I too am an airline pilot with over 25,000 hours, and I agree with Guvnor, regardless of where he is coming from on this point. I was always willing to have an armed law enforcement officer on board before Sep 11 and would be even more happy to have these gentlemen on board now. If some crazy with a boxcutter gets to his feet, he is not long for this world and that suits me fine.
People who fear guns and want security no matter the cost should not be in the aviation biusiness. Let them go do something else that does not cause them to have sweaty palms.
Despite the beefed up security, there are people still getting on board airliners with weapons, and they will always be able to do so. But when they have tried to carry out their nefarious plot, they have been stopped, using vigilance and common sense. Why not encourage that? The last guy to take weapons on board had two loaded pistols, but please note, he did not intend to use them, and was in fact not a threat to anyone. It proves that the idea of 100% security is a joke, and we need a more common sense approach. Taking nail files off flight crew is the answer? Get a grip!
The real reason for the 9-11 disaster was a failure of Intelligence, not a failure of security. There are reports that several individuals and some agencies had alerted the various aviation authorities to the possibility of a terrorist attack using airliners as weapons, prior to Sep 11. no doubt the FAA was informed and it would be reasonable to assume that they have experts on terrorism on staff. Yet they did not (I assume, since I cannot know for sure) inform the airlines, nor modify their instructions for crews to cooperate with hijackers. To the best of my knowledge they still have not done so.
And it appears to me that from what has been posted here, most of you (but not Guvnor) are buying into this idea that it is the honest, responsible and law abiding people we need to watch out for, making their lives as miserable as possible when all they want to do is fly, and pay our salaries.
Have I slipped into a parallel universe or something?