The UK has decided to have sky marshals on their airlines.

Sky marshals are law enforcement agents who will have a gun with them on the plane. Their purpose is to be a deterrent to terrorism. If a bad guy makes it on the plane, there will be a good guy to rescue everyone.

The airlines say that's bad. They say that guns aren't supposed to be on the planes. –Well, neither are the terrorists. But if they're on there, wouldn't you feel safer with a sky marshal on the plane?

Israel and Australia have sky marshals.

The US has had sky marshals in the past.

Back thirty years ago, my father-in-law was gone for over a year flying on planes from here to there to everywhere, not coming home. Sky marshals, in the US at least, had a terrible job. It wasn't a five day a week, then you're home undercover thing. You're not home for months at a time. If the airplane goes somewhere unsafe, like Vietnam at the time, the sky marshals go with them.

There were no incidents that I ever heard of in the US with the sky marshals. These folks are trained for bad situations. I would rather have someone trained taking care of a potential problem and not have to count on the heroism of a plane full of people willing to die to save some other target.

God bless the sky marshals.