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CNN Live Today
Interview with Rob Sproc and Jim Tilmon
Aired July 10, 2002 - 14:34 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: The issue of guns in the cockpit goes to Capitol Hill today. The full House is expected to take up the bill that would allow for firearms and commercial airline cockpits. The vote is expected around 4:00 p.m. this afternoon, and the debate has been divided.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DEL. ELEANOR HOLMS NORTON: We are rushing to the security blanket of guns in the cockpit that could do more harm than good. And that is the test.
REP. DON YOUNG (R-AK), CHAIRMAN OF HOUSE TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE COMMITTEE: Our duty is to protect the passengers, our cargo, and to maintain control of the ship at all times.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Safe travel must include defenses on both the ground and in the air.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have never seen a door other than Fort Knox that couldn't be gotten into one way or the other. But, look, if the terrorists think, and their mind-set think if we fail, why do it?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: For more debate now, we are joined by aviation consultant Jim Tilmon in Phoenix, and in Washington, Rob Sproc with the Allied Pilots Association. Gentlemen, hello.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello.
PHILLIPS: All right. First of all, Jim, I know you are totally against this. Lay out your feelings.
JIM TILMON, AVIATION CONSULTANT: First of all, it's not so much that I'm against it. It's that I believe I'm for something else. We only have so much money and so much in the way of assets and time. I want to see that all of that put to the very best use. Right now we're looking at $3.3 billion that the House is authorizing for a $4.4 billion request from the TSA, and it looks like between the House and Senate they might come up with the money.
But if we don't come up with that, we are going to end up with no security, ground or air. And if we only have limited resources to begin with, let's put that into things that are going to make a difference. Let's put that into video in the airplanes and reinforced cockpit doors and a whole array of things that can make a real difference right away, without taking away from a program that I think is vital to the security of our passengers.
PHILLIPS: All right, Jim, we'll get more specific on a couple of points that you made there. But first, Rob, why don't you tell me why you say yes to guns.
ROB SPROC, ALLIED PILOTS ASSOCIATION: Well, obviously this is just one of the layers of defense that we want to add to the entire picture.
Captain Tilmon there has some very good points, that hardened doors are eventually going to come on. We know the funding for that has been cut drastically. Arming pilots is the last line of defense that we have before an airplane gets shot down by an F-16 should somebody get through the door.
And those hardened doors aren't due for another couple years anyway. So this is a program that can get on board relatively quick with a relatively large number of pilots to protect the vast majority of flights that are taking place today.
PHILLIPS: Rob, have you ever fired a gun?
SPROC: Oh, yes, I have.
PHILLIPS: Do you own a gun?
SPROC: I own three of them, yes.
PHILLIPS: OK, so you know what kind of training is involved in order to own a gun. And you know how you feels when you fire that gun. Your adrenaline gets pumping, and you only have a matter of seconds to think, OK, do I fire, do I not fire, and the training is very intense. You do have to know the law well. Do you think that every single pilot can be trained, has the mind-set and the ability to have the self-control and the discipline to own and operate a gun?
SPROC: The resolution that will Allied Pilots Association passed back in October said it would be the volunteer pilots who would be properly certified, trained, and screened.
So we're going to put people through the process of properly training them. I carried firearms in the military when I was protecting and transporting this country's nuclear arsenal, and the training that they put you through takes care of all those concerns about the type of ammunition, how to protect your weapon, how and when to fire, all those things we expect to be taken care of in the training process.
PHILLIPS: Jim, you talk about money. Let's bring that back in. Training will be very expensive. But if it is really good training, this could a safe way to go. TILMON: Yes, but your training means the same type of training that we have for our air marshal program right now. May have to be retrained every three months. they go back four times a year to be proficiently trained. This is a rapidly deteriorating skill, and we have to look at logistics of this.
Who's going to carry the gun? Will they be kept in the cockpit? Will it be kept on the ground (UNINTELLIGIBLE) operations? Will it work in every state? Who is going to be the person who is really in charge if the copilot is the gun guy volunteer and captain isn't?
I mean, there are all kinds of logistical problems that we have that we just don't have to have. If we can give the pilot group the confidence that we do have a secure system -- and I think that's what Congress should be thinking about.
We have got to make it possible for Rob and all of the other guys who -- and gals who are flying in those cockpits to believe sincerely in their hearts that nothing is going to come through that door that's going to harm them, and I believe we have the skill and the technology to do it if we are willing to go ahead and do it.
PHILLIPS: But Jim...
SPROC: Unfortunately the facts just don't bear that out. I mean, we still have weapons that are getting on airplanes. We have box cutters getting on airplanes almost on a daily basis.
We want to be able to provide that -- not only the effect of being able to stop a fight should one occur, if they try to come into the cockpit, but also the incredible deterrent effect of telling these folks, hey, you are going to be unsuccessful in doing this. If have you a large percentage of the pilots out there that are armed and properly trained, the terrorists are going to go somewhere else.
