White House & Capitol Evacuated

[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.

 

[MJG]

The thing that scares me out of all of this is the fact that apparently this CFI (if that's what he indeed was) was apparently aware of the ADIZ. He mentioned it to his father the night before the flight. So he was aware of it and still busted it. Inexcusable.....

The other thing that cracks me up is when the F-16s, F-15s (insert your favorite interceptor here) finally catch up with these idiots and they still don't get it. Like that idiot in Florida last year that thought the fighters were "putting on a show for him".

I guess the old addiage is right. You can teach someone to fly a plane but you can never teach them the common sense that's supposed to go along with it.

Already this morning the "experts" are on the networks calling for the ADIZ to be extended.

I see a ban on all GA near the capitol in the near future.

 

[Sniper Bob]

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.

A UPS delivery truck would work quite nicely. They're everywhere and blend right in.

I guess a FedEx truck might also work.

 

[goaliemn]

I drove semi-truck for awhile in 2002. I went through DC numerous times. Never got a second glance by anyone. I could haul roughly 45,000lbs. and I could get close enough to all the landmarks on the highway to see them quite clearly.

 

[FN FAL]

Those types of two seat aircraft are not "generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to a sporting purpose", and should be banned as "assault aircraft".

The military uses a lot of two seat aircraft for ground attack missions and there is nothing in the constitution that guarantees the right to keep and bear airplanes. Besides, I don't need a Cessna 152 Assault Plane to hunt ducks, I rest my case.

......

 

[funky]

People have just gone WAY overboard with this cr@p.

Well, that's what you get when you have a country led by FEAR. Welcome to the NEW U.S.A.

 

[FN FAL]

A UPS delivery truck would work quite nicely. They're everywhere and blend right in.

ahhhhhh...the power of brown.

 

[Mr. Cole]

Great, and I'm moving to DC within the next few weeks. I guess I'll have to file IFR every flight, or wait and fly on the weekends I make it back to NJ.


Dave

 

[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>".

Ok friend, who's really rationalizing. The small aircraft advocates who "know" that a small aircraft couldn't be dangerous, or me, a person who is giving some sort of explanation as to why the authorities get so worked up about an errant small plane.


While some of you are busy burying your heads in the sand as you declare the lack of threat that small aircraft pose, the movers and shakers are moving closer and closer to completely legislating us out of the sky. Instead of telling them they are wrong, maybe we should try and understand what scares them. Like it or not, they have the power to completely shut us down, and just telling them that a C150 isn't a threat won't stop them.

I'm ready to support a total ban on non-commercial aviation anywhere withing a hundred miles of DC. I'd rather not, but if this kind of airspace violation continues we might end up with a total ban on a lot more airspace than just DC.

I still can't believe that these pilots busted the airspace, and I'm even more incredulous about the way that some of you are just blowing this off.

enigma

 

[the_dimwit]

I'd like to put my 2 cents in, if I may....


I've been reading the posts in this thread, and the discussion regarding the damage potential of a "small aircraft" is interesting. I was talking with my father one day a year or so ago, and he asked me what I thought about small, GA aircraft and the potential threat they posed. Naturally, I pointed to the FL incident in which the kid crashed into the building. "See? Little to no damage."

He pointed something fairly interesting out to me, though. It could (stress the word COULD) be possible to load a small (say 150 or 172) with explosives and cause quite a bit of damage and loss of life. My dad theorized that, if a pilot took off at a major airport, flying a C150 with max payload of C4 and crashed it into fully-fueled airliners parked at the ramp, the results might be surprising.

At first, I dismissed this theory as somewhat impossible. After all, how long would it take a GA aircraft to take off, circle around, and find a nice, neat row of commercial aircraft to plow right into? However, like another poster said, airplanes taking out skyscrapers was somewhat far-fetched at one time....

I wonder--is the reaction downtown overdone? (I work directly across the street from the Pentagon--can see it from my window as I type this.) I grant you, a C150 wouldn't do much structural damage to a building or bridge, but a little WMD in the mix would paint a very different scenario.

What do y'all think? Am I suffering from paranoia due to living in the DC Metro for too long (was here for 9/11)?

--Don

 

[PeteCO]

Ok friend, who's really rationalizing. The small aircraft advocates who "know" that a small aircraft couldn't be dangerous, or me, a person who is giving some sort of explanation as to why the authorities get so worked up about an errant small plane.


While some of you are busy burying your heads in the sand as you declare the lack of threat that small aircraft pose, the movers and shakers are moving closer and closer to completely legislating us out of the sky. Instead of telling them they are wrong, maybe we should try and understand what scares them. Like it or not, they have the power to completely shut us down, and just telling them that a C150 isn't a threat won't stop them.

I'm ready to support a total ban on non-commercial aviation anywhere withing a hundred miles of DC. I'd rather not, but if this kind of airspace violation continues we might end up with a total ban on a lot more airspace than just DC.

I still can't believe that these pilots busted the airspace, and I'm even more incredulous about the way that some of you are just blowing this off.

enigma

Look, I'm not trying to blow it off as a non-serious issue - I think they should have blown him out of the sky. His screwup is so colossal that he should never fly again, if only for endangering our right to fly. I totally agree with you there.

However, the press and the government DO blow the threat wayyyy out of proportion. I agree that these idiots need to navigate, but I'm also sick and tired of the BS reasons the government and press give that only instill false fear into the public.