[HN Gopher] My grandfather was almost shot down at the White Hou...
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My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)
Author : plondon514
Score : 130 points
Date : 2023-01-17 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nones-leonard.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nones-leonard.medium.com)
| amelius wrote:
| Of course the White House didn't want the same embarrassment as
| the Kremlin felt when some guy landed a sports airplane on the
| Red Square.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust
| raldi wrote:
| What a story! I've submitted it as a post of its own.
| francisofascii wrote:
| After looking at the map I am a little confused on which river.
| Sounds like he took off in a NE direction and the ATC's command
| to "follow the river" meant follow the Anacostia river NE. Maybe
| the pilot was confused by the Washington Channel and started to
| follow that when he turned left?
| rtkwe wrote:
| They say they lined up on runway 18 which is now runway 19 so
| they were flying almost directly south. That doesn't really
| clear up how they had any ambiguity about what direction they
| should go to follow the river though because for a decent ways
| you're already following the river downstream.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Technology has made this problem better: most pilots these days
| are flying with a GPS enabled moving map. Little airplane icon,
| big scary boxes around restricted airspace. Yes all this stuff is
| optional and a good pilot will have other ways of knowing where
| they are. But in normal operation most pilots have something
| simple now. That wasn't the case years ago.
| DerekL wrote:
| Title has a typo. It should be "the White House".
| boringg wrote:
| I feel like there has to be a lot of stories similar to this
| where people got really close to getting shot down. Rare but not
| completely uncommon .. or is this truly a unique story?
| goodcanadian wrote:
| I really doubt that he was all that close to being shot down. I
| actually doubt fighters were scrambled or missiles armed. They
| might have been if he had entered restricted airspace, but from
| the story, it sure sounds like he did not. Even if he did enter
| restricted airspace, the threat would have been assessed,
| actions taken, and so on. Perhaps, he might have even gotten a
| fighter escort out of restricted airspace. Shooting down a
| plane over a populated area is going to be an absolute last
| resort.
| blamazon wrote:
| The following sounds so stressful, especially considering the 727
| was a trijet with a center engine! [1] That must have been a
| crazy vantage point in that time period.
|
| > 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.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_727
| knodi123 wrote:
| > "Airline pilots are the best at what they do and have spent
| years honing their craft."
|
| 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.
| krisoft wrote:
| No the rare and vital skill is to get a map and look at it and
| figure out which way you are going to go. How come this person
| didn't know if they have to turn left or right? How come they
| didn't know from the top of their head the airspace structure
| around them (including restricted airspaces, especially). This
| is 101 level stuff.
| GTP wrote:
| But at the same time, ATC told him to follow the river, while
| in its trajectory he was crossing it. Did he do a wrong
| maneuver that made him go in the wrong direction form the
| start? Or was ATC that didn't give the information correctly?
| tjohns wrote:
| The river visual is a published approach for DCA. P-56 (the
| restricted airspace the pilot almost penetrated) is VERY
| well known and would top of mind for anyone flying in that
| airspace - not to mention highlighted on paper charts,
| EFBs, and panel-mount GPSes.
|
| 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.
| BWStearns wrote:
| If ATC tells you to do something you have to do that (with
| rare exceptions). Doesn't matter if you want to go some other
| direction. So even if he wanted to go up the Anacostia, if
| ATC said go up the Potomac then you go up the Potomac so it
| doesn't have to do with not knowing where you're going, it's
| the ambiguity of the instruction.
|
| 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.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Doesn't matter if you want to go some other direction.
|
| 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.
| tjohns wrote:
| > I bet that he was not cleared for a visual departure
| out of DCA.
|
| 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/Inform
| ation/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.
| BWStearns wrote:
| You have to do a readback but unless you're familiar with
| DC geography you might not think to ask which river to
| follow. You could give the readback correctly and then
| realize you have follow up questions that can't be
| addressed conclusively by looking at a map. Correct move
| by that point was ask for clarification even if it made
| you sound dumb on the radio.
| csours wrote:
| I wonder if Air Traffic Controller is a misnomer of the same
| type as "Autopilot". It's a true enough description, but it
| gives the wrong impression to inexperienced persons.
