Seems sufficient proof that the risks of someone carrying a gun on a plane outweigh any possible anti-hijacking effect :-)

indeed, great statement from a great person, clearly. 9/11 was an anomaly, the towers had never been hit by several planes before in their 31/29 years of existence...

Always a great plan to arm someone who's got enough on their plate, what with keeping a planeload of people in the air. By the way, here's a gun in case you get bored...

"No, the ultimate deterrent to hijacking a plane is armed passengers"

That sounds like a great way to destroy a plane by mistake if you ask me.

The best way to prevent hijacking is to not have a door between the cabin and the cockpit. The pilots could board the plane through a different door entirely.

Unfortunately, it'd be more expensive to retrofit planes, so instead they put guns on them and make them more dangerous than they were in the first place.

Because his girlfriend complained about his early accidental discharge.

I hope they release a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder for the time this happened. I don't mind the names being anonymised, but it should make for an interesting read.

Is there any way to force the release of this information?

I seem to recall a statistic about people carrying weapons to protect themselves being more likely to be injured/killed than those that don't.

Plus I'm not entirely convinced of the value of introducing a loaded gun into an environment that didn't previously have one.

As for the 9/11 argument - you honestly think that someone who is taking steps to get themselves killed is going to be put off by a gun? Really?

"No, the ultimate deterrent to hijacking a plane is armed passengers."

Lol, you nearly had me going then ;)

I'm reminded of that video of a cop shooting himself in the leg whilst giving a gun safety lesson in a school.

It would have been a slightly different story if this accidental discharge had been into the passenger compartment and hit a passenger. It's fairly amazing that people weren't injured by the panic that must have been caused by the sound of a gunshot on a plane.

I'd be the first in the queue for compensation caused by the distress of believing the plane i was on was being hijacked :)

I'm pretty sure that the possibility of deathiness is 100% for all of us, no matter what we do. Maybe you meant our demisability?

"But what is the ideal deterrent to stopping a hijacking plan? "

You cannot deter people ready to die anyway.

Want guaranteed safe flights ?

Everyone gets sedated before going on the plane !

Mythbusters had a go at blowing a hole in a plane by shooting it. I think the Goldfinger imagery is pretty busted - all you end up with is a rubber jungle and a bullet-sized hole in the plane.

And Sara - there is no ideal deterrent. If someone *really* wants to hijack a plane, they will. All we can do is make it harder. Arming the pilots isn't a good plan - it just increases the chance of accidents. Making a separate door for the crew (as suggested above) isn't a good plan either - what if there's a cockpit fire or something and they need more bodies to help put it out?

It's an endless balancing of cost vs. benefit. But I think the cost is currently too high.

Given that there is now a very tough door between pilots and the passenger cabin, and in the event of trouble the pilots' job is to get the aircraft on the ground, having a gun in the cockpit is of limited use. Having one loaded and ready to fire is even less use, given that they'd have adequate warning of someone breaching the cockpit door to be able to load a gun.

As for making holes, a single bullet through the fuselage is unlikely to be a serious issue (but might be noisy and would require a descent to safer altitude). Through a windscreen might be more serious, given that the hole is big enough for a man to be sucked out if it shattered (BA5390 being an example of this). What is more dangerous is if the bullet damaged electrical cables and caused a short-circuit and fire.

First, the reason the bullet didn't pierce the skin of the aircraft was that they have "newer" bullets that don't have deep penetration but still have decent stopping capabilities on human targets. They were developed to reduce over penetration. You could also have subsonic rounds too. From a .40 pistol, a subsonic round would still have enough force to put a person down.

But that doesn't excuse the pilot for having one round in the chamber. Not sure which weapon the pilot had but with proper training you can easily work the slide and be in a position to shoot without having the risk of an accidental discharge.

Don't get me wrong. If you're knowingly going in to a situation, you want to keep a round in the chamber and remember whether the safety is set. But a pilot isn't and there's the re-enforced door that would delay any terrorist getting in to the cabin.

