Armed pilots add to cockpit safety

Starting in May, pilots who want to be armed and pass a screening process will be trained and will be allowed to have weapons during flights.

Congress has approved allowing airline pilots to carry handguns on planes and use them inside cockpits as protection if needed.

Transportation Security Administration chief James Loy has prepared a program to train commercial airline pilots to use semi-automatic handguns.

The agency will select the first group of 48 pilots to be trained for a week to be "federal flight deck officers."

The first armed pilots are expected to begin flying by May. The pilots must carry their assigned .40-caliber weapons in locked boxes through airports to aircraft.

It's a good idea that pilots are going to be armed. It's a different world, one where we know all too well that planes can be transformed into flying people-filled bombs.

There has been some criticism of the plan to have armed pilots in the cockpits of commercial airliners.

But gun-toting pilots only sound like a drastic measure to those who already have forgotten the horrific events during the morning hours of Sept. 11, 2001.