My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)
nones-leonard.medium.com
nones-leonard.medium.com
Edit: I just asked him (he’s at the dentist) and he said around 1980, guess I was wrong about when he started flying!
> When we were ready to head back to Teterboro Airport, I got to a phone, [cell phones had not not yet been invented], and called Departure. [...]
That's not precise enough to really know. It could mean "before the 90s", "before 1983", or even "before 1973". The plane's registration is from 1977, so TFA can't mean literally "before cell phones were invented". Though I suspect it really means something like "before cell phones became widely available to private pilots", which presumably means "before 1990".
Maybe the missiles are elsewhere, or maybe they're just a cost-effective rumor. The book makes it clear that the Secret Service is constantly underfunded and sorely lacking in modern technology, with agents sometimes having to use their personal car to transport the people they're protecting because their official cars aren't working.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Fail-Rise-Secret-Service/dp/0399...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Eugene_Corder
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/15/politics/aircraft-lands-on-ca...
Maybe the answer is to cool it with the idea that government officials all need to have large personal protective details. Isn't that the job of the police? And aren't they all just citizens of this country? If it's not safe for various politicians to walk around in the streets, then maybe they should do something about that because it means that it is unsafe for everybody.
"every one of them needs multimillion dollars worth of protecting" is a straw man. Of course the vast majority of politicians, which includes a lot of city council members of tiny towns and so forth, do not need a 24hr security detail. And they don't have them either.
It happens for the handful, not the majority. Which seems to be what you want, but your tone is frustrated or angry.
Having been the target of about five dozen death threats myself as a political commentator/activist here in Germany, I can tell you the political climate drastically devolved over the last seven years, and police is nowhere near the security system it should be. In my case it took over four years until the main perpetrator was identified, arrested and subsequently sentenced to almost six years in prison[1]. And for what it's worth, it's not limited to politicians, journalists and activists - even ordinary doctors can be driven to suicide [2], or YouTube streamers such as the infamous Drachenlord [3].
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSU_2.0
[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa-Maria_Kellermayr
[3] https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/kommentar-wer-dem-d...
Loads of people in other countries issue the same threats, but because they don't readily have access to ranged weapons, and specifically firearms (and every legal firearm that they do have are registered with the police), those threats are just that: threats.
Of course, we know the problem there, and everyone knows the solution, and everyone knows that solution cannot happen in the US, even if in the past it might have been possible to solve.
So by all means, protect the ones who really need it, but in a lot of cases, the solution to someone whose agenda is so controversial that they need secret service protection during elected visits to adversarial places (rather than being compelled to do so because of the office you hold) is to go "we're not going to protect you for personal activities. If you want to walk into a lion's den, expect lions. If you don't like that, maybe consider that you don't need to rile people up"
All my examples were from Germany, a country with very strict gun control. And yet, Drachenlord got haters literally every single day shouting at or vandalizing his property, attacking him physically, swatting him (the first conviction of swatting in Germany was for a Drachenlord hater). LGBT people or people "looking foreign" routinely get beaten up with fists.
Gun control is a relevant issue, yes, but it's only a very small part.
>If you want to walk into a lion's den, expect lions. If you don't like that, maybe consider that you don't need to rile people up
That's pure victim blaming with a healthy dose of "chilling effect" applied and I'm sad to see such a take on this site. Speaking the truth, advocating for democracy must be protected at all costs.
quite the overreach: by all means, have your opinions and spout them, and by all means, request local police protection because that's what police is for, but if you're so divisive that need the US Secret Service to protect you: maybe you don't. There are very few people who should qualify for that.
Don't pretend I'm saying no one deserves protection, I'm saying almost no one deserves USSS protection.
Local police in the US has been shown often enough to seriously lack training: 21 weeks on average [1] - that is ridiculous, even traffic cops in Germany have to pass through literally two and a half year of training, and another four years and a strict physical training regime for the high rank allowing them into personal protection details. Not to mention many police departments are already overwhelmed with responsibilities, have massive cultural problems on their own, or actually are underfunded - while ridiculous budgets like NYPD are so widely known they're almost a meme, many smaller PDs (and, associated, fire departments and EMTs) seriously struggle with funding to keep the lights on. Adding the workload required to provide somewhat decent amount of protection for exposed persons would completely bust a lot of them.
> There are very few people who should qualify for that.
