he only thing that could prevent something like this is sky marshals on EVERY flight in civilian clothes.
There will never be armed air marshals on every flight. We have over 30,000 flights every day (normally) and you would need even more air marshals than that since they would need time off, holiday's vacations etc. - they would all need to go through extensive background checks since an armed air marshal doesn't need to smuggle his weapon on board - he is supposed to have it, and in the end they are just flying around with nothing to do but wait for something that is (still) exceedingly rare. I doubt you could keep very many competant, well trained, reliable (in a security risk way) people in such a glorified night watchman kind of job.
The pilots (two of them) of course are already there doing their job - they are already responsible (to some extent) for security on the flight. They are already known to be generally competant to keep a level head in a crisis. Many if not most are former military and so already have handgun training. those that aren't can always be trained. They already have the appropriate background checks and are not deemed to be a security risk (besides if a pilot turns out to be the bad guy you are already screwed)
The argument that a hijacker now "doesn't need to smuggle a weapon on board since the pilot already has one" is ridiculous. An unarmed man or group taking on two men with handguns are taking a rather huge risk - yes there are scenarios where they might get the weapon and use it against the pilots, but the smart money is on the guy with the gun at the start of the fight.
Besides, the final purpose for having the gun on board, carried by either an air marshal or the pilots, is not to create a fool proof scenario where the good guys are guaranteed to win (though you would of course try to make that as likely as possible) but to deter would be hijackers by making a successful hijacking even more difficult and uncertain.
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he only thing that could prevent something like this is sky marshals on EVERY flight in civilian clothes.
There will never be armed air marshals on every flight. We have over 30,000 flights every day (normally) and you would need even more air marshals than that since they would need time off, holiday's vacations etc. - they would all need to go through extensive background checks since an armed air marshal doesn't need to smuggle his weapon on board - he is supposed to have it, and in the end they are just flying around with nothing to do but wait for something that is (still) exceedingly rare. I doubt you could keep very many competant, well trained, reliable (in a security risk way) people in such a glorified night watchman kind of job.
The pilots (two of them) of course are already there doing their job - they are already responsible (to some extent) for security on the flight. They are already known to be generally competant to keep a level head in a crisis. Many if not most are former military and so already have handgun training. those that aren't can always be trained. They already have the appropriate background checks and are not deemed to be a security risk (besides if a pilot turns out to be the bad guy you are already screwed)
The argument that a hijacker now "doesn't need to smuggle a weapon on board since the pilot already has one" is ridiculous. An unarmed man or group taking on two men with handguns are taking a rather huge risk - yes there are scenarios where they might get the weapon and use it against the pilots, but the smart money is on the guy with the gun at the start of the fight.
Besides, the final purpose for having the gun on board, carried by either an air marshal or the pilots, is not to create a fool proof scenario where the good guys are guaranteed to win (though you would of course try to make that as likely as possible) but to deter would be hijackers by making a successful hijacking even more difficult and uncertain.