US Airways pilot fired.

Here's a link to a video of the locking holster setup.

http://thesilverbacks.blogspot.com/2008/04/why-us-airways-pilot-fired-his-gun.html

Seems to me that firing is too harsh. Perhaps a suspension and loss of flight deck officer status, but not firing.

K

How many US airliners have been hijacked with firearms since stronger security measures started in the 70s?

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What difference does it make if the airplane was hijacked by people armed with firearms or box-cutters? There have been at least 4 planes too many lost that I can think of. I would rather take my chances with an armed pilot or air marshall any day - even one who had had an ND. At least I'd know that one person on the aircraft that was on my side had a weapon. I can't believe I'm reading comments on THR saying there is no place for armed resistance on an aircraft.

"BerettaShotgun - I thought this point had been discussed many times. There is no inherent danger caused by simply adding another hole into the structure of an aircraft. The pressurization of an aircraft is controlled by , usually two, large valves that dump air overboard to set the required cabin pressure. Adding even a 20mm hole is not going to trouble the pressurization one little bit if the damage is simply the extra hole in the aircraft skin. Now, aircraft structure or systems could be damaged. It is possible, but unlikely, that either structure or systems damage would cause an accident. Serious bird strikes and lightning strikes are both events that aircraft are designed to accept."
DUDE!!
I don't think we are talking about a Piper Cub.....

Mr. Rogers:
Ever heard of a reamer?????
Ever drilled a hole in an Aircraft skin????? You ream any lockbolt/hyloc/hi-shear/jo-bolt, and the drilled hole must be 3 degrees of perpendicular to be acceptable. Must be deburred to be acceptable as deburring relieves any stress crack the drilling operation might have started.
Ever shot a piece of metal and looked at the backside of it???
Ever heard of a catastrophic fatigue failure???
Ever seen the Hawaii Plane, how the fix ended up being a piece of 0.250" doubler ( externally !! ) the length of the fuselage at the lap seam.
Extra holes aren't there normally and from my experience (20+trips around the sun) pilots and engineers typically frown upon them.
DUH!!!!!!!!!!!
Get real, you (ya'll?) might have thought you had a discussion about a simple hole - but - it AIN'T a CLEAN HOLE. unless he was popping a 38 wadcutter...
I simply don't recall actually having any serious info on this subject to avoid petty speculation.

It is not the same as a bird strike,( which actually makes a dent in the canopy-leading edge or inlet; takes out an engine otherwise if it is a goose or coupla' gulls) and lightning doesn't affect much on alloys (skins).
Lightning, on the other hand, is a holy terror on composites. Mucho repair from lightning strikes on composite panels.

Pilots and engineers may frown upon extra holes, but that don't mean it'll bring the plane down.

Agreed
I totally agree with arming Pilots, personally I think it should be a requirement of all the people on board

No BerettaShotgun, I am talking about the military and commercial aircraft I was flying for 40 years before retirement. I have never flown a Piper Cub.

Ever shot a piece of metal and looked at the backside of it???

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Well, I did not shoot the hole in the aircraft myself, somebody else did. I did look at the hole from the backside. Does that count? I don't think it was done with a reamer though. The extra holes are not desirable but sometimes they are a fact of life and the aircraft seems to survive surprisingly well. Of course, most people don't continue to fly aircraft with major damage until fatigue failure occurs.

Inevitably, in 40 years of aviation there have been high-blood-pressure moments but - never, has a failure caused an incident that training or good aircraft design could not mitigate, and I would not expect a puny 40 caliber softpoint to change that situation.

Now the realty is this. If the aircraft you are flying in is hijacked and it heads towards a major city in a suspect manner it will be shot down by a US fighter. No ifs or buts, that is air defense policy. For those of you concerned about a 40 caliber hole in the aircraft - just think what that air-to-air missile will do.

DUH!!!!!!!!!!!
Get real, you (ya'll?) might have thought you had a discussion about a simple hole - but - it AIN'T a CLEAN HOLE. unless he was popping a 38 wadcutter...

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You can say that again - compared with the missile the bullet hole is the least of your problems. The armed pilot may be the only defense between you and an F16.

Would you let your kids rid the bus to school with a bus driver that just had a ND while your kids on the bus?

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Maybe not just had, but if school bus drivers were ordered to carry pistols and ready their condition every time they moved around, but their driving record was clean,,, handgun retraining sure, but then again, this wasn't a busload of school children.

The holster/lock design is a bad one... not sure what role it played in the problem, so I won't pretend to know....

I would not use a holster like this, I wouldn't allow my kid to, and I wouldn't expect a pilot to either....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV-wZt_IcLE

Some of you are worried about the safety of a pilot carrying a pistol, because the pilot can, by mistake, cause the pistol to damage the plane.

The pilot already can, by mistake, damage the plane in any number of ways, most of them more serious than a bullet can do. Lower the gear beyond Vlo, extend the flaps beyond Vfe, exceed Vne. These are just some of the more obvious ways to damage an airplane. There are many.

And you're worried about a bullet?

It is pretty rare to see an LEO fired over a ND (nor do their ND's make the national news).....unless there is some sort of grossly negligent situation, or a serious injury.

The firing seems excessive. Loss of FFDO status. Retraining (maybe). But for an ND that resulted in no injury, minimal physical damage to the aircraft (he did seem to have the weapon pointed in a safe direction if the photos that I have seen are at all factual), the firing seems overly severe.

Ever heard of a catastrophic fatigue failure???

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Fatigue relies on a high number of significant load cycles...this would not come into play from a bullet hole.

