Pilots press for handguns in cargo planes

Pilots press for handguns in cargo planes    Pilot groups met with the media at a half-dozen airports this week to draw attention to the Transportation Security Administration's slow pace for implementing a program for arming pilots with handguns to defend their planes from potential terrorists.
   Leaders of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance and the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations also said Congress must quickly make cargo pilots eligible for the program. Under legislation passed last year, commercial pilots are eligible to carry firearms on passenger airlines after undergoing special training and background checks.
   Congress will consider whether to arm cargo pilots as part of legislation to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration when it comes back from its summer break after Labor Day.
   'By excluding the cargo pilots the legislation unknowingly focused the terrorist spotlight on air cargo operations,' John Safely, president of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations, said during a news event at Washington's National Airport that was carried on C-SPAN.
   Safely and other pilots said cargo pilots often work at night, in remote sections of the airport that lack perimeter security, guarded gates or TSA screeners to control access, and whose planes do not have the benefit of hardened cockpit doors and onboard air marshals.
   'It is no wonder that the terrorists are actively interested in cargo operations,' said Safely, whose organization represents the cargo pilots of United Parcel Service and Airborne Express, as well as passenger pilots for American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and AirTrans.
   'If a guy can get across that gate and get aboard a cargo airplane and hide, we have to have a way to protect ourselves' to prevent a repeat of Sept. 11, said James Shilling, legislative liaison for the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations.
   Capt. Bob Lambert, a United Airlines pilot and president of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, said at the current training pace it will take 15 years to train all the 40,000 pilots that volunteer for the program. So far fewer than 200 pilots have been trained.
   The pilots asked Americans to pressure their congressmen to pass legislation to arm cargo pilots, but made no mentioned of the known shipper program or other security measures being considered for airfreight security.