|
| 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.
| blamazon wrote:
| Why are we still doing air control with competitive real time
| voice radio anyway? Can we not engineer in some queued delay of
| planning?
|
| (I know nothing of the vagaries of air control)
| leeter wrote:
| Primary ATC is still done that way but at least for the big
| jets there are other ways they send digital comms to ATC[1].
| The main reason is because radios fail and more complex
| radios fail more easily. A standard Jetliner carries three
| radios, any of which the pilots can use to contact ATC. The
| bands are internationally standardized. So it's not just a
| case of the FAA mandating a change. It would have to be the
| entire world. So even if the FAA did require digital radios
| it wouldn't actually change much because both ground and
| plane would still have to transmit analog backup anyway. That
| creates more chatter etc.
|
| 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.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS
| blamazon wrote:
| Interesting, that explanation does make sense. It's
| interesting to think about how the limits of human
| synchronous focus are involved. That must be such a
| stressful job! TIL about ACARS.
| kube-system wrote:
| People may chime in at any time and the relative priority,
| timing, volume, etc of calls is unknown in advance. Basically
| it's CSMA, implemented via human brain. If it's good enough
| for Ethernet, it's good enough for ATC.
| [deleted]
| dogleash wrote:
| Resilience.
|
| 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.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| my startup is providing air traffic control solutions using
| an AI trained bot to talk to the pilots when a life and death
| situation arises!
| blamazon wrote:
| I feel it somewhat obvious that humans talking to humans is
| a good thing for life and death split second stuff, same
| page there.
|
| 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.
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/LyVuGQUl2bA
| NordSteve wrote:
| Same reason there's party chat in your FPS game - puts a
| sense to use for a real time information channel. Most of the
| time voice ATC comms are boring, but when they are not
| they're super useful.
|
| 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.
| BWStearns wrote:
| Airplanes live for decades (probably a fair amount are going
| to pass the 100 year mark) and so backwards compatibility is
| a huge issue for adding any tech into the system.
|
| 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.
| Animats wrote:
| Another clueless VFR pilot in Washington DC restricted airspace.
| This reads like pre 9/11 procedures. Hearing from Oklahoma City
| FAA 3 weeks later has to be pre-9/11.
|
| 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...
| joshdick wrote:
| And that's why we now require any pilot flying VFR within 60nm of
| DC to get special training:
|
| https://www.aopa.org/advocacy/advocacy-briefs/air-traffic-se...
| m2fkxy wrote:
| and that's why you have a chart of every place you fly to, from,
| or through, sitting on your knee or not very far from it.
| mannykannot wrote:
| In addition to everything else, this pilot may have put himself
| at considerable risk of running into wake turbulence by following
| behind a 727. Waiting 3 minutes or more for the vortices to
| dissipate would not have gone down well in this situation.
| tjohns wrote:
| The 3 minute delay for wake turbulence is required by ATC
| procedures (when applicable). It can only be waived by the
| pilot in specific situations, and _only_ by the pilots request.
|
| 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...
| jamesmoroni wrote:
| I had a similar experience in 2008. I was an Air Force helicopter
| pilot stationed at Andrews Air Force Base just outside DC. I got
| a last-minute assignment to show a new copilot some of our
| operating sites on the north side of DC. One of those sites was
| Camp David. I read through the NOTAMS but didn't notice that the
| large restricted area around Camp David was active that day
| because the president was there. So we totally busted through the
| outer restricted area and the Secret Service wanted my head. They
| launched a helicopter to chase me away, and they almost launched
| the F-16s at Andrews. I almost lost my wings. It was a bad day.
| pivo wrote:
| I've just finished reading, "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the
| Secret Service" by Carol Leonnig [0]. In that book the author
| describes an incident on September 12, 1994 [1] in which a pilot
| landed a small plane in front of the white house. Secret Service
| members she interviewed were dumfounded that they were asked
| there to run to the white house roof with rifles to protect the
| building, and that there were no such thing as anti-aircraft
| missiles available at the time. More recently, another person
| landed a small aircraft on the Whitehouse grounds [2] with
| (apparently) no missiles involved.
