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Consumer Reports


Pilots begin training for guns in cockpits

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | (KRT) GLYNCO, Ga. - It is an airline pilot's nightmare: A terrorist in the back of the airplane threatens to kill passengers and flight attendants until the cockpit door is opened and his demands are met.

Barricaded behind a bulletproof, secured door, the pilot is a deputized federal law enforcement officer with a .40-caliber handgun. But by law he cannot open the door - and risk allowing an intruder into the cockpit - regardless of the mayhem in the passenger cabin.

"It's a decision I would have to live with because I could not allow someone to take over the aircraft and turn it into another weapon of mass destruction," said one pilot at a special tactics training course earlier this month in Glynco, Ga.

Before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, airline pilots were taught to negotiate with hijackers and accommodate their needs.

Now they remain behind a secured cockpit door, and the most violent behavior in the passenger cabin will not draw them out.

Should someone force his way into the cockpit, however, airline pilots at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco are being taught to shoot to kill as the last line of defense against losing the airplane.

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That is the only circumstance under which they are allowed to fire their weapons.

"We have to protect the cockpit at all costs," said an airline pilot who flies to Milwaukee regularly and participated in the 48 hours of training.

Course participants were not allowed to give their names or identify their airlines. This month's class had several dozen pilots enrolled and was only the second session since the program began earlier this year.

Pilots have praised the training as necessary, although some say flying an airplane and confronting an attacker in the close confines of a flight deck require different sets of skills.

"Someone can be an excellent pilot, and can even be a good marksman, but that does not necessarily mean they have what it takes to be a law enforcement officer," said John Mazor, spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association International.

Training is provided through the Transportation Security Administration. Upon successful completion of the week-long course, airline pilots are deputized as federal law enforcement officers with the nation's smallest jurisdiction: the tightly secured flightdeck, or cockpit, of their airplanes.

The course is the result of a decision last fall by Congress and the White House to allow pilots to use deadly force to protect the cockpit.

So far, the TSA has certified only 44 pilots to carry the standardized semiautomatic pistols in an airplane cockpit, although the agency expects thousands of captains and first officers eventually will apply for the program. The 44 pilots have since flown about 1,500 flights, still a miniscule number given there are more than 85,000 airline pilots in the United States.

But the TSA has said that it wants to buy as many as nearly 10,000 handguns through 2006. "The idea is to make the bad guys guess which flights we are on," said the airline captain and course trainee who flies to Milwaukee. "It's war, and tactically we don't give any advantage to the enemy."

By law, the gun-toting pilots can't step outside a secured cockpit with a firearm holstered to their side. When walking through an airport, they must keep their weapon in a locked case inside a nondescript bag.

Pilots can't brandish a weapon in the passenger cabin even if a terrorist threatens to continually kill passengers until the cockpit door is opened.

The problem with opening the door is it could set off worse scenarios, including several terrorists stepping forward, taking over the plane, and turning it into a weapon of mass destruction, said Capt. Jay Schnedorf, a Midwest Airlines pilot and executive vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association International.

Schnedorf was not enrolled in this week's training and, as a union official, could comment on the issues using his name.

"I could not jeopardize an entire plane full of people, as well as innocents on the ground," by opening the cockpit door to an intruder, he said.

The pilot who flies to Milwaukee said he would exercise two options without giving a terrorist access to the cockpit: First, land the plane as fast as possible and hope that passengers would overpower the terrorist. Second, while bringing the plane down, he would employ flight maneuvers to try and knock the attacker off his feet.

"I could think of a few scenarios that would make the bad guy very uncomfortable," the Milwaukee pilot said.

Pilots in the TSA program are trained to shoot in the cramped quarters of a pressurized cockpit filled with sensitive flight instruments.

The agency says it continues to investigate the potential damage that stray bullets could cause in an airplane, but that it's nothing like the movies in which people are sucked out of a plane from a sudden loss of cabin pressure.

Even if bullets struck sensitive electronics, an airplane has backup systems and could still be landed safely, according to TSA instructors.

When necessary, pilots will shoot to kill a cockpit intruder - even at the risk of piercing the fuselage with bullets or accidentally killing an innocent passenger, said TSA instructor Joe Collins.

"We are teaching pilots to win at all cost," he said. "They are going to successfully land that plane no matter what."

Not all pilots will be allowed to carry guns. First they have to volunteer for the TSA program, pass background tests and psychological tests. Then they have to make it through the rigorous training, which includes hand-to-hand combat in addition to marksmanship lessons.

About four pilots failed to complete the TSA's prototype class in April. Thus far, one pilot has gotten a black eye from the self-defense training and another broke his finger. Nearly every pilot in this week's class had scrapes and bruises.

"I spent nine years in the Marine Corps, and this is some of the toughest training I have ever had," one pilot said. "I got bruises all over."

Through interactive videos and the use of laser guns and paint ball guns, the trainees go through scenario after scenario of deadly situations. Every move they make is monitored by instructors who can change a scenario's outcome based on a pilot's actions.

"People walk out of here sweating, which is what we want," Collins said. "We have to get some people past certain popular notions, like it only takes one shot to take out a bad guy. That stuff only happens in the movies."

The TSA says it will continue to train pilots to be flightdeck law enforcement officers as long as there's a demand for the program and the money doesn't run out. The government has budgeted about $25 million for the first year of training.

The course is taught at a former military base in southern Georgia where about 70 other government agencies also take various firearms and tactics classes. Armed pilots will augment the sky marshal program in which armed federal agents are placed in the passenger cabin on selected flights, TSA officials said.

"We don't have enough federal air marshals to cover every single flight in the United States," said John Moran, a TSA administrator who runs the Glynco program.

Pilots who complete the program will be certified law enforcement officers, if only in airplane cockpits. They must pass psychological tests, including an interview with a psychologist, partly to determine if they are able to kill.

Pilots are not required to tell their employers about their participation in the program until after they are certified. They must requalify twice a year, and the TSA pays for training costs and equipment, including the .40-caliber handguns.

Hardened cockpit doors and guns provide better protection for pilots, but flight attendants say they need better, more consistent self-defense training.

A violent incident on an airplane will almost certainly start in the passenger cabin - where the armed pilot is not allowed to go, said Dawn Deeks, spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants.

"So our concern is there will be a lot of dead or injured people" before a terrorist even reaches the secured cockpit door, she said.

Anti-gun groups have not spoken out against pilots carrying firearms in the cockpit, although some airlines have not warmed up to it.

"Personally I don't think it's a good idea," said Timothy Hoeksema, Midwest Airlines chairman and chief executive. "Frankly I think isolating the cockpit with bulletproof doors, and all of the other things that have been done, is a better alternative."

Many airline pilots are ex-military officers and are comfortable with handling weapons. Anyone who enrolls in the TSA program should be prepared to kill, said one female pilot in this week's class.

"You have to make that decision and envision yourself doing it long before you are put into a life or death situation," she said. "Personally, I would die to ensure that somebody doesn't get into the cockpit of my airplane."

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© 2003, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services