IMO, the list is orders of magnitude longer - Members of Congress, members of the government, their publicly known top staff, leaders and deputy leaders of government agencies, on state level at least the governors and their cabinet, and the heads of major parties as well. That's for the US a couple thousand people, protection details shouldn't be that expensive given how large the US federal budget already is. Recent events, not just the events surrounding Jan 6th, but also all the other threats that have happened over the last years (and yes, I include the shooting of Republican Steve Scalise here), warrant it IMO to make sure at least the representatives and the most important people in government get the very best protection there is, independent of the country.
The handful of congresspeople in leadership get special protection from capital police. Most elected congress people only get special protection if there is a specific concern.
The perennial mistake is believing that if any of these guys get capped, it's some irreparable loss to society. It's not.
Let them play the odds of life like the rest of us do. A society that depends on strongmen isn't a free society.
Like, yes, I would not mourn a lot of people who end up having protective details. But I absolutely don't want to live in a world where all it takes to change a policy is one particularly motivated sociopath. Keep in mind that John Hinckley Jr's assassination attempt on Reagan wasn't out of disagreement with Reagan's policies, it was to impress Jodi Foster. A nobody's obsession with an actress is really, REALLY not the thing we should allow to materially affect our civilization.
I think there's a good argument to be made that the WWII-era Japanese government became the one capable of its atrocities in China specifically because assassination was so frequently employed to check to its power.
Musk or Bezos could request a place deny entry to other customers while they shop or eat. Secret Service can demand. It’s a whole different beast altogether.
1- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/us-pays-2m-a-month-to-...
Kind of like how 9/11 wasn't about killing some office workers
That is the issue, the foundational principle of the United States was that we were a federalist system with a weak and narrowly defined federal government. The office of Presidency should be inconsequential to the Everyday citizen of either the US or the world.
The fact that we continually shift more power from Local / State government, then from Congress to the Executive is the exact reason the president is a "Symbol of Power"
>Kind of like how 9/11 wasn't about killing some office workers
Again the theory of Distribution apply here to building as well. World Trade Center was attacked because NYC is seen as the Central Place for world finance.
NYC has become too powerful and that power should be distributed.
This is all rank and dubious speculation wrt your general rule about POTUS needing a dedicated security team.
Hell, Duane Johnson needs a dedicated security team.
If you are positing a federal government so weak that POTUS is not widely known within the U.S. population, you're political views are more radical than you're letting on.
The US Navy is the only constitutional branch of the DoD. How is that for being radical.
> Arising from or going to a root or source; basic.
>Departing markedly from the usual or customary; extreme or drastic.
> Relating to or advocating fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions.
> designed to remove the root of a disease or all diseased and potentially diseased tissue
> of or relating to the origin
> favoring extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions
> Favoring fundamental change, or change at the root cause of a matter.
It seems today however we have allowed the federal government to simply ignore it because it is "too hard" to pass an amendment. Sorry if it important enough to expand the power of the federal government is should be important enough to put in the work to amend the constitution, and if you can not pass it then clearly the nation agree's it is not in scope of the federal government.
And by "nation" I do not mean a "democratic vote where by 51% of the population tells the 49% what do to" which seems to be common in the "Protect our democracy" crowd.
What you're not seeing with your point is that the federal government actually hasn't really expanded their power, it's just that more and more things have been "capitalism-ified" to where doing business purely within one state is uneconomical. More and more of society has transition to conducting business over state and national lines, and thus the federal government is governing more of the everyday person's life than they were 100 years ago.
The same Interstate Commerce Clause that in Wickard v. Filburn the federal judiciary interpreted as giving the federal legislature the authority to regulate intrastate non-commerce; and in turn relied upon in Gonzales v. Raich that the federal government has the authority to regulate the growing and use of cannabis for medical purposes by one man acting within one state and according to that state's laws for his own person.
> More and more of society has transition to conducting business over state and national lines
This is true, but the above examples show that the federal government is intruding in people's personal actions with no commercial purpose that stays confined to one state, on the basis that those actions might exert a force, however minute, on interstate commerce. The federal government may as well say that they can regulate everyone since people breathe air which crosses state lines and therefore is under federal jurisdiction.