|
| 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...
| yencabulator wrote:
| 1994 was a long time ago. Here's a picture of one known setup
| for you:
|
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a30027303/...
| ok_dad wrote:
| The answer is that the people with their finger on the missile
| trigger knew the aircraft was no threat due to radar and visual
| interceptions and decided not to launch a dangerous missile
| into the middle of a huge city full of important officials
| since moving the President and other important officials to a
| basement would be sufficient to protect them from a Cessna.
| Instead, they waited for the plane to come down somewhere (on
| the lawn, it seems) and arrested the person inside.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > knew the aircraft was no threat
|
| A Cessna intentionally crashing into the White House is no
| threat? Especially if packed with explosives?
| ihattendorf wrote:
| Not if you have ample time to move everyone to safety
| before it arrives. Seems a good trade off to make if you
| aren't confident what the pilot's intentions are instead of
| just blowing them out of the sky.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| > _since moving the President and other important officials
| to a basement would be sufficient to protect them from a
| Cessna._
|
| 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...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _people with their finger on the missile trigger knew the
| aircraft was no threat due to radar and visual interceptions
| and decided not to launch a dangerous missile_
|
| 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.
| cafard wrote:
| "Landed" is not quite correct for 1994: the guy crashed it. (He
| had been smoking crack beforehand, as I recall.)
|
| 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.
| ufmace wrote:
| I have no idea how the Secret Service in particular is doing,
| but I would kind of expect that any actual anti-aircraft
| missiles would be owned and operated by some unit of the Army
| or National Guard or something. They own all of the actual
| missiles, and repair and maintenance people and gear, and
| probably training for how to operate it and how to try not to
| fuck up when you have 15 seconds to determine if an incoming
| aircraft is hostile and needs to have missiles fired at it.
|
| 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.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >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.
|
| 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_.
| vt85 wrote:
| [dead]
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| I like your take but politicians do have a target on their
| back that the average citizen doesn't.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| But not one so big that every one of them needs
| multimillion dollars worth of protecting. A handful
| absolutely do, the vast majority don't. They will be
| perfectly fine. They might catch an egg or cake, or in the
| rare instance a fist: they'll still be fine.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| As far as I am aware, the vast majority of politicians in
| the US do not receive Secret Service protection.
|
| "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.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Unfortunately, that is increasingly changing. The covid
| pandemic, for example, has led to a _massive_ increase in
| threats to everyone advocating for containment measures,
| and so do the advocates of other political issues
| impacted by conspiracy myth spreaders and /or the far-
| right (e.g. 5G rollouts, single-payer healthcare, gun
| control, immigration).
|
| 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...
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| That's a problem with a different solution, though.
|
| _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"
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Most politicians do not get secret service protection.
| Only those in the line of succesion, former presidents
| and family of the above.
|
| 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.
|
| https://www.secretservice.gov/about/faq/general
| rqtwteye wrote:
| "Maybe the answer is to cool it with the idea that government
| officials all need to have large personal protective
| details."
|
| 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"
| phpisthebest wrote:
| General rule for me is If any person has soooo much power we
| need a dedicated team of people to protect them continuously,
| that person has too much power and the solution is not ever-
| increasing amount of security, but ever decreasing amount of
| power to that individual
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Assassinating the president has little to do with denying
| him the power of the presidency, and more to do with what
| he is a symbol of.
|
| Kind of like how 9/11 wasn't about killing some office
| workers
| fijiaarone wrote:
| A lot of presidents have been assassinated in America.
| Not one assassination has affected the continuum of
| government or been more than a personal tragedy.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _Not one assassination has affected the continuum of
| government or been more than a personal tragedy._
|
| The formerly-enslaved workers in the American South would
| like a word about Lincoln's assassination and his
| replacement by the southern sympathizer Andrew Johnson,
| who had very different ideas about Reconstruction and the
| rights of freedmen.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Symbols can be powerful...
|
| 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.
| marnett wrote:
| I always thought the two WTC towers were more
| representative of global capitalism, not just good
| targets for attacking NYC.
| jancsika wrote:
| > 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"
|
| 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.
