Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
This is in response to “For true airline safety, arm the pilots,” the Sept. 22 letter from an American Airlines captain advocating arming cockpit crews.
The task of the crew is to safely deliver passengers and crew to their intended destination, not assume the role portrayed by Rambo.
From the 1950s to my retirement in 1995, most flight crews were trained by the military and had received weapons training in some form. That is, for the most part, not true today. If the flight crew was armed, consider the field of fire that would be from the cockpit rearward. A stray round could kill or wound a passenger.
Let’s leave the task to an air marshal trained to do the job.