You have to be kidding me. I did not think anyone would honestly make that case. Many argue about how the federal government needed to expand their power but I have never seen anyone claim they have not expanded their power at all
That is new one for me, and not supported at all by the historical record, which for example was clear there needed to be a amendment passed to ban alcohol but then magically due to some very bad court rulings (like wickard) they could ban whole classes of drugs without a constitutional amendment
History is VERY, VERY clear that FDR massively expanded the size, and scope of government and held the supreme court hostage forcing them rule his way after striking down many of his laws originally as unconstitutional
No one that has studied American History can say with the strait face the Federal Government has not expanded its powers
This is the nation that hosts the davos summit, is the hub of FIFA and red cross, plus several other high profile multinationals, NGOs, and wotld bodies, and is also the only core european country not parricipating in thr EU zone agreement.
Surely if you know the PM of Spain, Norway or Poland you ought to know switzerland right?
The would be assassins are as backwards about the symbols as the sycophants. They don’t see symbols as a byproduct, a shelved trophy of societal achievement, rather than its cause. It is understandable that a religious person would invert cause and effect, as if the shine of wet streets made rain. It is a bad thing for the US to become a cargo cult of itself.
The formerly-enslaved workers in the American South would like a word about Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865 and his replacement as president by the (Union-loyal) southerner and states-rights advocate Andrew Johnson, who had very different ideas about Reconstruction and the rights of Blacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson#Reconstruction
EDIT: Recall as well the 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by a Serbian nationalist: That one murder started the dominos falling for a 30-year, continent-wide war (with a 20-year intermission) in which tens of millions of soldiers and civilians died — with millions of those being systematically murdered. Moreover, that new Thirty Years War (Churchill's term) destroyed the fairly-prosperous international commercial system of the early 1900s; devastated most of Europe's physical- and economic infrastructure; and catapulted Russia and the U.S. to the status of global hegemons.
So yeah: Assassinations can indeed be quite a bit more than just personal tragedies ....
Federalism. The Federal Government does far too much and most of its function should be left to State and Local governments.
>>and nuclear weapon problem?
MAD is a terrible strategy, and I dont think our Nuclear weapons serve the function many believe they do.
Because the smaller government is (federal>state>local) the resources needed to hollow it out and made into puppet also drop.
At a national level I am 1 of 331,900,000.
At a state level I am 1 of 7,739,000.
At a county level I am one of 2,252,000.
At a city level I am one of 733,919.
At a neighborhood level I am one of 82,123.
I have four orders of magnitude more influence over my city council rep than I do over my president.
If only things actually worked that way. The vast majority of voters don't exercise that power. Moreover, state and local governments are more vulnerable to capture by rent-seekers and other special-interest groups bent on shaping public policy to suit their desires.
1. It'd be great to use the Australian system of compulsory voting (and it's kind of a community event, from what I've read). But that's not likely to happen in the U.S., because certain segments of the political spectrum don't want "the wrong sort of people" to vote, and so when they gain power they make it as difficult to vote as they can get away with.
2. "Education and empowerment" has worked so well in other areas of life — among other successes, absolutely no one smokes tobacco anymore; everyone drives carefully and soberly while obeying all posted speed limits; everyone eats healthy foods in moderation to maintain an appropriate weight; etc. (Not.)
And that's why in the tech world, for example, everyone takes the time to properly document their code, thoroughly test every release, refactor when appropriate, and clear away technical debt. (Again, not.)
And in medicine, doctors never misdiagnose illnesses or forget important steps in treatment because they always use authoritative best-practices checklists, which the medical establishment works hard to keep up to date and quickly disseminate to practitioners. (Yep, not.)
Apropos of that last example: Remember the crash of the FAA's Notice to Air Missions [NOTAM] system last week? That's a federal system; 50 state systems would be unworkable.
While we're on the subject of NOTAMs, here's a thought experiment: Imagine that the NOTAM system were somehow to be privatized — investor pressure for growth to boost the stock price would eventually and inevitably lead to dangerous corner-cutting and underinvestment.
3. Bottom line: Every human being is a mixed bag: We're created co-creators helping to build a universe, but we can also be short-sighted and narrowly focused on what we want without regard to how it might hurt others. All this can lead to stupid decisions — or malign ones — which we're great at rationalizing. So: Our political structures and laws need to deal with humans as we are, not as we wish we were.
