pilots the enemy
Spoke to an adviser to Senator Gordon Smith (Republican Oregon) this morning about aviation topics. Talk inevitably got around to arming pilots as a last resort before being shot down by a USAF fighter.
The adviser (name I will not divulge) said words similar to "We are discussing that and having a lot of trouble. We are worried about the pilots hijacking the aircraft."
If this is the level of trust the government has in its commercial pilots (60% ex-military, 100 % with long verifiable employment backgrounds and life histories, several of them in my company ex-airforce one pilots) what are we supposed to feel. Can any US pilot have faith in an organisation that has so little faith in them?
Perhaps the government think they should not have taken many of these people into the military in the first place. Perhaps they think giving these people top secret security clearences and the control of nuclear weapons was a mistake. Perhaps the government thinks they made a mistake trusting these people in the past because clearly they cannot trust them now.
Reminds me of the military. Effective people cannot get anything useful done because of mealy-mouthed politicians.