Foreign armed marshalls on Air NZ flights

The Government has introduced legislation to allow both foreign and domestic armed air marshalls or AIr NZ flights.

I guess it was pretty inevitable, but I do wonder at the empirical evidence that air marshals prevent terrorism. Has there been a single case of air marshals preventing a terrorist attack? In the Robert Reid shoe bomber case it was passengers and crew who took action I think.

One ironic side effect of Sep 11 is that conventional terrorism on flights no longer works. Before Sep 11 passengers would allow hijackers to take a plane over and negotiate terms. Now the assumption is that the terrorists will crash the plane into some target and as you will all die under that scenario, then might as well rush the terrorists as only some of you may die that way, and you’ll save lives on the ground.

Finally I recall a friend’s suggestion as to how to stop terrorism and hijacking on flights. Instead of banning guns, he proposed you actually issue them. Every person as they board gets a loaded gun. However each gun has only one bullet. Hence any attempt at take over means you’ll only get one shot off, and probably end up shot 30 to 40 times 🙂

Of course all those gun shots on board may not be healthy for the plane, which might explain why the idea has not been implemented!