Panic! Alert! Nevermind!

The Capitol Police have a habit of evacuating the Capitol building every time an airplane wanders into the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) around Capitol Hill. Violations occur more often than you might think. Two F-16s, operating under the nickname "Brave," wait on the runway at Andrews Air Force Base and get fairly regular exercise by chasing wayward Cessnas out of the area. You would think that most amateur pilots would be aware of the flight restrictions around the Washington area by now, but you would be wrong.

Comments

Do the flight restrictions apply to flies on the wall around Hillbilly's campaign?

Posted by D | March 12, 2008 1:03 PM

That's got to be the worst feeling in flying . . . you are putting along in your little Cessna, and then "hey, is that a pair of F-16s coming? CRAP!!!"

Posted by B. Minich | March 12, 2008 3:04 PM

There is something completely cowardly and unseely about the entire US government fleeing anytime a puny little plane weighing less than most cars do appears in their region. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity, and derails the People's business for a small but significant fraction of the entire time the Government is actually at work.

Nor does evacuating buildings do anything if the tiny Cessena du jour is actually manned by an "evidoer" with a "serious weapon" - unless you commit to spend billions to give all those gov't workers milling around outdoors their own blast, germ, nerve gas resistant shelters. Which we won't do.

Barring a WMD on board, the worst a small plane or helo could do would be to kill a dozen or so gov't employees at their desks or now clustered in a park - from the kinetic force of the impact and maybe a small conventional bomb. And the only single persons that really matter in our scheme of things are the 9 Lawyers dressed in Robes and the President and VP - who have personal protection and bunkers. Kill a dozen others in other spots in Gov't, and Gov't still continues just fine...

The better solution is to remain working and ignore the planes and let the AF intercept them.

Or, issue one warning, then blast any plane out of the sky with a Patriot Missile or MANPAD. Falling debris might cause a few casualties on the ground the 1st time you destroy an aircraft, but you can be pretty sure thet the dramatic pilot learning curve to avoid prohibited airspace would end repetitions except suicidal nuts and terrorists who wouldn't be any loss to society to place by missil 10-40 kilograms of high explosive up their aircraft's ass.

Missiles are also a lot cheaper than maintaining ultra-expensive planes on patrol or 24/7 alert over Government VIPS.

Posted by chris ford | March 12, 2008 4:10 PM

Pilots are quite well aware of the restrictions, but it is remarkably easy to be off course for a variety of reasons. There might be an instrument malfunction, an incorrect navigation frequency set, one lake mistaken for another, one highway mistaken for another, unexpectedly strong winds aloft, an FAA that forgets to tell a pilot about a temporary restriction (yes, that happens), a visual flight rules (VFR) pilot confronting unexpected clouds below and losing ground reference, electrical failure (and loss of all electronic navigation and communications), a wayward autopilot, etc., etc.

The Washington ADIZ is also way too big which doesn't help, because any of those reasons (and more) are compounded literally geometrically as the size of the restricted area grows, ensnaring more pilots. And the Washington ADIZ isn't drawn in a way that's even moderately easy for pilots to obey naturally, with boundaries aligned to unique natural features on the ground like uniquely shaped highways and bodies of water. You have to be a bit of a cartographer in the air to figure it out. (Pilots didn't draw it, and the Feds have rejected all pilot association attempts to redraw it sensibly.) It's also too tall: there's no way for most pilots to avoid the ADIZ by simply flying well above it. (Isn't something like a mile above enough? It should be.) And it's completely alien to U.S. pilots because there's nothing else like it anywhere else in the country. If you're from Kansas, the most complicated airspace you've got to worry about might be making sure you chat with the Topeka tower controller before you reach 5 miles out or a couple thousand feet above.

Aside from all that, the ADIZ works perfectly.

Posted by Timothy | March 12, 2008 4:22 PM

Here's the FAA's helpful description of the boundaries of the Washington ADIZ. Of course, it's all in capital letters because the FAA hasn't discovered lowercase yet, and besides it's VERY IMPORTANT.

THE DC ADIZ IS THAT AIRSPACE, FROM THE SURFACE TO BUT NOT INCLUDING FL180, WITHIN A 30-MILE RADIUS OF 385134N/0770211W OR THE DCA VOR/DME. 2. THE LEESBURG MANEUVERING AREA WITHIN THE DC ADIZ IS DEFINED AS THE AIRSPACE AROUND THE LEESBURG EXECUTIVE AIRPORT (JYO) BOUNDED BY A LINE BEGINNING AT THE WASHINGTON /DCA/ VOR/DME 299 DEGREE RADIAL AT 30 NM 390139.1N/0773826.7W, THENCE CLOCKWISE ALONG THE DCA 30 NM ARC TO THE DCA 323 DEGREE RADIAL AT 30 NM 391220.1N/0772957.6W, THENCE SOUTH VIA A LINE DRAWN TO THE AML 355 DEGREE RADIAL AT 7 NM 390254.9N/0773000.3W, THENCE COUNTERCLOCKWISE ALONG THE AML 7 NM ARC TO THE AML 331 DEGREE RADIAL AT 7 NM 390139.3N/0773325.5W, THENCE WEST VIA A LINE DRAWN TO THE POINT OF BEGINNING.

Well OK, then. No problem! That's just the outer boundary. There's an inner boundary as well with a separate cartographic description. Up until surprisingly relatively recently these geometric shapes weren't even depicted on the aeronautical charts.

Posted by Timothy | March 12, 2008 4:43 PM