| prottog wrote:
| What part of GP's take on the American federalist system
| are you describing as radical? Seems to me that the truly
| radical thing is what the federal government has morphed
| into over the years, its founding constitutional document
| notwithstanding.
| adolph wrote:
| It's almost as if such an investment is a brittle
| monarchical single basket of collective eggs.
|
| 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.
| pixl97 wrote:
| So how do you plan to deal with the continuation of
| government and nuclear weapon problem?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Is there a continuation of government reason why every
| former president continues to have a full time secret
| service detail?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| They are bodyguards. Ex-presidents pissed off a lot of
| people, domestically and internationally, when in power.
| They are much more likely to be targeted for murder than
| the average citizen.
| lazide wrote:
| They're also just high profile.
|
| 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.
| AdamN wrote:
| That's the whole premise of Designated Survivor and
| Battlestar Galactica even. The US has 16 levels of
| succession at which point it peters out.
|
| It seems like the threat of a decapitation strike against
| the US has been mitigated.
| gus_massa wrote:
| For many years the secret code to launch nuclear missiles
| was for a long time 00000000
| https://sgs.princeton.edu/00000000 Now they claim they
| changed it, but be sure that if the president is dead the
| military have some workaround to launch the misiles.
| prottog wrote:
| > if the president is dead the military have some
| workaround to launch the misiles.
|
| 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.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>how do you plan to deal with the continuation of
| government
|
| 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.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _The Federal Government does far too much and most of
| its function should be left to State and Local
| governments._
|
| 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.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| What, besides MAD, has prevented Putin from using
| tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine?
|
| 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.
| beebmam wrote:
| If the federal government should be reduced in power,
| then why should state or local governments have any more
| power over individuals?
| mulmen wrote:
| Because I have more power as a voter and constituent to
| influence policies that affect me.
|
| 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.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _Because I have more power as a voter and constituent
| to influence policies that affect me._
|
| 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.
| sobkas wrote:
| > If the federal government should be reduced in power,
| then why should state or local governments have any more
| power over individuals?
|
| Because the smaller government is (federal>state>local)
| the resources needed to hollow it out and made into
| puppet also drop.
| [deleted]
| xamolxix wrote:
| >> MAD is a terrible strategy
|
| 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?
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I wonder how big Musk or Bezos's security teams are?
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| I'll bet it's large but nothing close to that of the
| President and other top government officials. For
| example, the U.S. government is currently paying $2
| million per month to protect former Secretary of State
| Mike Pompeo due to Iran threats[1]. That's the former,
| now think of what it'll cost to protect the current
| Secretary plus all the private travel costs on that giant
| Boeing 757.
|
| 1- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/us-pays-2m-a-
| month-to-...
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| It was revealed a few years ago Zuckerberg was paying
| about 20M per year on security. That's almost 2M per
| month...
| LarryMullins wrote:
| It seems likely he gets less bang for his buck. The
| Secret Service is a much larger organization so they can
| take advantage of economies of scale. On the other hand,
| government agencies can be very inefficient when
| permitted to be, so who really knows.
| safety1st wrote:
| Who cares?
|
| 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.
| petsfed wrote:
| I think there's merit to at least forestalling rule-by-
| assassination.
|
| 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.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Reagan had an elected vice president. Bush Sr. being in
| charge instead of Reagan is not what I would call a
| material effect on our civilization. These guys are all
| interchangeable, as evidenced by the fact that we change
| them on purpose at least every eight years.
| dctoedt wrote:
| Let's not forget 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) that killed millions of soldiers and
| civilians -- eventually including some _two-thirds_ of
| Europe 's Jews, as well as hundreds of thousands of Roma,
| Sinti, and other so-called "undesirables," murdered by
| the Nazis on an industrial scale. That war also destroyed
| a fairly-prosperous international commercial system;
| devastated most of the continent's physical and economic
| infrastructure; and catapulted Russia and the U.S. to the
| status of global hegemons.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Oh you're singing to the choir on that stuff. Don't get
| me started on who we can and can't feed into the
| woodchipper because I'm already rate-limited. I'm just
| always surprised when people limit their thinking (and
| I'm not saying the post that spawned my response was
| guilty of that, though it's possible) of the powerful in
| society to government officials.
