Paul J. Adam wrote:
I'm not particularly pro- or anti- armed pilots. There are significant
administrative issues (how do you secure the weapons between flights?
What happens when you fly to a country that doesn't recognise personal
carry?) but answers could be found: my main concern is that other more
effective measures for protecting the pilots and their aircraft get
ignored as too difficult or expensive, because "the pilots can be armed
so now there's no problem".

I agree we should not consider any individual tactic as sufficient in
this case.

I suggest we need to implement defense in depth - which means placing an
entire series of obstacles, or defenses, between the terrorist and their
success. Too much reliance on any single defense will result in the
defense being neutralized or gone around. An entire series of defenses,
with new defenses being added as older ones are known to be compromised,
will result in making the terrorists task much, much more difficult -
which is about as good as you can hope for.

The final defense is, in this case, an armed pilot. Although it sounds
like the TSA is working to not let that happen as much as perhaps it
should. Are there questions and issues, and perhaps even problems? Yes,
as there are with any attempt. But as a passenger, I would feel safer
flying if I felt there was a higher chance of the cockpit crew being
armed than if I thought there was a smaller chance of it.

We might have stopped another try in Paris, but since apparently at
least one of the people we wanted to talk to (reportedly the one with a
pilot's license) was either warned off or for some other unknown reason
was a no-show means we might not get as much good intel out of the
botched try as we might have.