Guns for pilots

05/05/02

For 40 years – from the Cuban missile cri sis of 1961 until last July -
the FAA al lowed commercial airline pilots to arm themselves against
hijackers. This little-mentioned fact makes even more haunting the
question: What would have happened on Sept. 11, scarcely two months after
that permission was rescinded, had the pilots of the four hijacked
airliners had the means and the training to defend their passengers,
their planes and their own lives?

There’s reason to argue that most of the 3,000 people who died that day
might still be alive; that uncounted billions of dollars in damage to the
nation’s economy might not have been inflicted; that Osama bin Laden and
his murdering al-Qaida might not have been propelled to the status of
demi-gods among the zealots of radical Islam who daily pray for the
destruction of everything that is American.

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But the eight pilots who died that day had no defense but their bare
hands. And cadres of terrorists lurking in our society, the government
tells us, still remain a threat to repeat such catastrophic assaults.

That’s reason enough to agree with most Americans and the Air Line Pilots
Association in their common-sense call: Allow those pilots who wish to do
so, and can meet the stringent qualifications now under consideration in
Congress, to bear arms in the defense of all.

Airline pilots are not “cowboy” personalities, given to rash
impulsiveness. They are among the most self-disciplined, level-headed
people in the world. Every time they enter a cockpit, they take
responsibility for hundreds of lives aboard a technologically complex,
multimillion-dollar machine. Many learned to fly in military aircraft.
Several still fly heavily armed warplanes in the Air National Guard – the
same planes and pilots, by the way, that would be ordered to shoot down
civilian airliners should terrorists gain control of them and threaten
another attack.

And what is being proposed is not a give-’em-a-gun-and-send-’em-up
approach. Rather, the pilots want a week of intensive training, designed
by FBI firearms experts, with the expenditure of some 1,700 rounds of
ammunition – all focused on cockpit defense. The standards for approval
would be far higher than most law enforcement personnel routinely
demonstrate.

All would be volunteers, and would be sworn law enforcement agents with
the title of Federal Flight Deck Officer. Their authority would be
limited to that space forward of the locked bulkheads, where, in the
gravest extreme, what pilots call the “last clear chance” to avoid
disaster would be played out.

Opponents offer weak, impractical arguments. The danger of more guns on
airplanes? Sworn police and a smattering of air marshals now fly armed on
hundreds of flights every day. Newly secured cockpit doors? They won’t be
in place for at least a year, and even then, as a recent break-in by a
deranged passenger showed, might present little challenge to trained
invaders. Planes exploding from a bullet through the fuselage? That’s
Hollywood fantasy; it doesn’t happen. Pilots too busy flying? They are
trained to handle all sorts of airborne emergencies. It’s obscene to
suggest they should focus solely on monitoring the auto-pilot while
someone comes to kill them.

Flight attendants say that, unless provisions are made for their
protection, they will oppose allowing pilots to have guns. There’s no
objection here to training those crews with non-lethal weaponry to help
save lives on the passenger side of the bulkhead. But only a live pilot
at the controls can maneuver the plane to thwart a cabin attack. If
terrorists control that seat, then all is lost.

Arming pilots would be more cost-effective than hiring legions of air
marshals, can be made to happen in months, and would plant in the minds
of potential hijackers the deterring uncertainty of what they might
encounter on the other side of that locked cabin door. The danger remains
real; the steps taken so far to prevent it are largely illusory. Reduce
the threat. Arm the pilots now.

? 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.