White House & Capitol Evacuated

[goaliemn]

Now all the terrorists have to do is pre-position a few vans full of spear gun toting towel heads near the whitehouse, then have one of their buddys fly a plane into the no fly zone. Shazzam! Hoards of frantic people running out into street from the whitehouse...it would be like shooting fish out of a barrel.

I had never thought of that angle. A great dry run.. Plus all the tourists and such.. You don't have to kill important people. Killing lots of "innocent people" is just as effective.

 

[Mugs]

I have the misfortune of operating in and out of DCA and even after careful planning and serious consideration of the entire flight/area/situation, it still gives me a stomach ache every time I have to go there. I hate the place (that one's for you JC) I'd rather make fifty arrivals to LGA than one into DC. I really can't understand any pilot going into that airspace without being 100% on top of every aspect of his flight.


enigma

I don't find DCA anything to get a gut ache over. The USAir guys can practically fly in and out of that place blindfolded. Know what you are doing to the same degree you would at any special airport, and don't try the Frontier 1 White House Overfly Departure procedure. Besides, the River Visual really is kind of fun.

 

[TonyC]

I think it has escaped all but one poster that this STUDENT pilot was with another person, this means only two things, either he was flying ILLEGALLY by carrying another passenger or the fellow right seater was a CFI, go figure.

Not so fast, oh ye of hasty judgment.


Besides the two things you might conclude, there is at least one other. A private pilot is allowed to carry a passenger, even if the passenger happens to be a student pilot.




.

 

[FN FAL]

I had never thought of that angle. A great dry run.. Plus all the tourists and such.. You don't have to kill important people. Killing lots of "innocent people" is just as effective.

It's all about TERROR...killing people is OPTIONAL.

Seeing a bunch of people running amok by the Capitol terrorized me, I had the sound down on the tele when they broke in with the video footage. I expected to see Godzilla or something.

 

[Kingairrick]

That was an Iranian airliner and Iran is comprised of mostly Persians, not Arabic people, relatively.=QUOTE]

I never knew that Iran was populated mostly by cats. Can't we just spay them?

 

[enigma]

The point is, Enigma, just how many million vehicles capable of carrying a much larger waepon load than a Cessna are operated within 3 miles of the White House and Capitol every day? The weapons you described don't have to be dropped on the White House roof.

My gut feeling is that if Hillary was living there, rather than GW, the howls of derision would be much larger.

An airplane is able to deliver a weapon with much more accuracy than is a truck. Also, I'd imagine that the roads leading into Washington are populated with personel (police, etc) who are on the alert to suspicious vehicles. I'd guess that Ryder trucks get a pretty good once over if they are spotted on the streets whether they are spotted by common citizens or by LEO's, on the other hand no suspicious eyes are able to scope out an inbound aircraft.

I don't disagree that any weapon the Cessna could carry could also be carried by an auto, but we have many avenues available to stop an errant automobile, and very few with which to stop an errant airplane.

I still think that the AOPA, etc, will be hard pressed to keep this incident from causing lasting damage to the general avation community.

enigma

 

[FN FAL]

here is another related story; evidently these cops weren't chillin wit da homies...

Authorities Blow Up Small Refrigerator

Thursday May 12, 2005 5:46 AM

CHICAGO (AP) - Authorities blew up a suspicious package outside the downtown federal courthouse Wednesday that turned out to contain a small refrigerator. The 3-foot-high cardboard box was discovered by a granite bench outside the John C. Kluczynski federal building and near a U.S. post office, police Sgt. David Villalobos said.

Officers considered the package suspicious in part because it had no address on it.

Authorities temporarily blocked off streets leading to the federal building while a small charge was set off next to the box.

The incident happened several hours after the White House and the Capitol in Washington were evacuated when a small plane strayed into restricted airspace.

 

[azpilot]

F*cking Morons! This says a lot for the lack of quality flight training in this county. I.E. students are able to pass without having a clue on the rules of the sky or basic navigation skills. It would have been very easy to plan a VOR to VOR route to the west of the DC area to avoid the airspace. This would have lenghten the trip by about 40 miles. The both the DE who passed this moron and the CFI who trained him should be questioned.

 

[PeteCO]

An airplane is able to deliver a weapon with much more accuracy than is a truck. Also, I'd imagine that the roads leading into Washington are populated with personel (police, etc) who are on the alert to suspicious vehicles. I'd guess that Ryder trucks get a pretty good once over if they are spotted on the streets whether they are spotted by common citizens or by LEO's, on the other hand no suspicious eyes are able to scope out an inbound aircraft.

I don't disagree that any weapon the Cessna could carry could also be carried by an auto, but we have many avenues available to stop an errant automobile, and very few with which to stop an errant airplane.

I still think that the AOPA, etc, will be hard pressed to keep this incident from causing lasting damage to the general avation community.

enigma

I think you're stretching way too far in rationalizing your position.

"On the alert for suspicious vehicles"? "I'd guess that Ryder trucks get a pretty good once over if they are spotted on the streets whether they are spotted by common citizens or by LEO's, on the other hand no suspicious eyes are able to scope out an inbound aircraft"? It's not too hard to make a vehicle look "not suspicious". And, a truck doesn't have to say Ryder on the side, nor does it need to have a neon sign saying "terrorist" in order to be dangerous. A stolen van will do quite nicely. Trucks don't exactly stand out in a city, you know.

As far as avenues with which to stop an errant vehicle, the advantage of using a vehicle for an attack is that this doesn't even become a concern - a vehicle would never be recognized as "errant" in the first place.

The overreaction is ridiculous, period. ANY airliner that flies into the area is "less than 3 minutes away from the white house", because a friggin 150 is much, much slower. The press are proven idiots, and the ignorance of those in the goverment is astounding.

I still think the pilot should have been shot down, because I'd rather see him get smoked than my rights violated further in the latest "War on <enter name of evil thing here>".

 

[Resume Writer]

It's all about TERROR...killing people is OPTIONAL.

Seeing a bunch of people running amok by the Capitol terrorized me, I had the sound down on the tele when they broke in with the video footage. I expected to see Godzilla or something.

I was watching the Daily Show last night. Jon Stewart was asking a very poignant question. "Is there not a plan for where these people were to go?" Seeing those people run like crazy down the street was not a very good plan. Didn't they have plans for people back in the 50's or 60's for bomb shelters? Chaos in the streets could have caused even more problems of a secondary nature.