TILMON: Well, Rob, the -- my problem is, who is going to train them, who is going to pay for it, and which airline is going to really want to have that many of their pilots out on the training program that has nothing whatsoever to do with flying the airplane.
SPROC: Whichever airline wants to grab most of the flying public as flying on the safest airline, because the surveys are out there: 79 percent of the traveling public wants their pilots armed. They are the ones who want the security out there.
TILMON: Rob, I...
SPROC: The fact that the CEOs haven't bought on to this yet is quite an indictment.
TILMON: Rob, I just looked that week's "Aviation Week," and they talk about the survey that was done by the FAA to determine what the public thought about guns in the cockpit.
And they say that something like well over 90 percent of the people there did support guns in the cockpit, and later on they determined, after looking at those surveys and the way they are worded, that over 96 percent of those people were worried their comments just exactly as gun advocacy groups had suggested.
So I'm saying I'm not sure that we really know what the American public wants out there. And American public know so little about what you and I do in a cockpit, and so I don't know if they are the right ones to make that kind of a decision.
PHILLIPS: So, Jim...
SPROC: Well, fortunately today -- fortunately today at 11:15 a.m., Senator Barbara Boxer signed on as a cosponsor to the Smith- Miller bill, which is a much stronger bill than what came out of the House Aviation Subcommittee.
There is debate going on right now in the House. Amendments may be offered to strengthen that bill, where only 250 pilots are required to be armed. So we are obviously up here supporting the issue to strengthen that, and we are very pleased that Senator Boxer came on.
Captain Breslin (ph) and Captain Pells (ph) worked very hard with her to get that done, and we are glad that this is receiving bipartisan support. I don't know if you heard some of the debate today, but it is very -- going across both party lines.
PHILLIPS: OK, Jim -- hold on, Rob. Let me ask Jim a question. What is it that we don't know about what takes place in that cockpit?
TILMON: Well, one of the thing that takes place in the cockpit, it's a place of business. I mean, we have plenty to do up there. This is a profession that requires a lot of attention, and you don't just replace that by punching on the autopilot.
We have a job to do and that is to protect those passengers and their lives, yes, and I support a lot of things that Rob says and a lot of things that the congresspeople are saying. But I support more than anything else, let's leave the flying job to the pilots, let's leave the law enforcement to the law enforcement people, and let's put some more money in the program and let's put more air marshals on the -- in the cabins of these airplanes.
And that, I believe, is a better deterrent than saying, "I wonder if I'm on an airplane that has a pilot with a gun."
PHILLIPS: Rob, why not -- why not put money into the marshals program? Why not let the pilots have the locked doors, have the keyed doors, have secure doors, and may just make sure that armed marshals are on every single plane, put the money there, so the pilots don't have to worry about operating a gun and airplane. That is a big mental challenge.
SPROC: Yes, but -- well, actually no, it's not.
Captain Tilmon knows better. To cover over 30,000 departures that there are every day in the domestic flights alone, you need a size -- an air marshal corps the size of Marine Corps. And that's just never going to happen.
He is talking about money. If we were to fund that, it would be just huge dollars, and when Captain Tilmon talks about place of business in the cockpit, he knows that even when he was flying in a two-person cockpit, when there was an emergency in the cockpit, one person is designated to fly and the other person is designated to fix the emergency by running the checklist, pushing the switches, and stuff like that.
If you go to our Web site he would see a demonstration video that we made with some former Special Forces folks that demonstrates very clearly that in a terrorist attack situation, one pilot has the capability of flying the airplane to a successful landing while the other pilot stops the fight with lethal force.
PHILLIPS: Him, my next story might be pilot boot camp.
TILMON: Yes, it might very well. But I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying that it is not the best use of assets and money and time.
Sure it can be done. I believe in pilots. I believe in a lot of things that you say, and I believe that an airline pilot is capable of doing all kinds of wonderful things. But why should we ask them do that in addition to what he is -- what is already being done? And why can't we put the money where it should be?
And we don't have a to have a size of the Marine Corps to order to insure that a person who's bent on doing harm to an airplane has that deterrent, because you remember that all of the pilots don't want to carry guns.
And my private survey, unscientific as it is, says that I'm still trying to find a pilot who says he really wants to carry one. I'd like very much to see what the wording was on that survey that was given to the pilot group, asking them if they really wanted to support this program.
PHILLIPS: Well, I know...
SPROC: I think most of the pilots that have been through the recurrent training is either part-time law enforcement officers or had endured the military training and the recurrent qualifications that are necessary in both those are still enthusiastic about attempting to protect the safety and lives of their passengers.
PHILLIPS: Gentlemen, we've got to leave it there. I apologize. Rob Sproc and Jim Tilmon, great conversation. I know we will be talking about it very soon, possibly by the end of the day. Thanks, guys.
TILMON: Thank you.
SPROC: Thank you very much.
TILMON: Good work, Rob. PHILLIPS: Thank you. See, they still like each other. That's good.
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