By Gun Week staff

It took nearly 20 months from the day that terrorists crashed commercial jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, but the first wave of airline pilots have now been trained and commissioned to carry guns for cockpit defense.

Some of them began flying armed under the new federal rules for the first time on Apr. 20.

It was an idea spawned by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) within hours of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack that killed over 3,000 people. Within days of the CCRKBA demand that pilots be armed, the first of several bills authorizing armed pilots had been introduced in Congress, and organizations ranging from pilots associations to traveler groups threw their support to the idea.

Intense Capitol Hill lobbying ensued. In the process, the first director of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), John Magaw, wound up being sacked, at least in part due to his opposition to arming pilots. Magaw, a former head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the Secret Service, came into the job with a grand scheme of building a new force of federal air marshals. He quickly raised the hackles of many lawmakers, due to his spending largesse—an estimated $450,000 just to outfit his private office—and his repeated opposition to arming pilots.

Even now that he is gone, however, some observers have accused the TSA of “foot-dragging” on the pilots program. Tracy Price, head of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance (APSA) recently told Gun Week that he was unhappy about the slow progress that had been made, and the extraordinary requirements placed on pilots to be accepted into the firearms program.

The first class of 44 pilots graduated from firearms and defensive tactics training on Apr. 19. There are still issues to be worked out between pilots, the airlines and TSA regarding storage and carrying of firearms. According to Associated Press (AP), pilots are critical of a requirement that they must lock their guns in a lockbox to leave the cockpit, even if it is just to use the restroom. Another issue regards how pilots are supposed to get their firearms to the airplane.

AP reported that during training, pilots may have fired as many as 8,000 rounds through their pistols. Training was conducted at the federal law enforcement training center in Glynco, GA. The first class included both male and female pilots.

A second class is scheduled to be held in July. Each training session runs one week, and the course not only includes high volume, intense shooting drills, but also exercises on how to fend off a terrorist hand-to-hand. The training is described as “rigorous.”

“This is brutal,” a trainee, a male pilot, said after fighting off another pilot pretending to be a terrorist.

The pilot trainees, pitted against one another, thrashed and grunted with dummy pistols in a padded room. Instructors yelled out rapid-fire orders on how to fight attackers: “Get your hands on there, lower your center!”

Graduates are required to tell their employers that they have been certified to carry a gun 24 hours after they finish training. They do not have to take a weapon with them every time they fly, but they do have to inform airlines and the flight crew when they do. Passengers are not supposed to know if a pilot is armed.

More pilots are to be trained this summer, though the size of the group is uncertain.

Capt. Fred Bates, an American Airlines pilot who helped put the program in place, said as many as one in three US pilots—about 30,000—could be carrying weapons on the flight deck in five years.

Not all pilots who want to carry guns will be able to. They have to volunteer for the program, pass background checks and psychological tests and make it through a week of rigorous drills.

AP quoted TSA training chief Ivan Kalister stating that the pilots in his first class were highly proficient.

“If we give them the basic tools,” he said, “they will be able to respond well if they’re attacked.”

The number of pilots who may eventually fly armed is not known. A lot depends upon how many volunteer for the training and pass the screening process. Perhaps more depends upon how much money Congress is willing to spend on building the training program. Some critics in government have suggested that the cost of training a single pilot is as much as $10,000, but no details of such costs have been revealed. A House subcommittee on aviation is scheduled to meet in May to determine how much should be budgeted for the training program.

A spokesman for TSA noted that the course will be modified as requirements demand.

Wire services and newspapers around the country began to do public reaction reports immediately after the first few pilots boarded their planes.

The Pioneer-Press of St. Paul, MN, reported on some opinion gathered from travelers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Apr. 20.

“Derek Rasmussen places a lot of trust in commercial airline pilots. So when some of them were cleared Sunday to carry handguns in cockpits, Rasmussen had no trouble extending that trust even further,” The Pioneer-Press reported.

“Pilots having guns makes me feel even more safe,” said Rasmussen, a Denver man in Minnesota to visit family. “I trust pilots with my life when I’m flying…and I’d trust them to have a firearm.”

Mary Pat Zabinski, however, saw it differently.

“I think having the gun is a little scarier,” said Zabinski of Grand Rapids, MI. “A gun going off in a pressurized cabin—what’s the point? That seems dangerous.”

Cafe owner Peter Fragale of Jacksonville, FL, thinks arming pilots is a good idea, AP reported.

“They make me feel better,” he said as he waited at Jacksonville (FL) International Airport for a flight to Atlanta.

“They should all have guns,” Fragale said. “It’s that last layer, that last-resort layer, in case the terrorists get through all this security,” he said, gesturing toward uniformed federal screeners. “And they will.”

Art teacher Mary Ellen Binz, returning to Lake Mills, WI, said putting guns in the hands of pilots makes her nervous.

“It’ll get in the hands of the wrong person,” she said. “I wonder how pilots feel about it?”
Polls last year showed more than 70% of pilots—and a huge majority of the traveling public—favored the right to be armed.