International Action Organization

Airline Pilots Set to Carry Firearms

April 18, 2003

By PHILIP SHENON

New York Times

GLYNCO, 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.

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