| cowsup wrote:
| Nowhere near as large, or influential, as the Secret
| Service. If you've ever had to commute near airport, and
| the POTUS is flying in or out, you're essentially
| screwed, for potentially hours.
|
| 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.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > ... but ever decreasing amount of power to that
| individual
|
| Assuming that the power needs to exist, this implies that
| we would need more people, which in turn makes the
| government larger.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Bruce Schneier once said something that really stuck with me.
| He was talking about the culture of the DHS I believe and how
| their mission was "Never Again" in the wake of 9/11. But
| _never_ is basically an impossible standard to meet, and the
| result was that we get security theater instead. I would
| imagine you can also soak up a near infinite amount of money
| and effort trying to achieve never again. Zero Fail sounds
| like the same thing.
| mc32 wrote:
| 'Never' and 'Zero' programs are all aspirational. We want
| Zero pedestrian deaths, but we know it's not possible (even
| in back in the age of horses), but still something we
| should aim for within reason.
| mwint wrote:
| It's that "within reason" that people get hung up on.
| [deleted]
| chucksmash wrote:
| > 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?
|
| 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...
| nivenkos wrote:
| Or Olof Palme.
| seunosewa wrote:
| J F Kennedy
| mc32 wrote:
| On the other hand... Indira Gandhi.
| bakul wrote:
| She might have escaped her fate if she had replaced her
| Sikh bodyguards with non Sikhs after Operation Blue Star
| that removed a militant Sikh religious leader and his
| followers from the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Indeed, these very same people who demand a well-armed and
| trained _personal_ security detail are the very same people
| who enact laws to deprive the convenience store worker from
| having a firearm to defend themselves with while working in
| the middle of the night.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >> book makes it clear that the Secret Service is constantly
| underfunded
|
| 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.
| foota wrote:
| Looks like they get ~3 billion a year and employ 8000 people.
| Seems like chump change. They have responsibilities beyond
| just protecting the president.
| Retric wrote:
| The less politically interesting government agencies tend to
| work surprisingly well with minimal budget and no need for
| games.
|
| 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.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 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"
|
| 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).
| [deleted]
| colonwqbang wrote:
| Yes, it seems unlikely. How many civilians would be in danger
| by the debris raining down on central DC (or the white house
| itself, if he really was right over it). Not to mention the
| risk of a missile missing the target and instead exploding
| somewhere down on the street.
| euler_angles wrote:
| In the present time, there is an air defense network around
| Washington DC. It uses the NASAMs system. Anything that is
| determined to be a threat can be engaged with surface launched
| AIM-120C missiles.
|
| https://www.kongsberg.com/kda/what-we-do/defence-and-securit...
| neutered_knot wrote:
| A launcher is visible on Google Maps, and is still there. I
| drove by it today.
|
| https://goo.gl/maps/LByxzGzqQ28ETtJb9
| aimor wrote:
| That Pentagon shaped pool really caught my eye, then the
| long covered building, had to look it up. Now I know all
| about the David Taylor Model Basin and the Naval Surface
| Warfare Center's Explosive Test Pond.
|
| https://www.navalgazing.net/David-Taylor-Model-Basin
|
| https://www7430.nrlssc.navy.mil/bblp/mine/carderock01.htm
| squallgmn wrote:
| Washington National doesn't have any runways that run
| perpendicular to the Potomac, so if the pilot maintained runway
| heading on takeoff, he should have already been more or less
| aligned with the river going north or south. The story says he
| landed on a 6000 foot runway. There are three runways on the
| field: 1/19 is 7169 feet, 15/33 is 5204 feet, and 4/22 is 5000
| feet. It's possible the runways were configured differently back
| then, but it's most likely that runway 1/19 was in use because
| it's the only one over 6000 feet. That runway runs almost due
| North/South. If the tower operator instructed the pilot to follow
| the river after departure and intended the pilot to fly south,
| it's almost certain the pilot took off on runway 19 which is
| nearly parallel to the river and the pilot would be traveling
| south. If the pilot found themselves crossing the river, they
| were not on a runway heading and had already deviated. The pilot
| could have checked his compass or heading indicator, take into
| account the runway heading of 190 degrees, and that should have
| informed him to turn right to return to his original heading.
| Instead, the pilot turned left which put him in the opposite
| heading he was assigned.