That holster design looks exactly like I expected it would: Non firearm knowledgeable Government bureaucrat political appointee thinks, "What's the cheap and easy way to secure a gun into a holster? I know, take a $7.95 brass padlock(I recognize the type; they are about that much, they are an NSN item), drill a hole in the holster so the hasp can go through the trigger guard, and presto!"
And of course, the idiot(s) that came up with that holster idea has to protect his or her job when the inevitable problem crops up, so the unlucky pilot in question gets sacrificed.
And in the end, this one poor decision by some nameless bureaucrat will likely cost more $$$ due to the consequences of many more ADs, property damage, and lawyer bills than had a holster manufacturer been given a non-bid contract to make them according to some common sense spec.

Some of you are worried about the safety of a pilot carrying a pistol, because the pilot can, by mistake, cause the pistol to damage the plane.

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Actually, I am more worried about

1.) The pilot showing up sober

2.) The pilot paying attention to what he is doing in the cockpit instead of a flight attendant he slept with the night before

3.) The pilot had a good nights sleep before the flight



Chris

US Airways pilot fired.

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See, the way I heard it, it was an HK USP what done fired...

Wait, arguably one of the riskier times for the pilot/plane has to be when he/she gets up to take a leak, opening the security door and all. Yet they force them to lock their weapons just when they may need them most? Great rules TSA/FAA. :banghead:

All avoaided if Pilots use Springfield XD autos

All avoaided if Pilots use Springfield XD autos. XD's have Grip safety which prevents the weapon from firing if Grip safety is not engaged.

There's a Latin name for the logical fallacy you are committing, but I can't remember what it is. Essentially, you are saying that because it has not (yet) happened to other pilots, it CANNOT happen to other pilots.

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I'm not saying that at all. It can and DID happen, obviously not impossiblem however it is VERY improbable. Pilots operatre within the TSA rules and holster choice every day for thousands of flights. Yes, it may happen again, and whomever does it next will be negligent also. Check that the gun is all the way in the holster before inserting the padlock and make sure the lock is not touching the trigger. That's all he needed to do. Put the procedure on your checklist! Follow the checklist!

But we all know that checklists don't always get followed by every pilot.

"Dis is an H&K fotey. I'm da only one on dis flight deck profeshna enough to...!BANG!"

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The first time I saw this article, this is the line that went through my head.

Someone asked what would happen to a LEO who discharged a firearm in on board an aircraft or while in flight. That LEO would likley face disciplinary action by his employing agency, possibly face termination over it, and certainly be banned from flying armed again by the FAA and/or TSA. Those same options should properly be in play for this and any other FFDO who does the same.

As for the TSA's policy, had it been followed, this wouldn't have happened and THAT is why the airlines are after the FFDO's job. Regardless of what we think of it, it isn't too hard to follow the "ensure it is seated and snapped in" part. I would strip him of his FFDO status, give him some time off, and call it even if it where up to me. Unfortunately for him, it is not.

Oops. An unintentional "discharge." See, had this happened on a plane I'd be screwed, and it wouldn't be the High Road's fault. ;-)

I'm not saying that at all. It can and DID happen, obviously not impossiblem however it is VERY improbable. Pilots operatre within the TSA rules and holster choice every day for thousands of flights. Yes, it may happen again, and whomever does it next will be negligent also. Check that the gun is all the way in the holster before inserting the padlock and make sure the lock is not touching the trigger. That's all he needed to do. Put the procedure on your checklist! Follow the checklist!

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You, I'm assuming as a pilot, have to follow complex checklists in order to operate your aircraft as safely as possible, yes?

I'm just kind of curious, and you'll have to pardon the analogy, but what if the FAA decided that since landing gear failure was remote but quite likely a dangerous thing to have happen, then every time you take off, you need to flip the gear up and down a few times, you know, just to make sure they work. Aaaannnd maybe once or twice while in the air, aaaaannnndd once or twice more on approach. Just in case.

You would naturally follow this rule, no matter how stupid or illogical it is, or would you try and rally all of your pilot friends to make a change in the rules based on... probablilty, science, reason... something like that?

In other words, what I'm trying to get at is, the less you fiddle with something important, the less likely it will fail.

An aircraft has many complicated procedures because it has many systems and possible points of failure. In this case, a pistol has essentially one point of failure and the rules require fiddling with it all the bloody time!

So, I will plant myself firmly on the side of the pilot and blame the stupid rules which put him in this situation in the first place with no legitimate reason for it.

Just my passenger-only .02.

"Yes, since we THR members believe firearm safety to be the MOST IMPORTANT thing, we are now requiring all law enforcement officers who carry a duty pistol, to draw their firearm, unload it, dry fire it several times, then reload it and reholster it. This is to be done at minimum, twice per duty shift. It could be for only five minutes, we don't care; it just needs to happen twice per shift, minimum. Oh, and if any officer happens to have a ND while doing this, you'll be fired and count yourself lucky we don't bring you up on charges. Have fun and let's be careful out there!"

As they apply to a failure prone system, checklists are not so much protection against a badly designed system as CYA protection for those who are too stupid or too short-sighted to redesign that system.

I have yet to see evidence that what this pilot did was actually a failure to follow a checklist. Is there actually a checklist?

If the possibility of the pistol not being seated correctly in the holster was a known problem and there is a checklist that reads something like "Ensure the pistol is fully seated in the holster then insert the lock through the holster", the pilot is to blame.

If there is a checklist, and the problem was known to management and the warning was not in the checklist, then management is to blame.

If neither the pilot nor management knew of the problem then "S*** Happens". Let's fix the problem.

I see no reason a pilot should be terminated for this event unless it can be shown he negligently ignored a checklist, or other current valid training, or he was playing cowboy.