Pilot Loses Gun Delays Flights

By Terry Green
Jan 15 2011

A JetBlue pilot lost a carry-on piece of luggage that contained a handgun on Friday in New York which delayed flights out of the airport for over two hours.

The pilot was part of a program known as Flight Deck Training, which allows pilots to carry firearms in their flight bags to fend off would be hijackers on flights without Air Marshalls.

The incident, according to several witnesses and the airline itself, was a simple accident. The pilot sat his bag down near the bags of a passenger on another flight. The passenger picked up the bag mistakenly and boarded the plane. When the pilot noticed that his bag was missing he alerted authorities and locked down the airport.

When the passenger realized that one of the bags that she had carried on did not belong to her she turned it over to the flight attendant. The bag was then returned to the pilot and the flights were able to take off.

TSA officials said that the gun in the bag was locked and could not be fired. They investigated the incident and found nothing out-of-place. They declared the incident to be nothing more than a simple case of incorrect bags and allowed all normal activity in the airport to resume.

JetBlue said that all pilots in their employee have been trained as Flight Decks officers and are sanctioned to carry weapons. Most JetBlue aircraft do not have Air Marshalls on board due to a lack of space.