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| He mentioned in the piece that he was on 18:
|
| "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.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That does match with the rest of the story. Left turn of of
| 18/19 to go up river would point him back towards the
| Whitehouse and Capitol. It does make their mistake a little
| more egregious though because if they're 'following the
| river' turning nearly 180 to do that and also not following
| the flow is much larger change than simply following your
| current heading and making the small turn to follow the river
| out to sea. That unexpected and uninstructed turn back
| towards the WH and Capitol certainly would have raised a lot
| of eyebrows.
|
| 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
| squallgmn wrote:
| During flight school, one of the first things we learn on a
| piston-single aircraft is to apply right rudder and
| maintain runway heading on takeoff. Small single-engine
| planes have a tendency to yaw left due to effects of
| torque, slipstream, and p-factor. I'm guessing the pilot
| drifted left on climbout due to lack of right rudder. He
| could have turned 90 degrees by the time he leveled out at
| 1500 feet and been over the river. Sometimes as pilots, the
| worst thing we can do is react. It's usually best to take a
| breath, think about your situation, cross-check, decide,
| and act intentionally. By rolling the dice, the pilot had a
| 50/50 chance of making the wrong decision. I don't like
| those odds.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Almost certainly he took off northbound, which puts you pretty
| quickly over DC if you do not turn your plane left to track
| with the bend in the river just north of the airport.
| thrwwy95fab9d1 wrote:
| I had the same skeptical reaction to this story. The runways
| may have changed numbers (I'm not sure how to confirm this),
| but if they were crossing the river taking off from what is now
| runway 19, they seriously deviated from their flight plan and
| deserved the call.
| warent wrote:
| This should probably say "ground-to-air" with dashes. Title was
| super confusing for me for a while.
|
| Like, right now it reads the ground shot him down into some
| missiles that are in the air
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| The FAA representatives terrible attitude aside, I sense there's
| something that is being left out. When the author states _" I
| filed a visual flight plan and we were on our way._" that would
| seem to indicate that he looked at a chart, saw the restricted
| airspace, and planned his takeoff and turn appropriately.
|
| 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...
| mannykannot wrote:
| > The FAA representatives terrible attitude aside...
|
| 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.
| elashri wrote:
| While this might be true, there were some reports (without
| government confirmation) that such missiles already deployed
| before 2001 [1]. The other thing is that it might be only a
| bluff the FAA officer add fot psychological purpose.
|
| 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...
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| The FAA rep is not just dissuading the pilot but any others who
| may hear about it. Also given the era it was much easier to get
| away with such bluffs as people couldn't jump onto the internet
| to look for corroborating evidence.
| treetoppin wrote:
| Interestingly, the US Coast Guards only "no fail" mission is
| providing rotary wing air intercept capability to the air defense
| network. In the National Capital Region they have helicopters
| that get scrambled as part of the air defense response to go
| intercept air targets that a slow and low. Basically anything
| that it would be hard for a fighter jet to pull up along side and
| match airspeed with. The Coast Guard helos don't have any air to
| air weapons capability, their main purpose is to prevent false
| positives. They can get real close and relay information to the
| air defense folks who have access to weapons systems, and also a
| helicopter suddenly appearing next to you with a signboard saying
| that you need to turn immediately is a pretty good indicator to a
| weekend warrior that they are not supposed to be flying there.
| [deleted]
| gus_massa wrote:
| The story was posted in 2018. Do you know when it happened? (Or
| at least an approximation.)
| cryptonector wrote:
| It says that cell phones had not been invented yet:
|
| > 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".
| plondon514 wrote:
| I believe he started flying in his late 30s/early 40s so it
| would be around the early 1970s.
|
| Edit: I just asked him (he's at the dentist) and he said around
| 1980, guess I was wrong about when he started flying!
