Pilot's Gun Goes off in Cockpit

For those who always thought that arming pilots on commercial flights was a bad idea, today's incident will hardly come as a surprise: a gun accidentally went off in the cockpit of a U.S. Airways flight. ABC News reports:

*The pilot, who both the TSA and US Airways declined to identify, was a member of the Federal Flight Deck Officer program, an initiative put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The initiative allows authorized members of cockpit crews to carry weapons on board. *

*"There are thousands of federal flight deck officers and this has never happened before," said the spokesperson. "This was probably a bit of a fluke." *

*The Federal Flight Deck Officer program provides training to eligible crew members on the use of firearms, use of force, legal issues, defensive tactics, the psychology of survival and program standard operating procedures, according to TSA's Web site. *

*Flight deck officers must requalify for the program twice a year; the pilot involved in Saturday's incident requalified in November 2007. *

On the flip side, it appears no one was hurt. So far, TSA won't release any information on how the bullet discharged or what was struck.