On track,
You must have no sense of history. Are you aware that 9/11 was the SECOND attack on the WTC by Alqueda. that the first one caused 6 deaths and 1000 injuries when they planted a truck bomb in the basement of the WTC? Are you aware that we tried it your way and actually caught those responsible (it wasn't a suicide attack) for the actual attack and that the result of all that was that less than a decade later another 3000 died in the same place? We tried it your way. It didn't work Now we are trying it OUR way...
And no matter how much spin you put on it. Bush was democratically elected. Even that liberal bastion the NYTimes eventually conceded that fact ( a year or two later)
BJCC,
I concede the ANO. HOWEVER, the question that I have (as yet unanswered) is can the operational specifications of an airline, (THE OPS SPECS) modify the ANO on an individual basis. In other words the blanket ban would stay in effect to keep business and private aircraft from carrying guns.
In the USA that sort of thing can happen. While the OPS SPECS are generally MORE restricted than the FARs (our equivelent) there are occasional waivers of various FAR's granted. The most notorious of those was the "Transcon" exemption that lead to the APA's split from ALPA that allowed on certain city pairs some duty time limits to be exceded so that transcon flights (back in the propliner days) could be done with a single crew... But there are all kinds of other exceptions there including certain lower visibility ops... I suspect that it is exactly the same way for UK airlines. That the ANO may say one thing, and it is promptly waivered somewhere in the company ops manual or operational sepcifications...
Cheers
Wino