I was under the impression that we were discussing methods of ensuring flight security.
Pax who happen to be armed, do not come into the equation.
The thought of you blazing away at the first thing through the door is precisely why our governments won’t allow us to be armed.
It has been already been pointed out that pax will now know they have to intervene or die. The odds that a small number of unarmed terrorists will prevail over 200 plus pax, fighting for their lives is slim at best. They most certainly won’t have the time to break into the flight deck at their leisure. (Just me doing some critical thinking
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I think it very strange that some advocates of arming the flight crew believe that they don’t require practise in CQB. Just about all security agencies that do this, train very hard at it. I will admit that most team members don’t include a pilot among them; perhaps that’s where they’re going wrong.
It’s not elitist BS, it’s the simple truth. Next time you’re down the range give it a go and see how you compare. Just like flying, it has to be trained for and the skill level maintained.
The ammunition used by some teams is designed to disintegrate after hitting a target. This helps protects the A/C skin. Shooting through an innocent passenger (as has been suggested) in an effort to hit a terrorist is a big no no for that reason alone, not to mention the legal and ethical implications. I have no idea whether the US sky marshals are issued with this type of ammunition though. Even standard ammunition does strange thing after passing through a medium. I have seen a 7.62 round hit a small bit of wood and change direction by at least 80 degree’s. This is no surprise to anyone that shoots a lot.
It does occur to me that if the normal type of police firearms training were sufficient to deal with this kind of threat, why do governments spend fortunes, training special teams?
I repeat, the best thing IMHO is to let properly trained men and women do the job, while we fly the aircraft, it’s what we do best.
Some form none lethal flight deck defence would be a good idea though, how about very powerful cattle prod that could double as a nightstick. This way it could be left on the A/C like the handcuffs and is unlikely to upset to many foreign governments. I would imagine that you could defend the flight deck with such tool.