Does that stop corruption in your city? (hint: The answer is 'No")
Or even abuses? (hint: The answer is "No")
In its final days, even slavery was a "more local" policy.
People should get their mindsets right on democratic vigilance. The problem is not ceding decision making to the federal government. The problem is ceding decision making to any government. That's why we need to not only be able to remove people from power, but actually do so from time to time. So that every one from the local sheriff and judge, all the way up to the president and chief justice never get too comfy.
And yet you need the federal government to defend your right to select which state to live in if you decide that you want to move https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saenz_v._Roe
Believe it or not, the current situation yields tons of power to your state, just not powers that involve anything outside of the state (wars, interstate commerce, etc)
What is a better strategy?
>> and I dont think our Nuclear weapons serve the function many believe they do.
What function do you believe many believe they serve, and what function do you believe they actually serve?
inb4 "they don't work anymore", Russia has a mature nuclear industry and huge stockpiles of nuclear material. They're more than capable of making nuclear bombs which work.
I could foresee a wide range of of responses to Russia using a nuke in Ukraine. I highly doubt the US would respond by dropping a nuke on Russia. That just wouldn't accomplish anything useful.
MAD.
And what is it that presently restrains NATO? MAD.
And you’re probably right—it wouldn’t achieve anything useful.
What I’d expect is the first gulf war all over again. Some good 2 months of non-stop relentless air campaign with surgical strikes, and boots on the ground for the final phase. And a dismembered, completely dysfuncional Russia wrapped into endless internal conflicts between the constituent republics at the end.
Except that state and local governments are more vulnerable to capture by rent-seekers and other special-interest groups bent on shaping public policy to suit their desires.
This idea that Federal Government is opposition to rent seeking is laughably absurd given the context of the last 50+ years where ever single omnibus spending bill that is passed is littered with pork to rent seekers.
As Joe Biden says.... Come On Man....
1. A Single vote in a smaller political division carries more weight than being diluted in a large nation like the US at the national level.
2. If the local rent seeking becomes too harmful it is far less costly to relocate to a new City, County, or State than it is to immigrate to a new nation
3. It is infinitely more costly for a large corporation to rent seek thousands of cities / counts, and/or 50 US States, than it is for them to rent seek 1 federal government.
I could add probably 5 more things. IMO Federalism is a more desirable system of governance, and provides ways to limit the damage the inevitable corruption can cause.
A mouse falling the same proportional height will survive without a scratch.
Systems behave differently depending on the scale. Small is beautiful, and its a good heuristic that the smaller the scale the more tolerance to variance that system has.
A few local govts that have been captured (SF? NYC?) will not collapse the US.. But if the FBI, the executive, legislative get captured...
Terrible, but it has worked so far.
What do you propose as an alternative? Mutual disarmament?
Once you have nuclear weapons, there’s no reason whatsoever to EVER give them up.
It seems like the threat of a decapitation strike against the US has been mitigated.
Some random whacko thinking you’re in a love affair with their crush (cough like Jodie Foster/Reagan) is enough to catch a bullet. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hinckley_Jr.]
Whack jobs are a real problem.
The presidential line of succession exists for a reason. It's the office of the president that has the power to authorize a nuclear strike, not the person.
... 00000001?
https://www.aviationbusinessme.com/airports/airport-business...
Goes shopping in foreign supermarkets
https://greekreporter.com/2022/08/13/boris-johnson-spotted-s...
(The actual orders are of course secret and sealed until that time comes, and could be AU/NZ/CA depending on the persuasion of that particular prime minister. However the US is the most logical choice as the other countries have no nukes themselves and would likely be looking to the US for guidance anyway.)
Assuming that the power needs to exist, this implies that we would need more people, which in turn makes the government larger.
Also, maybe the US President and other super high level individuals are too powerful. But then if we make them much less powerful, who keeps other bad actors like Russia and China from stomping on whoever they want - ask the Ukrainians or the Uyghurs.
Yet, despite the fact that one of the foundational principles of good governance is to avoid excessive concentrations of power, that does NOT mean that there can be no concentrations of power.
The sad fact is that, whether it is the neighborhood bully or the authoritarian state next door, anyone who wants to live a self-determined life, with a self-determining government, must be better armed, better prepared, and better allied than the abusers and autocrats, or they will be taken over in short order. This includes being able to make decisions quickly. This requires a concentration of power in something like an executive branch.
