Cockpit

A group of Ellicott City engineers is working on what they hope will be the next generation of communications technology for aviators, and state dollars are helping them in their task. TechnoSys Inc., an Ellicott City company, was recently awarded $50,000 from the Maryland Technology Development Corp., or TEDCO, to help the firm commercialize the fiber optics-based aviator headset that the company has been developing over the past several years. The money from the Maryland Technology Transfer Fund will help the company develop a production prototype headset for use in military and commercial flight.

Mame is about a larger-than-life woman, and the musical itself is a large-scale affair. Cockpit in Court's production is directed and choreographed by Todd Pearthree, who has a proven ability for gracefully navigating sizable casts. And it stars Shannon Wollman, who has played her share of imposing dames, from Fanny Brice to Eva Peron. In Mame (score by Jerry Herman; book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee), Wollman gets to strut her stuff as an indomitable, free-spirited 1920s New Yorker, and she takes to it with gusto.

AIRLINE PILOTS are on their way to winning permission from Congress to carry guns on board as a last line of defense against terrorist hijackers. This emotional response to security lapses not yet corrected since Sept. 11 is loaded with its own potential for peril. The fear and frustration that prompted the overwhelming House vote Wednesday for allowing pilots to carry firearms if they choose are understandable. Too many baggage screeners are nabbing tweezers and corkscrews but letting more dangerous items through.

Cockpit in Court -- the summer theater in residence at the Essex campus of the Community College of Baltimore County -- opens its 30th-anniversary season tomorrow with a revival of 1776, Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone's musical about the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Todd Starkey directs a cast headed by Dave Shannon as Benjamin Franklin, and husband and wife John and Deborah Desmone as John and Abigail Adams. Here's the rest of the Cockpit season: Tom Sawyer (July 11-21, Recital Hall, Humanities and Arts Building)

WASHINGTON - Two months after hijacked airliners were turned into bombs, Congress voted overwhelmingly yesterday to approve a federal takeover of airport security that calls for sharply tightened screening of passengers and baggage. The legislation, passed before lawmakers left town for their Thanksgiving recess, sets in motion the most sweeping upgrade of aviation security in decades. It calls for the hiring and training of up to 28,000 additional federal workers to serve as screeners, sky marshals and security supervisors.

EVERYONE HAS done this at least once since Sept. 11. We've all tried to imagine some way of making the jumbo jets that traverse America's skies terrorist-proof. The unthinkable happened Sept. 11, and that forced us to think of things we've never thought of before. I convened a one-man, counterterrorism think tank and came up with this: remote-controlled airliners. In the event of an emergency, why not pilot jets from the ground? Even if a suicide hijacker succeeded in taking command of a passenger jet, even if he knew how to fly it, he could be denied his evil glory by an advanced remote-pilot system that would override his attempt to manually fly the plane from the cockpit.

CHICAGO - President Bush, seeking to rally the crippled airline industry, called on Americans yesterday to return to the skies and urged the nation's governors to station National Guard troops at airports to give travelers a renewed sense of security. "Get on the airlines, get about the business of America," Bush told hundreds of flag-waving airline workers outside a hangar at O'Hare International Airport. The president also said he plans to put the federal government in charge of airport security, place armed marshals aboard more flights and take other measures to protect passengers and crews, including strengthening cockpit doors.

WASHINGTON - President Bush will unveil a package of measures today to try to improve safety and restore confidence in U.S. air travel, including strengthening cockpit doors and putting armed federal agents on most domestic flights, administration and congressional aides said. Bush will also propose that the federal government assume a greater role in overseeing airport security and screening passengers. The president is scheduled to visit Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, where he will outline his plans to airline workers.

I'M TRYING to picture something here, and the more I picture it, the jumpier I get. The first thing I picture is an airline pilot with a gun at the controls of a 747. Then I picture a wild-eyed terrorist bursting through the cockpit door and announcing a hijacking. Then I picture the pilot, one hand on the controls, turning around to shoot with his free hand, the way the stagecoach driver in the Old West used to hold the reins in one hand and shoot at the bad guys over his shoulder. Meanwhile, the plane is dipping and rolling and passengers are screaming, including me, sitting back there in seat 18A with a spilled Coke puddling in my lap. No, check that.

The terrorist hijackings Sept. 11 that have grounded many fearful Americans have had the opposite effect on three-time Olympian Bonny Warner. Warner wanted to get back flying as soon as possible, so she requested and received her old job back as a United Airlines pilot. Warner, 39, a five-time U.S. champion in luge, is a captain who flies 737s for United. She was on a leave of absence since July to train full time for a berth as a bobsled driver in the 2002 Winter Olympics, but when terrorists hijacked four planes, including two United flights, Warner could think of nothing else but to get back into the air. "I came back to make a statement," she told The Gazette of Colorado Springs.