Pistol Packing Pilots

By: Lorenzo Dee Belveal

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center, nothing seems to have captured the interest of the general populace like the issue of whether or not to arm the cockpit crews of commercial airliners. The prospect of shootouts at 30,000 feet strikes this reporter as a daunting prospect, but a goodly proportion of our citizenry seem ready to take this chancey step. 

A recent article by columnist  Fred Reed has proved to be the "last straw" in urging me to the conclusion that the accomplishment of anything approaching fail-safe airline safety is a forlorn hope, if not an impossible dream in this age of armed terrorists, 'sneaker' bombs and a global face-off between resentful muslims and everybody else.

As a long time frequent flyer with a wall full of plaques that testify to the business I have generated for the likes of TWA, United, American, etc., my perspective is not a bit hypothetical. I have flown the tin birds in fair weather and foul, in friendly venues and war zones, in the spacious ostentation of First
Class, in the metal bucket-seats that constitute the make-do amenities in a B-17E and the removable fold-overs that still beckon reluctant travelers  into the questionable mercies of the ubiquitous C-47's (a.k.a: DC-3's).

Let's begin from the top --

Travel for our peripatetic society is a macro-operation. Pigs and people enroute from the west coast to the east coast traverse the same miles and geography, except the pigs can do it non-stop on a train. People who opt for the supposedly more posh airplane arrangements have to stop in Chicago. Don't ask me why. That's just how it is. To the best of my knowledge, that
is the way it has always been - since the Wright brothers first did their bird-like thing in the Kittyhawk sandhills.

Flying used to be touted as an upper-class indulgence, because it cost a lot more to fly than to take a bus, a train or hitchhike. No more. Now everybody flies. Design engineers have conspired to fashion aircraft seats that barely accommodate the human posterior, and won't, if said appendage happens to have a few extra pounds or an extra handkerchief in the pistol-pocket. But
with the new airplane configurations, the properly lean-framed flyer (who can fold his knees up under his/her chin like a Swiss Army knife) can be installed with several hundred like-minded travelers and the result is economy - with a capital  "E". 

Indeed, it's now cheaper to fly a person from San Francisco, to New York, than it is to ship a pig over the same route. This assumes, of course, that the
person involved is up to handling the personal indignities and physical pain involved in the sardine-can Super-Economy Class "accommodations".

It's a terrible way to travel, but it has one overriding virtue that hopefully eclipses everything else. It's CHEAP! REAL CHEAP!!

Cheap, however, does not equate with personalized attention. The mob scene at a big city airport departure gate has more in common with beef transfers in the Chicago Stockyards, than it has with human activity. This kind of collective assembly and crowd movement from point-to-point is not conducive to personal attention of whatever kind. 

The awful reality of terror threats has foisted a security imperative on the airline industry that it is not prepared to cope with. If it should eventuate that security steps must really be installed within the organized chaos of our modern airport terminals, then the entire nature of the air transportation business will, of necessity, have to be dramatically changed:

Macro-crowd control will have to give way to micro-crowd control.

When every bag must be inspected, x-rayed and encoded to its owner, when each passenger must empty his/her pockets, remove their shoes and perhaps even submit to fluoroscopy of their body cavities, the greater boarding time requirements involved are certain to eclipse flight departure times and every other lesser consideration. Bottom line: If these "security" procedures are  'no-exceptions' mandatory, then "moving the masses" is simply out of the question, regardless of what highly placed executives, ranking politicians and
bitterly complaining private citizens may have to say on the matter.

With this plethora of procedures firmly established in the terminal, what happens on the aircraft itself tends to become moot. Little remains to be feared from the picked-clean passengers who come board. Without carry-on luggage, who have been body-searched and are carrying their shoes under their arms, what possible threat remains? Should a deranged passenger decide
to attack either his seat-mate or the cabin crew, his weapons will necessarily
be limited to his/her own body parts, a rolled-up complimentary magazine
or - at most - a shoe. Able-bodied fellow passengers should be able to deal
with such contretemps in summary fashion with only  their bare hands.

These air-travel safeguards will surely add much to our individual and collective security, but the trade-off is that we just won't fly much any more.
There is a level of pain and inconvenience beyond which a rational individual
will simply forego the particular exposure in deference to sheer peace of mind.

Returning now to the central question: 

Should the cockpit crews be armed?  This loyal air-traveler fails to see any
compelling reason why they should not be.

By the same token, might it not be prudent to equip the passengers with
individual parachutes? This, in the event that a bomb happens to be secreted aboard the aircraft and a mid-air explosion occurs. The snug embrace of an almost fail-safe  Mark-IV quick-opening parachute would, in such a situation, add a welcome touch of reassurance for the discomfited passenger confronted by the imminent prospect of a long and lonely free-fall.

The airline industry may wish to consider this, along with pistols in the cockpit.  

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Copyright © March, 2002                                                                                All rights reserved by the author

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