WHO: US Airways and the TSA
WHAT: A gun carried by a US Airways pilot accidentally discharged during a flight from Denver to Charlotte on Saturday, according to airline and federal officials. No one was injured, and the aircraft was not in any danger during the flight, officials said. The pilot had been approved by the TSA to carry the weapon.
WHERE:Pilot’s gun goes off on US Airways flight [Charlotte Observer]
THE QUOTE:In a statement, the TSA said that the agency and “Federal Air Marshals Service take this matter seriously and it is receiving immediate attention.”
“Taking it seriously” is a phrase companies use over and over again in public statements whenever they have bad PR. Our series of posts on occurrences of the phrase is our attempt to question how seriously companies are really taking these matters if every time they trot out this phrase by rote. To see more examples of how companies are “taking it seriously” click here.
(Photo:Flying Photog)
More From Consumerist
-
You Can’t Bring A Loaded Gun In Your Carry-On Even If You’re An NFL Player
-
Southwest Airlines Pilot's Tiff With TSA Agent Escalates Until Cops Make Everyone Chill Out
-
U.S. Airways In Financial Partnership Talks So It Can Keep Flirting With American Airlines
-
Spirit Airlines Flight Bumps Up Against Parked US Airways Plane On Its Way To The Gate
-
US Airways Already Asked American To Get Married Back In April
wow, just…wow
Guns a a plane! What a retarded idea.
What EzraEkman said! (and said very well)
As someone who is actually trained to carry onboard aircraft (yes, there is a special course of instruction available to LEOs), the main concern with firing a weapon on an aircraft is avoiding the aircraft control systems (hydraulics), the fuel system (not as easy to do), and hitting other passengers that you really aren’t trying to shoot.
Unless the pilot’s sidearm is seriously defective, has no safeties of any type (there are a few out there), or is subject to ‘slam-fires’ (which would be caused by using an improper or ill-fitting holster), I’ll bet a dozen donuts (aka ‘power rings’) he was screwing around with it.
Round in the chamber: A gun with an empty chamber is what we call an expensive lump of metal. A half a second is a lifetime (literally) in a gun fight. Believe me, if you are in a gun fight and need to fire the first round, you will NOT have the fine motor skills necessary to pull the slide back and chamber a round.
Your mileage may vary…
There is no such thing as an “accidental discharge”. If it goes off, and the user of the firearm didn’t mean for it to go off, that’s negligence. That person should never be allowed to carry a firearm again.
@ViperBorg: An AD can happen … it requires an actual malfunction, due to wear or some other fault.
I discovered a malf on my wife’s new Detonics the hard way … it discharged when the slide chambered a round. The sear was later discovered to be defective.
But because I was following the other three rules, the bullet struck an empty waterbed, and went no further ( bed required one patch ).
That being said … I’m also pretty sure you are correct, and that this was an ND … probably another trigger discipline failure while re-holstering a GLOCK, in my opinion.
@ViperBorg: Saying there’s no such thing as an accidental discharge is like saying there’s no such thing as an accidental collision. As kbarrett pointed out, ADs happen from a variety of different reasons. Metal fatigue can cause springs to loosen or snap and shell ejectors to break, and primers can malfunction causing rounds to go off when you don’t expect them to, or not when you do. Casings can jam, chambers can break (effectively turning the firearm into a grenade), and the list goes on and on. It sounds like perhaps you have a bone to pick with gun owners and, while you certainly have the right to do so, this isn’t the forum for it. Your comments are inaccurate.
That said, I’m leaning more towards the side of negligence in this case. However, it’s really quite presumptuous of any of us to say “Pilot error!” or “Malfunction!” since we don’t have access to the flight recorder and none of us were present in the plane at the time of the discharge, much less in the cabin where it took place.
You said something else interesting:
“That person should never be allowed to carry a firearm again.”
I heard a story once about a corporate buyer who made a series of bad investments that cost his company over $10 million dollars. His first thought was to tender his resignation. His manager looked at it and said “What’s this?” He said “My resignation, or course.” His manager looked at him and asked “Why would I fire someone that I just spent ten million dollars to train?” The idea here is that, in both cases, barring some form of severe negligence (a complete lack of care, perhaps being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, etc.), those two individuals will probably be FAR more careful than another might be in a similar situation in the future, having had this experience. No one was hurt, and I believe it is likely that the FAA and US Airways will investigate this very carefully. Perhaps they’ll decide that he was doing something stupid, such as playing with it like several posters here have suggested. Or perhaps there really was a malfunction. Who knows? Let the folks responsible for the investigation decide what happened and what should be done about it.
Should pilots carry weapons into the cabin? I don’t think it’s unreasonable, although more training might be in order. Should they be firearms or something else? That depends on far too many factors to list here. As you will see if you read my original post above, I agree wholeheartedly with the necessity for gun safety and care. But statements like yours are erroneous in nature and your proposed solution/punishment is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
heh… “accident”. Yea right. If that’s true, aren’t all crimes really “accidents”?
He fired a gun in close quarters. That’s putting lives in danger. It’s reckless and irresponsible for someone with the job of ensuring safety on an aircraft. Let him do his time (5-10 sounds fair) and lets move on.
That’s called a security hole for a reason. Sad really. By getting a gun, they are no longer subject to searches, meaning they can smuggle anything they want aboard the aircraft and not get caught. For a terrorist, drug dealer, etc. What you need to do is hire a pilot with a gun. That’s cuts out one security check.
People with security clearance committing crimes? Never! Oh wait, there’s a dozen reports right there. Doh!
Watch this gun: [montego.roughwheelers.com] You can help make sure it won’t commit any crimes.
@MountainCop: I’d respectfully disagree. In a gun fight, yes, we’re on the same page. Locked and loaded, half-second count.
