3400 Airspace Violations since 9/11

This number seems consistent with personal experience. I disagree that one agency should be responsible, however - just what we need, a new federal agency. What are they going to do, hire a whole agency full of people to watch, one, two or five in every air traffic facility just sitting there observing? That's brain damaged. That's part of what Air Traffic Control does. If ATC isn't in radio contact with that aircraft, what are they going to do about it anyway? If it hasn't been done yet, I would suggest dedicated hard lines from NORAD to every air traffic facility (including flight service stations), or at least put NORAD on every Air Traffic Control Interphone line so the involved controller can communicated directly with NORAD rather than through sometimes three lairs of intermediaries, but a whole new agency? Wasted money.



We could close down all of our general aviation in the country, but that would be a major wrong for not much gain. We can do nothing, in which case numbers like these will continue, and eventually somebody will fly a Gulfstream or KingAir full of explosives into something important before NORAD can react (Montgomery Field here in San Diego is within five miles of several major military bases, so a KingAir could get there within about 75 seconds from takeoff, a Gulfstream about 45. Even in the old days where the Air Force had fighters on constant standby, they had two minutes to get airborne. In case you're not aware, the 9/11 hijackers did some of their training here in San Diego, and if that doesn't give your backside a pucker...). Or we can maybe close a few general aviation airports that are the cause of vast majority of the problems and get serious about enforcement actions (I'm only aware of two sustained enforcement actions against all of the pilots that violated FARs at my various facilities handled during my twelve years working for them, and both of those were truly egregious and in our faces about the violations. But there's a lot of true bozos out there who won't do their homework, scraping by with their heads you-know-where by grace of a lax enforcement system. We never wanted to write anyone up - preferring education instead - and when we did it was because we were convinced they were a true danger to the flying public and there wasn't anything we further we could reasonably do that would help them. However, the general aviation lobby has made it impossible to successfully take action against someone's license for anything less than, well, 9/11).



UPDATE: It appears as if the original article has been updated since I wrote this post based on it this morning. This was an article on how clueless Congress and the Federal Bureaucracy is, but now it appears as if something constructive may come of it. It's like they read what I wrote. Either that or Congress is getting tired of being interrupted all the time. You decide.



aviation security politics