Yes, I own guns, but I'm "captain safety" when it comes to firearms. ;-)

You do realise that in this case the plane was descending to land, in which case it depends on your flight level on whether your cabin is pressurised or not. The higher you go, the more the differential between outside and inside, so if you're descending, the 'sucking out' would not be an issue the closer you get to flight level 80.

There is no such thing as an 'accidental discharge, it's a negligent discharge. This isn't an accident, it's an act of negligence.

If he'd followed the four rules of firearms then this would never have happened.

After all, since my Anti-Tiger Stick was brought into service, neither I or the people around me have been attacked by tigers. My estimate would be at least over a million people have been protected by my Anti-Tiger Stick. That's why the deterrent value of this Stick is just staggering.

Add to the list of proposed safety Items:

Do not load a round until you are ready to kill someone.

I thought Glock Handguns were suppose to be safer than normal handguns. This just proves that you can not fix stupid.

We don't need any Terrorists now,after so much over-reaction to the terrorism there has been the Terrorists can just sit back and watch as we take down our own planes

P.S - I've had a good idea to reduce the threat of a repeat of 9/11, if all planes are fitted with a small amount of explosives and a big red button to detonate it with then the pilot could detonate it if it looked like someone wanted to fly the plane into a building.

My calculations show that this would make air travel at least 38% safer

Not from me but from people on the PPRUNE link that Brad posted. Some of you may not have time to plough through a billion pages of comments but a couple amused me...

First from Fergus Kavanagh responding to the news that the gun has to be locked away when the cockpit door is open:

"Run this by me again?

You have to lock the gun away when you open the door to go for a slash.?

So, when the door is open, the time of max vulnerability, you have the gun

locked away, but when the door is locked, and there is little threat, you

can take it out and .......

Nah, that cant be right.....

But it probably is."

And second from 'Two's In' who ably voices the fears of passengers and crew alike:

"It's easy to laugh this time when it was only a handgun - next time it could be more than 3 Fluid ounces of hand lotion."

Hear hear.

... are already gun-trained as the majority still come from ex-military backgrounds.

The pilot in question should be suspended and a full investigation is the only way to go with the whole issue of guns on planes being called seriously into question.

Its true that "there is no such thing as an unloaded weapon", but that's all the more reason to emphasize safety in the handling and storage of weapons.

I'd like to read the accident report for details on what sort of holster the pilot was using (some are crap and you are just asking for a gun to fall out or the trigger to get hung up).

As to the hole in the aircraft's skin, it very well may have made one. But aircraft skins are designed to prevent this kind of damage from propagating to the point where it becomes a depressurization hazard, and the cabin pressurization system should have no problem keeping up with a couple of 40 cal holes.

Now for my rant:

Law enforcement (both local and federal) are some of the crappiest shots and sloppy gun handlers I've ever seen. That the pilots 'certified' to carry firearms have been through one of their training programs is no comfort to me. From time to time, the cops, border patrol and FBI take over our local pistol range for periodic training and certification. Although they exclude members of the public, it is possible to watch the activity on the range's web-cam. These people can't shoot straight. It appears that they learn how to do so by watching TV. In fact, a friend of mine pointed out that some of what appear to be undercover cops (the scraggly looking ones) shoot gang style (holding the gun sideways). Looks cool, but you can't aim worth sh*t.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/01/29/aircanada-copilot.html

(a diverted flight due to a co-pilot in a state of considerable mental distress)

And this

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1258649,00.html

(a pilot led off the plane in handcuffs - excessive alcohol consumption)

Tempting fate?

While flying Heathrow to Male 4 years ago our flight had to make an unscheduled landing in Bahrain to take on a new co-pilot - as the existing co-pilot had broken his nose...bizarre!

Never did find out what the hell had happened there!

Being a H&K it is most likely double action which would make a round up the spout fine.

The only thing in the gun world more silly than the Amercians wanting everyone to be carrying are the Poms - with no handgun culture to speak of - being armchair cowboys.