A former Delta co-pilot was federally indicted earlier this month, accused of threatening to shoot the captain of a commercial flight last year if he diverted the plane because a passenger on board may have been suffering a medical emergency, authorities confirmed Tuesday.
He sounds nice.
Man. I thought the cabin was where all the action was. Who knew?
CRM Gone Wild
Somebody “on another network” speculated that the co-pilot may have been a drug mule and was incredibly concerned about either getting caught, or about the penalty for failing to make the delivery in a timely fashion.
Other than a psychotic break, it’s hard to imagine what other possible explanations there might be…
Was the co-pilot the"good guy with the gun", or the “bad guy with the gun”? I’m confused. If he was both, could he have stopped himself?
Also, why won’t the article tell if the pilot actually diverted, or not.
The article is about the court case, not about the flight. The court case is not about the flight, it’s about the wacko with the gun.
Back in the day as FOs we used to joke about the good news / bad news situation if the captain dies in flight:
Bad news: He’s dead and you have to be the solo hero pilot or die trying.
Good news: You just moved up one notch on the seniority list.
This guy reminds me of the old cartoon with the vultures standing around a clearing and one says to the group “Patience my ass; lets go kill something.”
Hey, @LSLGuy … didn’t you retire … recently?
I can’t help but wonder if you were the one thing holding it all together for all those years 
And of course it’s important to record the captain’s time of death for maximum PIC time in your logbook. You can probably count yourself PIC as soon as the captain becomes uncommunicative and just ignore their last few twitches.
Okay. I hate myself just a little for how hard I laughed at that.
6-ish weeks ago. This bozo’s excellent decision-making predates my retirement.
But yeah, I take 2 months off and the whole damned industry turns to shit. 
Gary Larson did a variant with wolves looking down at a herd of pigs. Caption was along the lines of “I say we go for it and screw trichinosis.”
But the article mentioned that they don’t know if the plane was actually diverted. This shouldn’t be too hard to find for a reporter.
Anyway, I laughed that he is charged with “interfering with a flight crew”. He IS the flight crew. Can you interfere with yourself, legally?
FWIW, didn’t Cleavon Little take/hold himself hostage in “Blazing Saddles?”
It’s a fairly standard question during pilot job interviews: “Tell me about a time you and your flying partner had a disagreement, and how was it resolved?”
My usual answer is to describe a couple of minor procedural discussions that were handled in the gentlemanly manner they’re supposed to be in a professional cockpit with good Crew Resource Management. And I’m not lying - nearly every “conflict” I’ve ever experienced** as a working pilot was settled with complete satisfaction and safety. No raised voices, no unkind words. I literally cannot imagine it reaching the point of threats by firearm.
**OK, there was this ONE guy… But he was a problem for everyone in our base, it wasn’t a big deal anyway, so it doesn’t count. But even he didn’t pull a gun on me.
Yep. He’s very talented, and they’re very dumb.
This was a pretty significant in-flight incident. Wouldn’t there be an FAA/NTSB report that would be available to the public?
As a professional pilot… hell if I know. As I said earlier, I haven’t seen anything even close to this in my career.
But my first thought is “no”, because it doesn’t appear to have been an “accident” or “incident” as defined by the FAA. The plane didn’t crash or get dinged, and nobody was injured.
So I’m not surprised that it is being handled as a law enforcement matter. The article mentioned a charge of interference with a flight crew, and I’m sure the FAA will also interpret that as some form of breach of regulations as well. “Reckless and careless operation” to say the least. The pilot in question was trained to carry his firearm in the cockpit, which makes it an FAA matter too.
The only analogous situation I can think of are the rare instances of pilot intoxication. That’s against the regulations and also usually results in an arrest.
@LSLGuy , what else have you got on this?
Apropos of nothing …
In the late-80’s, I took a SCUBA trip to Roatan, in the Bay Islands, in Honduras.
We flew into San Pedro Sula airport on the mainland and had about 90 minutes until our puddle jumper to our final destination.
I figured I’d knock back a couple of cocktails.
The guy next to me – clean cut, pretty handsome guy in a bomber jacket – and I bought each other maybe 3-4 rounds. He was smoking a big, fat stogie the entire time.
About 20-ish minutes before flight time, I told him what a pleasure it had been chatting with him, but that I had a plane to catch.
He laughed. “You? I’ve got a plane to fly!”
He pulled back his bomber jacket, revealing his airline uniform and gold ‘wings’ pin.
Yeah. He was my pilot … or co-pilot … or something.
But I’m still here, aren’t I??
Again, though – in keeping with the spirit of this thread – he did not pull a weapon on me. So, there’s that.
Why are pilots trained to carry firearms in the cockpit??
This program:
@Llama_Llogophile:I know noting beyond what’s in the current news.
I expect there was/is/will be no NTSB report. This is utterly not in their bailiwick.
FAA and FBI almost certainly found out about it very shortly after landing, but neither of those agencies put out public reports on the shit they handle. Had the Captain actually been shot, I have no doubt that would have been headline news on the day of the flight.
ETA: partly ninja-ed by @Riemann.
It’s not an FAA program. It’s a TSA program:
I can’t say much about it; I wasn’t involved in it so most of it is secret from me and what little is not secret from me is secret from you.
But here’s the short version background:
Following 9/11 and before we got the armored cockpit doors 2 years (!) later an interim bright idea pushed by the unions & some congressional hotheads with airline industry acquiescence was to offer pilots the chance to volunteer to be given firearms and the right to use them to shoot would-be hijackers. Plus some specific situational shooting training at the same government facility that teaches Federal Air Marshals & FBI folks.
At first the program was real popular because of post-9/11 martial fervor and because it allowed the FFDO pilot, like a normal LEO, to bypass the stupid new overbearing TSA security screening at work. Your gun was your pass around the long lines, conveyor belts, x-ray machines, and metal detectors. Plus you got a free gun and lots of free ammo every month to practice with. And a cool badge.
Said another way, a lot of the wrong pilots volunteered for the program for the wrong reasons.
Later, a bypass-security-screening program was put in place for all crewmembers: KNOWN CREWMEMBER. Which meant a lot of FFDOs suddenly quit bothering to drag their piece to work. But still kept the gun, the badge, the ongoing supply of ammo, and their periodic trip back to the training facility to go all Rambo on carboard cutouts in airplane cabins.
Given all the adverse selection involved here there have been relatively few incidents. Given the risks involved, it’s unclear the program has improved total safety. OTOH, there simply haven’t been any storm-the-cockpit successes since the armored doors came in. But tomorrow is a new day.
Consider the recent event with the mushroom-eatin’ Alaska pilot who went nuts on the jumpseat. Had either (or both) of the working crew been an FFDO that guy would have been stitched to the cockpit door and no trial would have been necessary.