Handful of terroists with letter openers, box cutters and knives?!
A plane with 80+ well-fed but scared-shitless American adults.
Plane forced to crash and kill thousands!
WHAT THE PHUCK!!!

If one commercial airline had the balls to train and arm their pilots with pistols, they'd either start a trend or definately get my business.

It would certainly make the terrorists think twice about hijacking American planes.

The many years ago,(mid-50's), TWA pilots were issued .45 revolvers for their flight kits.  Reason given me was that they were carrying the mail and had to protect it. Federal requirement, they said.

marsh

Heard on the news that in israel they have marshalls on there planes now why cant we do the same.

Just watch they will instead prohibit us from carrying any knives or even a leatherman in our flight kits.

i agree with arming the pilots, but at the same time why can they not put a heavy locking steel
door at the cockpit entrance instead of the
flimsy crap doors that are used now?

Two words: Sky Marshalls.

God Bless Texas

My friend and I dicussed this issue for awhile today after we had learned that the terrorists used knives/machetes for weapons.  If the pilots/officers were each to have a pistol at bare minimum, this could all have been stopped.  I know there are concerns about innocents getting caught in the gunfire, but I beleive that the gunfire is an acceptable risk concerning the chaos that we now know can be caused with a few jet liners and a few phycopaths.  

If pistols are too risky to use, then 20 a few guage riotguns with 10 shot would be enough to kill at close range but not penetrate the cabin, I would think.

I like idea of an air marshall, but that would be a one man show and maybe a group of minimally trained guys in the cockpit would do better in that type of situation?

JRB L1A1

8200rpm:  That was my first reaction exactly.  Give the cockpit crew each a .45 and tell them: “This is your plane, don’t let anyone take it from you!!”

We already have Sky Marshals on our overseas flights.  I’m sure we’ll be seeing them on domestic flights too.  Until we hire and train more, other agencies such as DEA, ATF, Customs, IRS, etc. may have to lend agents.  This happened in about 1971 when various unhappy folks started hijacking planes to Cuba.    

With a little thought, we can find ways to dramatically reduce the chances of this happening again.  Unfortunately, we always seem to wait for something to happen before we try to do anything about it.

And, of course, we need to identify those responsible for this, track them down, and send them to HELL!

Introducing Sky Marshals on domestic flights would probably cut back on air rage as well.

God Bless Texas

Naw,... we'll all just have to fly without carry-on luggage and naked.

Why do something that actually makes sense and lets us protect ourselves.