Originally Posted by Just Passing Thru
And don't forget the likely willingness of the pax to help perform a beat-down on the bad guys if at all possible. There's no way I'm going to stay seated and wait to die unless the flight officers or a FAM tells me to. Big-n-tall JPT will be happy to help beat the snot out of the bad guys and then stow them neatly in the overhead compartment.
This is another reason why you don't want the guys upfront to start blazing away. The issue of handling an armed standoff inside a narrow metal tube with a couple of hundred people in it is a fairly specialized skill when you get down to it--in the sense that it requires an ability to asses and react to a potentially dangerous situation with a large degree of quickness and accuracy. Imagine the fallout if somebody bum-rushed the flight deck, half the F cabin was busy administering the beat down, and one of those people administering said beat-down took a stray round..... Bad.
That ability is probably mutually exclusive to operating a transport-class aircraft, at least while in the approach/landing phase of flight (and probably departure). Climb-cruise might be another story, but I don't want the guys upfront who are driving my flights to have to try.
That said, the Airtran guy is dumb because he was on-duty, in uniform, and intoxicated. His status as an FFDO is just more fuel for the fire. In an abstract way it almost makes him stupid times two--carrying a loaded firearm while under the influence is not particularly bright; although I'm not convinced yet that it's quite as bad as getting ready to command a flight with 60+ onboard while plastered...