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Air Force One Flyby Causes Brief Panic In NYC
pdclarry writes "A Boeing 747 that serves as an Air Force One backup and two F-16 fighters escorting it caused a brief panic among office workers at the World Financial Center in lower Manhattan this morning, as large numbers evacuated the buildings. The incident was also spurred evacuations in Jersey City across the Hudson River from Manhattan."
Because underground excavation would be hideously expensive to the depths of a normal sky scraper.
Because there's airports whose approaches require flying near cities, and god forbid a rogue update or hack gets in to the turret systems.
Ever tried BASE jumping? Instructors won't teach anyone without skydiving experience. Now, have a couple hundred people, all panicked, jumping out of a building, untrained. Doesn't work. Not to mention most windows are shatterproof, and for safety reasons cannot be opened when that high up, so you'd waste valuable time trying to break a window.
And this got upvoted?
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
It wasn't Air Force One. It was the president's backup plane. It would only become Air Force One if something happen to the real Air Force One.
Actually, Air Force One is only takes the tail number Air Force One if the president is actually on board. Otherwise it goes by it's actual tail number.
While I appreciate your point, fact is, there wasn't a 747 involved in 9/11.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
From the NYT article:
The Police Department confirmed that it had been notified about the event but said it had been barred from alerting the public. âoeThe flight of a VC-25 aircraft and F-16 fighters this morning was authorized by the F.A.A. for the vicinity of the Statue of Liberty with directives to local authorities not to disclose information about it but to direct any inquiries to the F.A.A. Air Traffic Security Coordinator,â the Police Department said in a statement. The mayor criticized the secrecy around the flyover. The e-mail notification âoedid have the normal language of saying this is sensitive information, should be distributed on a need-to-know basis, that they did not plan to have any publicity about it, which I think is ridiculous and just poor judgment,â Mr. Bloomberg said.
Too lazy to remove the smartquotes, but you get the idea.
Required? No... it's by design. There's a reason we're supposed to be afraid all the time. Fear is control.
"those people" hated us (any western country not just the USA) long before Bush.
In the escort case, the military planes fly on either side of the escortee. In the pursuit case, well, no airliner in current service can outrun a fighter jet, so the jet will be a mile or so back, directly behind the plane, with radar lock.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
"When President Obama learned of the episode on Monday afternoon, aides said, he, too, was furious. Senior administration officials conveyed the presidentâ(TM)s anger in a meeting with Mr. Caldera on Monday afternoon." Source: NYTimes http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/air-force-one-backup-rattles-new-york-nerve/
I live near an AFB and have B-52s, C-130s, B-1 bombers and the occasional hotshot F-15 pilots doing afterburns over my house and I don't freak out.
I think this "incident" is a tad overblown, but I'm sure the GOP will rant about it for weeks.
CNN Story
According to CNN, the FAA and Air Force informed the NYPD and the NY Mayors office that this was going to happen, but the staff at both didn't think it would be necessary to 1) inform the public, or 2) inform the Mayor himself(!).
No wonder NYC is a mess :)
(not sure why the initial version of this was posted anonymously)
You missed the point - it's about culture, not individuals. I was pointing out that, when a bunch of individuals were given saw what was actually happening, they took action. The others didn't because we have been telling plane passengers for 50 years "Don't resist - we will come and rescue you". I don't blame the occupants of the other 3 airplanes - I pity them, because I'm sure they would have reacted the same way as the others did had they not been so indoctrinated.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I hope more people read this. A fighter plane escort means two things:
- the authorities know the plane is there
- the decision to shoot it down has not been taken
All of this means in turn that the situation is considered to be under control.
I'm worried when I hear fighter jets screaming above my head at full after-burner - it means they're in a hurry. I'm worried when I see a lone jet plane on a path that is clearly not a regular flight path - it means it either is in trouble, or trying to get into trouble.
But a jet escorted by a fighter plane is not part of any of those scenarios. Unless someone completely fucks up, and then we're right back into the territory of paranoia and irrational risk assessment.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Isn't it a good thing the fighters were there?
Planes that are flying where they're supposed to be are not usually flanked by military fighter jets. Planes that are acting erratically or dangerously often are, as in that incident with the stolen Cessna just three weeks ago. It's really not that much of a stretch, is it?
Shouldn't people be more worried about low flying planes without them?
Why's that, exactly? Unless our fighters are now equipped with disintegrator cannons or tractor beams, there's not a lot they could do once an airliner is zooming around low over Manhattan. It's a little late by then.
Look, I understand that it's currently fashionable to laugh in the face of danger and leave cowardly details like emergency preparedness to the fascist warmongers and their bleating sheeple. But this whole incident could all have been avoided with a little communication, and I really have a hard time blaming the folks in NY for acting exactly like they did.
-Requiring high altitudes for all planes, military or civilian
I think these are in place. Last time I saw a flight map for a city, there were huge no fly circles around it. I'm not a pilot but I think that's been around for a while.
Unless that city was Washington DC, you're interpreting that map wrong. No-fly zones, officially called prohibited airspace, are not very common and when present are usually quite small. You were probably looking at class B or C airspace, which is open to flight to all aircraft, as long as they are in contact with air traffic control.
The applicable regulations for minimum altitude (paraphrased, I don't have them memorized) basically say that in sparsely populated areas, you must have 500 ft of separation from any person, building, vehicle, or structure. In heavily populated areas you must have enough altitude for a safe emergency landing in the event of engine failure. That's basically all the guidance pilots get in terms of official regulations.