Similarly, regulating society requires making of laws, and again, by the time a society gets to tens or hundreds of millions of people, this will literally take forever without some kind of representative government; heck, just look at how long it takes to get a couple hundred congress or parliament members to get a basic majority something passed...
So, sure, when you have a tribe of several dozen or maybe the 150 of Dunbar's number [0], the leaders can be near-anonymous or completely unremarkable. Maybe even up to the size of a small town.
But once the size of organization, financing, and weilding of power just required to get anything done to maintain the society gets large, so must the concentrations of power.
The trick is not to pathologically avoid concentrations, it is to balance them.
This is the difference between a democracy and an autocracy. In a democracy, all of the institutions, the govt executive, legislative, judiciary, as well as the press, academy, industry, etc. are all independent, having their own will, centers of power, etc. In an autocracy, all of these govt and societal/economic institutions are bent to do the will of the executive. The trick is keeping those healthy, independent, and balanced.
So like Shinzo Abe?
Edit: I picked Shinzo Abe because it was a recent example I felt people would be familiar with, but honestly it seems like any notoriety at all is dangerous. Someone assassinated MLK Jr's mother[1] while she played a church organ. Relying on the general reasonableness of other people doesn't seem to scale at all.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/22/obituaries/m-w-chenault-4...
This would of course be far worse in a country that’s very familiar with violent crime and where everyone and their dog has at least 1.2 firearms, like the United States.
I lived in the DC area on and after 9/11. There was a huge increase of governmnent officials having drivers and flying private jet "for security reasons"
It's just a numbers game. Some very small fraction of people are mentally broken and may develop a psychotic fixation on a particular person. The more publicly known you are, the greater the chances that a crazy person will pick you.
You and I don't need security people because only a few hundred other humans know we exist. The odds of one of them being a murderous psychopath are vanishingly small. Millions of people knew who John Lennon, Ronald Reagan, and Rebecca Schaeffer were, so they rolled the dice enough and lost.
The Secret Service are police (that is, they're a law enforcement agency).
it is critical that we recognize a few truths before we declare something "underfunded"
1. No amount of funding will ever "be enough". Government programs and depts expand to meet their budget + 25-50%... so they are always underfunded, you can increase a budget by 2x, 3x, 5x, and the very next year they will be claiming "we do not have enough money"
2. Where is the money going.... Often in government budgets essentials (like fleet repair) are cut in favor of non-essentials in order to make the budget issue into a "crisis". It is much easier to blackmail the public /congress/ who ever that is controlling the budget with "We have to use our personal cars" instead of "We had to give up our Cappuccino's" . Just because essential services are being cut does not mean nonessential services have. This is seen in local government often when they cut the big 4 (schools, fire, police, roads) first because it is easy to pass a tax increase for those 4 items than any other local service / program.
Well, the scope that the general public (or the impact of freshly passed laws) also continuously expands, and payment/contractor/vendor costs rise as well, which explains some of the demand for more funding.
A part of the blame also lies in parliament groups not doing effective auditing and oversight on government agencies, which can differentiate between legitimate growth (for reasons outlined above) and cancerous growth (as described by you).
The National Transportation Safety Board for example has a 2023 budget request of 129 million. They are simply for too tiny and useful for anyone to really mess with.
The National Weather Service might have 10x the budget still generally gets ignored by politicians as so many companies, people, and government agencies depend on what they provide.
https://www.kongsberg.com/kda/what-we-do/defence-and-securit...
This led the government to close Pennsylvania Avenue NW between 15th and 17th Streets. The reasoning was not apparent, for the pilot had certainly not taken off there--he flew from a field in Maryland.
A Cessna intentionally crashing into the White House is no threat? Especially if packed with explosives?
I think it's safe to assume that the bunkers under the White House are sufficient protection against as much explosives as a Cessna could possibly carry. The plane itself will do almost no damage, it's a flimsy thing built light out of aluminum and it's not even fast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Tampa_Cessna_172_crash#/m...
I don't think we have evidence of this. The simple truth is the U.S. government doesn't fortify against domestic enemies in a systematic way.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a30027303/...
Also the way they were caught with their pants down on 9/11 kind of suggests that there was no actual military level ordinance readily available around DC at the time. Maybe there is now, but I heard at the time they scrambled some fighter jets with no weapons because there wasn't time to get the weapons out of wherever they were stored and load them up.