But we’re far from that situation here.
Behind a hardened cockpit door, in-flight, carrying a load of passengers already screened? Who would rip a hijacker to shredded little bits before the miscreant could finish standing (this far past, 9-11 passengers would never be docile)?
Odds of something stupid happening outweigh the odds of a situation arising in that environment that would necessitate chambering the round.
@digitalgimpus: Once again, we come back to the original argument in all of this – if you can’t trust these people with a gun, how can you trust them with a plane?
Shadowfire: The security hole is not about the gun. It’s about a way to avoid security. Anytime there is a way to avoid security, it’s a hole, so stop creating FUD.
Airline staff has been arrested many times for activity despite having been given clearance to get close to aircraft.
Anytime you give someone a free pass, they have the opportunity to corrupt.
You can still allow them to carry a gun, and make them go through the same security process.
One can argue the president shouldn’t be subject to US law himself. After all, he is the president. If you can’t trust him to follow the law… how can you elect him? But we still have congress, the judicial and legislative branches for the same reason.
ANYTIME you give someone a pass, you create a security hole. No exceptions.
TSA should even be randomly auditing each other on a daily basis. Nobody should be without oversight from someone else. And that “someone” should be an individual they don’t normally deal with, so no “deals” can be made.
Well, some more details about the issue have been released, and it sounds a lot more like negligence than an accident. My guess is that the pilot was showing it off or playing with it, as anapex suggested.
According to an AP article, the weapon was .40 Heckler & Koch USP. As some of you may know, this particular firearm DOES have a manual safety, as opposed to a passive safety such as a hand or trigger safety. In other words, the pilot either forgot to engage the safety or intentionally disengaged it. Hard to say which is worse; wandering around with a hot weapon or playing with it in the cockpit. The only *potentially* acceptable reason for the safety to have been disengaged was that some models require that the safety be disengaged to pull the slide back. I am not familiar enough with the USP to say one way or the other. Perhaps the pilot did not have a round chambered for the walk through the airport and then disengaged the slide in order to chamber a round once he was in the cockpit. *shrug* Doubtful at best, since he should have immediately put the safety back on, and the discharge did not happen until later, once the plane was airborne.
Another interesting point from the article was that the FAA is NOT going to participating in the investigation. (?!) I guess they were only concerned with the plane, and are leaving the issue of the pilot to the airline to deal with. Mildly disturbing. “Aw, we’re sure the head honchos over at US Airways can handle this itty-bitty issue!”
One final item of note: the level and angle of the exit hole makes it look as though the pilot was sitting in his seat, and, well, playing with the gun. I’m no forensic specialist, nor am I terribly familiar with the layout of that particular cockpit, but that’s what it looks like to me.
@MPHinPgh:
I was issued a gun with a broken safety at a paint gun park.
what the %&$#@! was this pilot doing? The hk usp has a safety and the hk p2000 does not. In either case the trigger has to be pulled to discharge and the trigger pull is not light. Any gun handler knows that you keep your finger off the trigger when handling any gun unless you intend to shoot. This is negligence to a major degree. a pilot who is trained in safety should not make this error, EVER!
@ Jenger: Unfortunately, many gun handlers do NOT know basic gun safety. All that’s required in many states is that you pass a simple written test (most of which is basic common sense), which may or may not contain that particular question. And of course, many of those safety rules are forgotten if the gun owner/user does not practice regularly, or does not take some form of safety class. Your assumption is unsafe at best. I don’t know much about the H&K USP’s trigger pull, but I’ve personally used stock triggers that didn’t require much pull at all, and many are modified (either individually or in bulk for the military, for example) to allow for an easier pull. Is it negligence? Absolutely, in my book, unless it’s shown that the safety was actually engaged and was somehow defective. But stop making unsafe assumptions.
That said, this pilot DEFINITELY should have known. According to this Associated Press article, the pilot took a week-long training program before he was allowed to carry the weapon on board. I don’t know the content of the course, but one would assume that the “finger outside the trigger guard” rule would be item #1 when picking the things up in the first place. Greg Alter of the Federal Air Marshal Service was quoted in the article as having said (among other things) “Gun safety is the crux of this course.” Sounds like the pilot didn’t get the memo. Time to yank that certificate and send him back to training. Fortunately, he’s already been removed from the program for now, pending the investigation results.
Also, according to the article, the pilot was attempting to stow the weapon which had, until that point, been in his shoulder holster. As I mentioned above, that means he was wandering around an airport with a loaded weapon, a round chambered, and the safety off. Bad, bad, BAD. Geeze, even the secret service keeps their safeties on, as does every law enforcement agency in the country, that I’m aware of. The military ostensibly does, though this may vary between service and groups. This pilot is none of the above. Or, perhaps he’d had it locked up in some sort of case. Better, but why wasn’t the safety on before he placed it in the case? Something stinks.
It might also be worth mentioning that, according to This USA Today article, although the gun discharged at 8,000 feet, the pilot didn’t notify air traffic control or say the bullet had punctured the cockpit until after the plane landed. At that time, he picked up the phone and called the TSA. Interesting. Granted, they were landing the plane, and there appeared to be no immediate risk to the aircraft. But they had no way of knowing that immediately. Plus, they were still PREPARING to land, and thus “stowing” the firearm. Doesn’t that at least warrant a mention to the tower in case there was a catastrophe? “Let the next guy know what killed you,” and all that?
According to this ABC News article, “Government aviation sources say a bullet was discharged by the pilot in the left seat, pierced the left side of the aircraft’s cockpit wall and exited the aircraft,” which begs the question: what were they over and have there been any unexplained bullet holes and/or injuries/casualties reported in the same timeframe? I wonder if that’s been examined yet.