| jaclaz wrote:
| I would say no earlier than October 1977:
|
| https://flightaware.com/resources/registration/N47943
| ryandrake wrote:
| Then definitely before the DC ADIZ. It's kind of tough to
| make this mistake anymore.
| cryptonector wrote:
| That registration and the reference to cell phones not
| being available at that time puts the timeline somewhere
| between 1977 and 1987 or maybe 1990.
| godshatter wrote:
| Shouldn't the dispatcher have given more precise directions than
| "follow the river"? If they had said "take a right and follow the
| river", this wouldn't have been a problem. I suppose they were
| used to professional pilots knowing what was meant, but they were
| already working to fit a small plane into a larger system
| presumably filled with mostly larger jets from commercial
| airlines that flew in and out of that airport regularly. Although
| I do agree that the pilot should have had no-fly zones at the top
| of their mind when flying in or around D.C.
| fh973 wrote:
| Actually no. The fact that to the left was a restricted
| airspace (that the pilot must be aware of) disambiguates the
| instructions already. Obviously the pilot did not do their
| flight preparation, was it includes being familiar with any
| airspace restrictions.
| krisoft wrote:
| Also. I'm looking at a chart of the DC airspace. P-56, the
| restricted airspace containing the White House, is not on any
| rivers. If you are following the river (left, right, doesn't
| matter) then you are not getting into P-56. If you are
| oscillating around the river then yeah, you are going to have
| a bad time.
|
| 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.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| If you take off northbound, you only have a few seconds to
| turn left with the river before you're over DC and into
| restricted airspace. If you take off and obliviously fly
| straight, it's too late. It's not a wide 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.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Taking off north-bound (runway 1) wouldn't give you the
| option of flying up the Anacostia (the right spur that
| bisects DC when looking at a standard map).
|
| 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.
| krisoft wrote:
| Yeah. No joke. it is even on the departure chart:
| "Departing Rwy 1 requires expeditious intercept of
| outbound course to ensure avoidance of P-56 boundary"
| rtkwe wrote:
| From the description they took off from 18 (now 19 due to
| pole drift) it sounds like they might have taken a left
| basically immediately off the runway which would put them
| pointed pretty directly at the restricted airspace around
| the Capital and White House. It is odd they'd be there
| though considering the story says the check for the river
| on reaching 1500 which even at best climb would be around
| two minutes after take off which should be well past the
| river.
| pja wrote:
| They probably assumed that a) the pilot knew about the
| exclusion zone (kind of a big deal!) and b) you follow a river
| downstream (usually) so their instruction seemed (to them)
| unambiguous.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> you follow a river downstream (usually)_
|
| Weird; I don't have that connotation of "follow" at all.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Taking off from runway 18 (now 19) you're pointed
| essentially down river already though. The Potomac is right
| there at the end of the runway. That's the most confusing
| part of the story to me is how he was ambiguously crossing
| the river after taking off basically straight downstream.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Yeah; this part makes no sense.
|
| 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.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It seems like the FAA guy had at least the core of the
| right idea that the author wasn't really prepared for
| flying out of such a busy airport and restricted area.
| Now afaik access is more restricted and flight plans from
| people who haven't taken a particular class on flying
| through Washington National will be denied, but you can
| still totally fly a small plane into and out of that
| airport if you really want to.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Honestly, I'm surprised by "follow the river" as a flight
| instruction. That sounds like the directions you'd get from
| someone that doesn't understand cardinal directions. "Turn
| right at the gas station, then turn left at the big oak tree"
| or something.
|
| I have no experience with flying, but I assumed it would be a
| heading / cardinal direction and not "turn right at [landmark]"
| treis wrote:
| It's fairly obvious when you look at the map:
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ronald+Reagan+Washington+N.
| ..
|
| Left is upstream and away from DC. Right is towards
| restricted airspace.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| This is a fairly common instruction from a controller in my
| experience, at least when dealing with small aircraft that
| they know are flying VFR. Traditional VFR navigation
| ("pilotage") is mostly based on finding landmarks anyway.
| Flying in another city with a runway pointed towards a river,
| "turn after the river," "report crossing the river" are
| common instructions.
|
| 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.
