Like a parachute?

 

How are you going to get out of an airline aircraft wearing a parachute, and deploy the parachute? It's an utterly ridiculous, idiotic comparison, this parachute bit of yours, but as you insist. The handgun can be fired inside the aircraft all day long. The parachute only works if you have an exit, however, and having exited a lot of aircraft in flight, I'm hard pressed to picture a 300+ knot exit at HAHO/HALO altitudes for your basic everyman passenger or crew, stable, and deployed.

I have no problem with a nice sight picture on an intruders chest, nor with the succeeding two shots there, and one to the head.

The parachute has no value. It doesn't represent a viable, useable product in an airliner. It won't prevent a thing. It won't save the day, even in a worse-case scenario. It doesn't save money.

The handgun, on the other hand, is cheap, and it's manned by a volunteer who isn't living on the taxpayer dollar. Economy at its finest.

 

Explosive decompression.

It's happened, and I bet those people would think "it's far better to have and not need, than the other way around." if they were still here today.

TWA 800? The nose came off and the plane flew along for a little while after, surely some people could have survived if they had chutes.

Then all the airplanes we've had with rear air-stairs that could have dumped people, get the FAs trained to throw people out mid-flight, automatic chute deployment or altitude-release backup, etc. Maybe we'd have to modify the doors a bit, but hey, better to have one and not need it than need one and not have it, right?

Is it ridiculous? Sure. It's equally as ridiculous as thinking you're going to stop something with a gun in the cockpit, because the second you open that door, you've just exposed yourself and the cockpit. Better to get the plane on the ground and treat it like a fire. People dying back in the passenger section? That's better than using the plane as a weapon and killing thousands. Opening that door would have to be the last thing anyone would ever want to do. A fire extinguisher would probably be a far better weapon than a gun at that point. It's just that our gun culture and fascination has been drilled in us since we were playing cops and robbers and watching Kurt Russel movies, so we WANT to be the good guy that blows away bad guys, even if it's totally impractical or impossible odds.

Um, no, it was funded by the taxpayer dollars. Again, if someone is a CCW holder and a pilot, I wouldn't have a problem with them carrying it as a crewmember. Make them go to a special school and pay for it if they want to carry on a plane so badly. Don't fund it with taxpayer dollars though, because it's a ridiculous program. Air Marshals may cost many times more, but they are in a far better position to handle any altercation in the passenger cabin, without exposing the flight deck to possible compromise. Maybe there aren't Air Marshals on every flight, but there wouldn't be pilots with guns on every flight too, and likely very few of your "trained super-squirrel operatives" trying to hijack EMB-120s and ERJs, if they get past the TSA.

At some point with security measures, you are just throwing stuff at the problem trying to make yourself feel better. FFDO is definitely that level. We obviously need to arm the rampers too, because that's likely how those super-trained operatives would gain access to the aircraft, by using the liquid nitrogen in the spray-can to cut a hole in the fence and then run out there with their automatic weapons. They would truly be the last line of defense. Heck, they could shoot out your tire so you can't go anywhere.

If it was pre 911, we didn't have cockpit doors, we didn't have a plane-full of passengers ready to tackle an attacker and FAs to direct them to do so, then I might agree that the FFDO program could be a good idea, but then we wouldn't have the layers of the TSA and other things too, and it would just be a stop-gap till we could have better security procedures that would prevent the super-spy-agents from taking over the plane.

 

[QUOTE=JamesNoBrakes;1419559] Air Marshals may cost many times more, but they are in a far better position to handle any altercation in the passenger cabin, without exposing the flight deck to possible compromise.

Just curious, how does the presence of an ffdo expose the flight deck to compromise?

 

[QUOTE=Mooseflyer88;1419570]They don't. Opening the door does.

 

On an aircraft, we're not compressed.

Perhaps you mean explosive depressurization.

High school physics easily disprove the idiotic CIA video showing the airplane continuing its climb after the missile strike, but no, no parachute would have been effective.

As you've clearly never left an airplane in flight or used a parachute, you wouldn't appreciate what's involved getting into a rig and exiting. You also wouldn't appreciate the need for proper training, and the rapid decrease in potential for success with any canopy if the user isn't stable on deployment. How do you propose that the passengers stand, retrieve the parachute, get into the parachute, and exit the aircraft, based on a random explosion, assuming it's remotely possible to make it into the slipstream in the first place?

You've never exited an aircraft in flight, have you?

Why would one be stupid enough to open the door? The whole point of the firearm is that one greets someone else coming through the door. Nobody is leaving the cockpit to go hunting. How can you be in your present position and not know that?

You do understand that the FFDO doesn't open the door or leave the cockpit, don't you? You really don't seem to grasp the concept. If a gunfight occurs, it's going to be after the door has been breached, from the outside. At that point, it's a damn sight better than a fire extinguisher.

Irrelevant, as the FFDO isn't there to handle any altercation in the passenger cabin.

The Air Marshall isn't there to handle a problem in the cockpit.

Do you understand the difference?

I can guarantee without any reservation that no flight attendant and no hero-wannabe passenger would last but a flash if I were inclined to hold the front of the aircraft. The forward galley area forms a fatal funnel; only a passenger or two can get through. People get slippery with blood, and it's hard to climb over bodies. One or two attackers coordinating holding that point while a third takes the door is fast and quick if coordinated, and the cockpit becomes fair game. Five hundred passengers aft of that point aren't going to make a hills beans worth of difference.

Someone truly ready, truly determined, truly rehearsed, no problem. The only place in the airplane at that stage where a defender can possibly be is the cockpit. If no one makes it through the door, fine, but if they do, and that's a strong probability if someone is prepared, then the only hope of defense is an armed cockpit.

A HKUSPC .40 is a very cheap investment, especially at government purchase rates. FFDO volunteers take their own time to travel to Artesia for training, and aren't employed by the government.

FFDO pilots are some of the least expensive investments, and a crucial layer, in the entire security compendium.

Parachutes don't affect national security. Pilots with handguns do, and should be funded without hesitation.

 

Speaking of cockpit doors .
Good luck with using a beverage cart .

 

You have just proved that you don't know how the FFDO program works. This is the third time you are talking about an FFDO opening the cockpit door to "take care" of a problem in the back and exposing the flight deck in the process. News flash, this is not how it works! It's a last line of defense because if something happens the cockpit door doesn't get opened for any reason, whatsoever. Only if the cockpit gets breached does an FFDO utilize his or her weapon. Thanks for trying to discuss a program you have no knowledge of and making yourself look foolish in the process.

 

These two guys trashing the FFDO program are either idiots or trolls or both.

 

No...this time I think he said what he meant:


JNB - I find it very hard to believe that these are really your thoughts and depth of knowledge of the program.