I think the rule of thumb is 5' at most scrambling time if plane is on alert-- fueled, armed, and pilot ready.
"Seat belts fastened, I rolled forward made a right turn and taxied to runway 18..."
18 at the time it was written/recounted, and 19 now most likely due to pole drift.
One thing I am having trouble with is picturing where they would have been crossing the river at 1500 feet. The Potomac is basically at the end of the runway he took off from.
On the other hand for the rest of the process small planes aren't that rare in National and there's even a rather scenic approach pattern that actually follows the Potomac into runway 19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zco3XlYt6Ko
Agreed that the pilot definitely made a huge, and not really reasonable mistake. Even though it was pre-9/11, I'd expect a pilot who was going to fly in/around DC to know there's going to be restricted airspace and to take the time to understand it.
(if link doesn't work, go to the Wikipedia article for Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and look at the bullets under "Expansion and restrictions")
Runways and named by taking the degrees from magnetic north and dropping the last digit. Parallel runways will be designated (for example) 31L(eft) 31C(enter) 31R(right).
You'd need to rotate the runway to rename it.
This story is from the early 80s. The magnetic north pole moves around 40 miles per year. What was once runway 18 at DCA over 40 years ago is now 19.
Currently, operations to and from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, DCA, are "limited to DCA Approved Carriers."[1] There's a huge restricted area covering the whole Washington area and special ID and approval procedures. Any aircraft out of place gets an F-16 and a Coast Guard helicopter escort. (Used to be two F-16s, but the Coast Guard is more used to dealing with the lost and clueless.) This has happened hundreds of times, and now the FAA makes anyone who wants to fly anywhere near Washington take a course on how to do it.
[1] https://www.faasafety.gov/files/gslac/courses/content/405/13...
> Seat belts fastened, I rolled forward made a right turn and taxied to runway 18 and took my place behind a 727, a large commercial airliner. When I looked back I saw another 727 roll onto the taxiway behind me and then as I slowly rolled forward there was another one behind that one. I was about twelth for departure. The radio traffic was constant. Like Jeopardy contestents the one that was quickest on the button got heard and those guys in the big planes were really fast.
Also, I'm looking at all the runways at this airport. They all have one obvious direction which way you should be following the river. Just from the angle your flightpath would be crossing the river.
Once you’re across the river, turning left is way worse (takes you directly over the federal complex), so ATC told them to turn right to exit the restricted airspace. That would take them around over SE DC.
Taking of north-east (runway 4) would give you the option of taking the Potomac (left) or Anacostia (right).
I've never seen runway 4 used. It's usually a north flow using 1.
Weird; I don't have that connotation of "follow" at all.
Anyone in possession of either a geographic sense of the area (or a VFR sectional) who has departed due south from National and is told to "maintain runway heading and follow the river" would not be confused.
I have no experience with flying, but I assumed it would be a heading / cardinal direction and not "turn right at [landmark]"
Washington National has no 18, but only a 19, and I guess everyone takes off southwards as directly north is the White House? Also the river is like parallel to the runway and then the natural extension of it, so "follow the river" there is super clear, no turn needed?
I must be looking at the wrong airport?
Famously, see:
Conversely, planes landing southbound follow the river and so are banking to the right until a few seconds before touching down.
If you’re flying near DC, or anywhere really, you should at least have a broad understanding of where you cannot fly. That is your responsibility; nobody in your ear will say “remember, don’t go to the restricted airspace.”
The pilot never claims to be the victim here, either. They screwed up and learned their lesson.
Depending on how long ago this happened that could be the same runway. There was an article that made the front page here in the last month or so about how the movement of the magnetic poles requires runway names to be adjusted periodically. This isn't that same article, I didn't feel like digging through my history, but it explains the same topic.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/airport-runway-names-shift-ma...
Agreed on the rest though, I just can't figure out a path that makes this story make sense.
Actual question still sticks: Takeoff on 18 southwards basically makes you follow the river immediately. Where did this guy encounter his left/right decision, to get back towards white house? he must have made almost a uturn then?
And even assuming the article is a bit inaccurate and he took of northwards (thanks for pointing out the patterns pilots have to fly if doing that @ others): I still cannot imagine how that plane flew and where it matches the description of: "When I reached 1500 feet I looked down. I was crossing the river. It went right and left."