| tjohns wrote:
| Indeed. Popular landmarks used by ATC in the SF Bay Area
| include a sunken ship in the middle of the bay, a
| (particularly large) church, a community college, an AT&T
| telephone office, the KNBR antenna, and major freeways.
| Among others.
|
| 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/e
| ast/zdc/dca/atcCharts/D...
| throw827474737 wrote:
| Hmm, can someone just paint me that path into Google Maps?
|
| 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?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| When planes take off northbound from National, they
| immediately bank left (northwest) to remain over the river
| and avoid the exclusion zones in DC.
|
| Conversely, planes landing southbound follow the river and
| so are banking to the right until a few seconds before
| touching down.
| wolrah wrote:
| > Washington National has no 18, but only a 19
|
| 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.
| etothepii wrote:
| Indeed but CGPGrey explains it in excruciating detail on
| YouTube. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qD6bPNZRRbQ
| cowsup wrote:
| You're correct. I live near DC and travel there for
| photography (much like the novice pilot in the OP).
|
| 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.
| dwater wrote:
| I used to sit nearby on my lunch break, and on a clear day
| you could watch planes after takeoff clearly follow the
| course of the river N/NW until completely out of sight,
| which would probably have been close the DC/Maryland
| border. They would be going in and out every few minutes
| and they all took the exact same flight path.
| tylermw wrote:
| Many planes take off northwards, and immediately bank to
| follow the river.
|
| Famously, see:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Florida_Flight_90
| dbrueck wrote:
| It's actually fairly common (in my area, for example, it's
| common for the controller to tell you to follow the
| interstate for awhile, and it works especially well at
| night).
|
| 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.
| advisedwang wrote:
| "follow the river" is more than a single turn; the river
| winds so it's a sequence of turns. Because of this saying
| follow the river is much more concise than the specific
| turns.
|
| Many of the takeoff and landing patterns do follow the river:
| https://skyvector.com/airport/DCA/Ronald-Reagan-
| Washington-N...
| dncornholio wrote:
| I have a feeling the person who made the call was trying to
| intimidate him. I'm fairly sure no jet was being scrambled or
| anti-air was being aimed for a small plane that made a wrong
| turn..
| godshatter wrote:
| We don't know what might have been going on at the White House
| at that particular time though. Was the President having a
| press conference, for example?
| prewett wrote:
| I _hope_ they were scrambling jets, that 's their job. I'm sure
| they assumed it was some mistake, but if it isn't, by the time
| you know for sure it is too late. I'm sure "scrambled" meant
| "pilots sprinting for their planes" and beginning the process,
| not that they have pilots sitting in warmed up planes ready to
| take off for intercept the moment someone crosses the
| restricted airspace line.
|
| The FAA caller was absolutely trying to convey that he was
| completely out of his depth, though. As is appropriate.
| otikik wrote:
| One of the things that surprised me when I flew (as a passenger)
| a practice flight on a coworker's Cessna was the constant radio
| chat between ground and all the airplanes. There were like 4
| planes doing practice runs like us. It was constant chitchat.
|
| 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.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| There is a lot more going on than just the radio
| communications. There are standard published approaches and
| departures that will generally be flown (once cleared). Flight
| plans are filed and clearance given before take-off, so ATC
| knows where everyone is going. At a large controlled airport,
| ATC is in control, so less needs to be communicated by the
| pilots. There are not generally aircraft flying circuits which
| is what required so much coordination in your example. Most
| aircraft at large airports are required to have ADS-B(1) which
| is transmitting aircraft position, altitude, heading, speed,
| _et cetera_ to anyone who has a receiver, particularly ATC and
| other aircraft. If everything does go bad, large airliners have
| TCAS(2). There are also lots of different controllers and
| frequencies to handle different parts of the airspace:
| approach, departure, tower (take-off and landing). This is just
| what I can think of off the top of my head.
|
| 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...
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| This is partially mitigated by data systems for commercial
| airliners. They have an in cockpit system that give them
| takeoff clearance & other details from the relevant air traffic
| controllers. I think they still verbally acknowledge something
| on the radio, but it is a brief exchange.
|
| I'll let a professional pilot try and add more detail here as
| to how it lessens the workload on the radio.
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