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Cargo pilots to start carrying guns
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- The government said Tuesday that it will begin recruiting
cargo pilots to carry guns in the cockpit for the first time, extending to
them a right enjoyed by passenger pilots for almost a year.
Congress
created the program to deputize pilots as federal law enforcement officers
in late 2002, but excluded cargo pilots at the last minute. A year later,
cargo pilots successfully lobbied Congress to allow them to join passenger
pilots, who fly the same planes that they do. The
Transportation Security Administration says it is now ready to accept
applications online.
Sloan Davis, who
flies a Boeing 767 for a major cargo airline, said he'll be one of the
first to sign up. "This is a welcome move," he said. "It closes a huge gap
in national security." Davis said he was concerned that cargo security was
largely left up to private companies.
The government
only requires a small percentage of freight to be checked before being
shipped in cargo planes. Air marshals don't fly aboard cargo planes, and
freight-handling areas at airports are not as secure as passenger
terminals.
Sen. Jim
Bunning, the Kentucky Republican who sponsored the bill to arm cargo
pilots, said he's "extremely pleased" by the news. Bunning's bill passed
in November.
Classes for
pilots who volunteer and pass the psychological testing will begin in the
spring, said Mark Hatfield, TSA spokesman.
A little more than a thousand passenger pilots have been trained and
deputized, Hatfield said. The TSA
recently doubled the number of 50-person classes it holds every week, to
100 pilots, and will have thousands more graduated by the end of the year,
he said. For
some, that's not soon enough.
Capt. John Safley,
president of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Association, a pilots group,
said the agency needs to remove obstacles to the program.
Pilots, for example,
say the psychological testing is excessive, they don't like carrying their
guns in lockboxes when they're not in the cockpit, and they're concerned
that the TSA can share confidential information about them with their
employers.
"There's still work to be done to make this a truly effective program," Safley said. "We're still not at the level we need to get to."
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