DC Aviation Incident: Comic or Tragic

Filed in archive Aviation News on May 13, 2005

I should perhaps title this post "How two regular guys in a Cessna 150 set the Homeland Security department on its heels."



The fact that two unfortunate pilots flitting around in a Cessna 150 - I call them Laurel & Hardy - innocently bound for an air show in North Carolina could cause near national panic is almost comic...if it weren't so serious.

Just how could a private plane be allowed so close to the Capitol before it was intercepted? Sure, a Blackhawk helicopter and a couple of F-16s veered in its wayward path, but had the intent of these two hapless pilots been criminal, would that intervention have been successful in thwarting a threat? I honestly don't know. And it doesn't matter that a Cessna 150 fully loaded with explosives might, as has been suggested, not done much damage. Lives would have been lost...innocent lives.

Just how hapless were these guys? One report indictes that an FAA examiner "was at the airport in Pennsylvania where the plane took off" and that the "pilot needed help operating the fuel pump as he prepared for the flight," an indication that "the pilot hadn't been flying regularly." (By fuel pump, did he mean the fuel shut-off lever?)

You want to hear something even more frightening? This is not the first time since 9-11 that this has happened. According to the Washington Post, F-16 pilot Lt. Col. Tim Lehmann said that he'd "intercepted about a dozen aircraft that strayed into restricted airspace since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks." Not only that, these pilots didn't know, according to one Bush administration official, that "they came very close to ordering a shot against a general (aviation) aircraft."

Laurel & Hardy, you better be thanking God above that you are still breathing, let alone have been let off apparently scot-free.

I suggest that the damage has been done. The FAA bears some responsibility and I think its in their best interest to take action against these two individuals. But, the biggest black eye has to be on the face of the Department of Homeland Security.

If you want to read some thought-provoking commentary, read Joe Scott's blog A Body Politic. He raises some provocative questions. You may or may not agree with his premise, but it's worth the read.

Maybe I'm making mountains out of molehills here. Largely, the evacuation and intervention procedures went as planned. Ultimately, maybe this was a test of the system. If nothing else, certainly it is a lesson learned. The chief lesson for private pilots: Proper flight planning is an absolute necessity. There is no excuse for flying into restricted or prohibited areas.