Wednesday, September 26, 2001

Risky Business
Pilots trained to fly, not kill
Representatives from the Airline Pilots Association are asking Congress to allow pilots to carry firearms in cockpits, a measure currently prohibited by the Federal Aviation Administration.

“It is probably safe to say that the entire aviation industry ... enjoyed a false sense of security before Sept. 11,” Capt. Duane Woerth, the union’s president, told the House Transportation aviation subcommittee. “We must replace that false sense of security with a genuine sense of security.”

Pilots are trained to operate aircraft, not to handle and use firearms. The use of firearms currently is, and should always be, absent in the pilots’ job description.

Allowing pilots to wield guns in essence would make those pilots policing agents.

Policing skills immediately adds more time and additional costs to pilots’ training.

Adding such power to the job description of a pilot would also require more extensive screening procedures and psychological testing during the hiring process, both costly procedures for an already struggling airline industry.

Union spokesman John Mazor said: “The cockpit has to be defended at all costs.”

The best defense is done through prevention. Achieving security for pilots would best be accomplished by isolating pilots, and cockpits, from the passengers.

The union claims “pilots must be prepared to kill a cockpit intruder.” That should never be the case, rather pilots must maintain their role as operators of the plane, not killers.

Instead of lobbying for the right to carry guns, pilots should be assisting and advising aircraft manufacturers in designing aircraft with impenetrable cockpits.

After such horrific attacks, the union has urged all of its pilots to act aggressively in terrorist attacks.

Aggressively they should, but not to the extreme of carrying guns on a commercial airplane.