Who knows whether he would have gotten caught before the attack or not; it’s totally irrelevant. The attacks happened. Everything from that point happens with the attacks firmly in mind.
Even if he could have gotten through security with his fake license, it doesn’t mean that he could have hopped on any plane he wanted to and flown it off. It also doesn’t change the fact that only pilots actually flying the plane would have the option of being armed. It may be now moot, but if pilots were able to be armed, extra precautions would be taken, and some wanker with a fake pilots license wouldn’t be able to walk through security with a gun.
note that i said nothing about a secured cockpit door, nor did i mention air marshalls. we all seem to be forgetting the OP here:
the OP is asking why we shouldn’t arm airline pilots. i was voicing my objection to the idea. i support the idea of air marshalls, though it isn’t too logical financially. i also firmly believe there should be a new cockpit door design that increases safety. what i don’t support is pilots having guns. i’m sorry if that was not clear.
yes, that was an extremely bad wording. i meant to go on the fact that pilots aren’t trained professionals, and they have other things to worry about when on the job (like flying the plane). cops, on the other hand, are professionals in fighting crime, thus my mind is more at ease with the fact that they carry guns.
these are both really good ideas, and the only scenarios thus far in which i would support pilots being armed.
i don’t believe for a second that each and every hijacker knew for certain this was a suicide mission. that is the only answer that makes sense to me. if not, did they think they were somehow going to get away with jacking a 767? lets assume only the pilots knew what the plan was and none of them had any knowledge of any of the other planes to get jacked (the second guy into the WTC would have figured it out pretty quick!) lets say the pilot told his stooges they were going to fly to a safe haven and issue demands. did they think they would live long after this? (especially if they started to slice people up!) sorry, i don’t buy it. they all knew this was a death sentance and a one way trip to (thier) promised land of sour ferret shit and camel-pussy.
another thing is that “these people” (whoever they are) do not view suicide in the same way “we” do. shit, they were doing something heroic in thier tiny twisted minds.
Well, gato; since it’s happened in the past that hijackers have actually gotten away with hijacking airliners, why exactly shouldn’t the latest group of scum not have believed they could’ve gotten away with it too?
Come to think of it, the fools who hijacked the Air France flight to Entebbe damn near got away with it. That is, until Israel kicked their ass.
didn’t they get whacked? (some of) the fools who tried to blow up the WTC in 93 got caught and are now rotting in prison. (they could have got the chair, but didn’t for some reason…)
i just think they knew it was suicide. guess we may never know.
Yes, gato; they got whacked. That was the whole point. Reread my posting just above. I said they damn near got away with it. Apparently, nobody believed Israel would even dare to go rescue folks who got hijacked from another country or another country’s airliner.
Not only did they damn near get away with it, they had a lot of governmental assistance from Big Daddy.
I seem to recall a study from a few years ago (looking for a cite) stating that pilots were not given enough downtime to receover from flight to flight, so they were among the highest rated in a group of overtired, stressed professions. Not sure I’d feel awfully comfortable knowing that they had guns and carte blanche to use them if they felt threatened on top of lacking time to sleep and de-stress. I hallucinate when I haven’t slept enough, although I don’t know how common that is. I wouldn’t want me to be armed if I hadn’t been sleeping enough.
I refer you to what I said before about “belt and suspenders”. I think the cockpit doors ought to be secured, but I don’t think we should entirely rely on this. Hence I think it may be a good idea to have the pilots armed as a backup, in case securing the cockpit door fails.
Is that really so hard to understand?
And what on earth makes you think that a pilot, armed or not, would do such an incredibly stupid thing, especially after the events of 9/11?
See what I said above.
Better to do what? Go out and confront the terrorists? I don’t think that would be a good idea.
To fly a jumbo jet they would also have to get hired by a major airline, which have, or I assume will have after the events of 9/11, extensive background and security checks. Not that I can see, whatever kind of plane it is, what difference it would make if such a hypothetical “terrorist pilot” were armed or not.
We can’t say for sure, no, but given the events of 9/11 it certainly will be their duty to keep terrorists out of the cockpit no matter what.
Realistically, they will have to assume that the terrorists are suicide bombers from now on. We really simply can’t take the risk of assuming otherwise, as I have pointed out numerous times.
As per what I said above, I completely disagree with this. The “history” of hijacking is completely irrelevent.
Many of the passengers, no doubt, but pilots are (or should be) trained to keep cool in situations like this.
An impulse on which, from now on, we absolutely must not act, as I have said numerous times before.
Quite possibly. I’d like to see some studies done on this, and or here what some experts have to say.
I’ll be giving this all the attention it deserves.
See what I said above to amrussel about “belt and suspenders”.
If you think they’re stressed now, wait until you see what they are like when they can’t leave the sealed cockpit on a 16 hour flight. Pilots need to eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom, a fact that would seem to preclude cockpits sealed to the point that no one can enter or leave, at least on longer flights. I have brought up this fact several times to people who think that sealing the cockpit door would be a viable alternative to arming the pilots, and I have not gotten a response.
I would think that if what you say is true, Kate, then we are simply going to have to start giving the pilots more downtime.