???
Many of the takeoff and landing patterns do follow the river: https://skyvector.com/airport/DCA/Ronald-Reagan-Washington-N...
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ronald+Reagan+Washington+N...
Left is upstream and away from DC. Right is towards restricted airspace.
Other landmarks popular with controllers include the freeway, the big Marriot, the Amazon warehouse, etc. It's sort of surprisingly informal when controllers are dealing with local light aircraft pilots. But that's mostly how those pilots are navigating anyway, "follow the freeway until the bridge."
There probably is a certain risk of misunderstanding here, but then pilots are expected to be reasonably familiar with the local area and its procedures, and to ask for vectors when unsure. These days DC is one of those places that it's strongly recommended (required by FARs now, I think?) to take a familiarization course because the airspace issues there are so sensitive. Plus they have the laser gun to minimize the need to send fighters.
It's different when flying IFR, but pilotage is an important part of VFR navigation.
It's also worth noting there's an IFR visual approach plate for DCA that basically says the same thing - "follow the river":
RIVER VISUAL RWY 19 - https://www.fly.faa.gov/Information/east/zdc/dca/atcCharts/D...
Keep in mind too that just telling someone to fly a certain direction is insufficient - the controller is trying to maintain separation among aircraft, so they need you to follow a particular path through a volume.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
https://www.aopa.org/advocacy/advocacy-briefs/air-traffic-se...
Losing ones wings would be having the pin (figuratively) removed and losing permission to fly.
I can’t imagine the noise in a big comercial airport.
I am sure there’s many good reasons for that system, figured out by people smarter than me with much more experience.
To me the whole thing felt too … manual. Imagine a bunch of train operators trying to avoid head-on collisions by all of them talking with a single control guy on a shared channel. But the trains move in 3D, one order of magnitude faster, and if they run out of fuel, they explode.
I'll let a professional pilot try and add more detail here as to how it lessens the workload on the radio.
You can listen to what is actually going on at your favourite airport on www.liveatc.net.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Dependent_Surveillan... (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sy...
And once you’ve listened to enough ATC radio, there are patterns and cues. If ATC wants to talk to somebody, they call them by flight number, etc.
But, yeah, listening to a busy airport is confusing for anybody who isn’t an experienced pilot.
This flight is a whole series of extraordinary coincidences, but the fact that such a ridiculous event essentially cleared the way for Gorbachev to reform the entire Soviet military is astonishing. History is full of strange things.
The FAA caller was absolutely trying to convey that he was completely out of his depth, though. As is appropriate.
Not uncommon at other airports where POTUS is a regular, airports with other VIPs (NYC area), major sporting events (no fly around the Super Bowl stadium). DCA has a permanent zone, the others are temporary and communicated via NOTAM.
My grandfather is an amazing man, storyteller, and my personal hero. He was an ad photographer in the mad men era. You can see some of his photographs here: https://condenaststore.com/collections/leonard+nones
And apparently one of those rare and vital skills is filling in the gaps when talking to air traffic controllers who are not competent to communicate life-or-death information.
(I know nothing of the vagaries of air control)
But aren't most of the comms really rote and mundane instructions that follow a standard pattern? We trust automated systems to land the plane, [1] why not to tell a plane to say, cross runway 22 and stop at threshold Z?
A human could still give that instruction, but with a button instead of their mouth parts flapping? Then the radio channel would be more open for higher urgency stuff.
It's also important to recognize that controllers are human and can only deal with one thing at once. The current system generally speaking gives one human control over one section of airspace.
In this specific case the pilot should have been aware of the restricted airspace and set a flight plan that took them away from it before turning to their destination. There is zero excuses for flying into restricted airspace as there are published maps. The zone around the WH and USC is a permanent zone, so even less of an excuse.
Put on your systems theory hat when thinking about alternatives.
FWIW, As was discussed in the post, ground/departure channels at a major airport were overwhelmingly busy for a private pilot untrained in that environment. As an occasional private passenger, I'm accustomed to quite low radio traffic because of the routes and airports we use. I've heard radio so quiet that a Controller handed us off to... herself on a different frequency for a different airspace.
Set a calendar reminder for the afternoon of July 23, 2023 in UTC-5, and go listen to the audio channel for the north ATC sector for AirVenture arrivals at KOSH. You'll get what I mean.
