By: Logan Dierker

The logistics of how the FFDO pilots carry their weapons to and from the planes had to be taken into consideration, since the bill states that the pilots’ can only be armed in the cockpit. The clause “The Under Secretary shall authorize… a Federal Flight Deck Officer to carry a firearm while engaged in providing air transportation or intrastate air transportation” (107th Congress) is included in this bill. This means that the pilots are authorized to carry their weapon wherever they are while they are on duty. What is missing in this bill is the way that the pilots are supposed to carry them; loaded or unloaded? It was left up to the TSA to determine those criteria. A YouTube video by The Aviation Intelligencer channel explains the official TSA FFDO gun holster and regulations. This video was posted in 2008, six years after the program was initiated. Even though this videos’ purpose is to show how “dangerous” the holster is for the pilot, which is debatable, it does show the actual holster the pilot uses and how he or she is required to use it (The Aviation Intelligencer). The gun is required to be in the holster with the holster lock in the locked position any time the officer is not in the cockpit (The Aviation Intelligencer). This ensures that the pilots’ gun would not be able to be removed from the pilots’ person and fired if an event took place, such as an airport patron attacking the pilot while he is on his way to the plane he is scheduled to fly. To put this video in context, this was posted in 2008, the same year that a US Airways pilot accidentally fired is weapon while the plane was in flight (Friedman). This, in addition to a less serious incident in 2011 where a woman mistook a pilots’ bag for hers but quickly noticed and returned his bag (NBC News), have been the only two safety hazard incidents for the entire time that the FFDO Program has been in operation – only two incidents in 13 years. This is an example of how the FFDO Program is actually a very safe program the way that it is set up currently.