcement and security. “We believe that this is
> going to be a very strong deterrent to anybody who might want to reach a
> cockpit.”
>
> He said that the first class of pilots represented some of the finest
> aviators in the industry and that several of them had had distinguished
> military careers and extensive weapons training before joining the
> airlines.
>
> The first class of students in the Flight Deck Officer program were
> selected from volunteers who were nominated by the Air Line Pilots
> Association, the pilots’ major union, and a smaller pilots group.
>
> Pilots groups had been pressing for years for the right to arm pilots,
> even before the Sept. 11 attacks, over the objections of their
> employers, who have insisted that the presence of guns in the cockpits
> raises obvious safety issues and could distract pilots from their
> central jobs.
>
> Under the program approved by Congress as a legacy of Sept. 11, the
> pilots are not required to tell their employers about their
> participation in the training until after they have graduated. That
> reflects an effort to protect the pilots’ privacy should they fail to
> complete the program, which includes a criminal background check and a
> psychological examination.
>
> The Transportation Security Administration said that 48 pilots had begun
> the class this week and that two had left for reasons that instructors
> would not explain to reporters who were invited to witness the training
> here today.
>
> The pilots who complete the course, which includes lectures with names
> like “The Psychology of Survival,” will each take home the .40-caliber
> pistol, a supply of ammunition, a holster and a metal lockbox. Under the
> conditions of the program, pilots will be required to carry the weapon
> into the plane in the lockbox covered in a nondescript cloth bag, and to
> take the gun out of the lockbox only after they are in the cockpit.
>
> If they travel home as a passenger instead of in the cockpit, the guns
> would be carried inside the lockboxes in special areas of the cargo
> hold.
>
> Some pilots in the program acknowledged knowing colleagues who, for a
> variety of physical and emotional reasons, should not carry guns onto a
> plane, even though they were more than competent to fly safely.
>
> “I think there are a lot of cops who shouldn’t be carrying a gun,” said
> Stephen Luckey, a former 747 pilot for Northwest Airlines who is now a
> safety specialist with the Air Line Pilots Association and joined in the
> training here this week. “But for most pilots, this is long overdue.”
>
> Mr. Luckey pointed out that this is not the first time commercial pilots
> have carried guns into cockpits. Beginning in the 1970′s, he was among
> about 10 pilots who were allowed to carry firearms in planes.
>
> In the 1950′s, airline pilots on flights carrying United States mail
> were allowed to carry guns. The captain of an American Airlines DC-6
> shot and fatally wounded a 15-year-old who tried to hijack his plane in
> Cleveland in July 1954.
>