Radio works pretty well and it's flexible. Imagine some asshole is flying a drone around on short final. It's easy enough to say "Hey heads up everyone, there's a DJI buzzing around at 200'", but with a more streamlined system there might not be an easy way to communicate that, and if you have the new system and radios then you still need to commmunicate everything on both while everyone adopts the new system.
This is basic preflight planning. The pilot didn't adequately prepare, given the complexity of the airspace they were flying in.
ATC isn't there to micromanage your flight. They don't need to tell you to avoid restricted airspace, it's implied.
Could he have guessed that the Anacostia would have been a better decision since the mall is just up the Potomac? Sure, maybe, but the real answer is be rude on the radio if you have to and get that clarification.
I'm not talking about wanting to go some other direction. I'm talking about the previous departure clearance he received. Those are the "A very busy air traffic controller spit out departure instructions." followed by the "hectic voice said “we have an amendment to your departure are you ready to copy”". Those are telling him which way to go. And they don't just rattle them off and good luck. They wait for the pilot to read them back, and they check that the pilot reads them back correctly.
I bet that he was not cleared for a visual departure out of DCA. So the departure he received must have had a list of nav points. Were they left or right? What restricted airspaces were there in the vicinity he should be aware of?
You know, it is telling that those details are left out. Probably if they were spelled out it would be clearer how big a mistake the pilot did. Very conveniently they are mentioned but not described.
Why not? DCA has a charted, named visual arrival. A visual departure via pilotage is no different, and is very common for VFR flights. (Yes, they would've been given a departure clearance with a route to follow, but "follow the river" is a valid VFR clearance.)
KDVA RIVER VISUAL RWY 19 - https://www.fly.faa.gov/Information/east/zdc/dca/atcCharts/D...
> What restricted airspaces were there in the vicinity he should be aware of?
That's on the chart. ATC doesn't need to (and usually won't) tell you about those. It's expected the pilot has done adequate preflight planning to be aware of them.
Pilots are always responsible for flying their aircraft in a safe manner. At the same time, the whole system must allow for pilots to do this. It has been many years since aircraft incidents have been investigated in a monocausal manner; the whole system is examined each time.
ATC expects a high level of professionalism from pilots, especially at a major airport.
Like, right now it reads the ground shot him down into some missiles that are in the air
It's built into the procedures, expected, and is totally acceptable.
Source: FAA JO 7110.65, Chapter 3, Section 10 ("Arrival Procedures and Separation")
https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/atc_html...
If ground-to-air missiles are ready to protect the White House way back in the ‘70s or ‘80s, then why were none used to defend The Pentagon from the huge aircraft that crashed into it in 2001?
The White House is not the Pentagon.
Also, while there have been rumors for decades of White House SAMs for decades (usually MANPADS – but sometimes something more capable), they’ve never been officially acknowledged and, and AFAICT the only thing that has ever become non-speculative public knowledge was an Avenger system that was photographed on a rooftop across the street during an alert in 2019 (by which time it was also known that D.C. had a post- and motivated-by- 9/11 layered air defense system, including NASAMS batteries.
But when this occurred, “before cell phones were invented”, if it wasn’t an embellishment added to the story, it was probably just something that was said to drive in the point “don’t ever make that mistake again”.
From the information given, I think the FAA rep was a douche but the author clearly did not plan his route properly. Also, this line was very confusing "cell phones had not not yet been invented."
If that's the case I seriously doubt missiles were pointed at anyone. Clearly this is pre-2001, maybe even back to the 80s. While jets may have been scrambled, I am calling BS on that whole part of the conversation.
The timeline, security posture, and even the flight corridors don't add up. Something is fishy...
One last guess is that it might be already anti air missile system from a nearby airbase or so ( which I don't have idea about if this was even feasible)
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/12/us/report-cites-antiaircr...
If this pilot did anything like this today, he would be in for a lot more trouble than a tongue-lashing over the phone. I don't know what the range of prescribed sanctions for this sort of infraction were at the time, but I suspect the person handling the case was exercising some discretion in choosing to respond with nothing more than a verbal dope-slap.
I’ve listened to a few intercepts on the radio. They don’t shoot without a good bit of verification. Typically, the lost pilot gets a hint when they see the F-16 fly across their nose, or a USCG helicopter flies alongside, or ATC finally gets through to them.