WASHINGTON — The US Airways captain whose gun discharged in the cockpit of a plane landing in Charlotte , N.C., was fired by the airline and removed from the program that allows pilots to be armed, federal safety officials said Thursday.
"The individual is no longer a federal flight deck officer," Kip Hawley, administrator of the Transportation Security Administration and assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said after testifying at a House aviation subcommittee hearing.
Hawley wouldn't say if investigators had decided the March incident was caused by pilot error.
Some industry activists have suggested that the design of the gun's trigger lock and holster makes an accidental discharge possible. But Hawley said Thursday that wasn't a contributing factor.
According to a Charlotte airport police report, the US Airways captain, James Langenhahn, was stowing his .40-caliber pistol when it discharged a bullet through the jet's cockpit wall and fuselage.
Nobody was injured on the March 22 flight from Denver carrying 124 passengers and five crew members when the gun discharged about eight minutes before landing at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport.
TSA said that the discharge was the first since pilots were allowed to be armed in an effort to protect flights from the same fate of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Langenhahn and spokesmen for US Airways and its pilots union did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5906506.html
Fonte: Flight Safety Information 25/07/2008.
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