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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."
It's pretty terrible that we as a nation are this scared by such events.
It's amazing how much people live in fear these days.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Da Plane, Da Plane...
I won't lie, I irrationally freak out every time I see a plane flying low. Although it's never anything- just some sight-seeing tourist plane. Still freaks me out. I don't live in the city though, I live in central NH. I can imagine why it freaks out New Yorkers. So before everybody goes on the whole "everybody's just over-reacting" thing, why don't we instead consider other options:
-Building tall buildings underground, instead of above.
-Requiring high altitudes for all planes, military or civilian, and producing auto-shoot auto-aim turrets around the ciy with no warning shots.
- Include parashoots as standard emergency materials for skyscrapers?
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Alert. Unafraid citizen. Sanitize... SANITIZE!
Maybe it was a plan to stimulate the cleaning, underwear and toilet paper industries... I'm sure there will be a load of undies needing cleaned tonight.....
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Planes don't fly low here anymore. Its not allowed. Certainly not 747s. For the people that were here Sept 11, 2001(I was one of the many)....its very upsetting, disturbing....to look up and see a plane that low and near. So don't jump to conclusions about people over-reacting. Its a real thing for New Yorkers and others in the area.
People should stop being so godamn insensitive? I mean, a lot of these people either worked in or around the WTC when it was hit. A lot of them lost family and friends in those buildings. There's ALWAYS going to be a sense of fear instilled in these people because of 9/11. It's not that they haven't gone on with their lives, it's not that they harp on the subject, it's that these people witnessed the greatest terrorist event in the history of the United States. If you think you wouldn't be so concerned about a Jet colliding with your building, either killing you, forcing you to jump from 70 stories up, or coming down on top of you, I suggest you think about the horrible realities that September 11th brought to that city and its people, and hwo you'd feel if someone close to you died so senselessy and terribly.
A plane is being escorted by F-16s. And this causes hundreds of people to flee for their lives by making a mad dash out of their building? There's being careful, then there's being an overly paranoid idiot. I'm pretty sure that if the jets are there, you'd be safer *in a building* rather than where all the explodey shrapnel can get to you.
A low flying 747 flying low near manhattan being pursued by F-16s. Definitely no reason to be alarmed! After all, if they fired missiles at the potentially hijacked plane it would explode completely like in the movies. There definitely wouldn't be any large, flaming fragments of the plane to crash in to buildings, potentially trapping those inside. You're right, definitely much safer in buildings.
Unfortunately for people who experienced the collapse of the WTC towers first hand, low flying planes crashing into buildings is something that could reasonably happen, and one could argue that it is not sane to wait and see if an unusually low flying plane is actually going to crash into a building before taking steps to save one's life.
As someone who was in lower Manhattan the last time a jetliner flew very low... you can bet your bottom dollar I'd be out of my building and on my way home (to NJ) if I saw that.
I wasn't in much personal danger on 9/11 (merely took the Path under the WTC), but I'll tell you that it really *SUCKED* to wait in line for hours and hours to catch a ferry across the Hudson without any means to contact my family (cell service was impossible to get).
Next time that shit happens, I'm first in line at the ferry (excepting the elderly, the very young, and the preggers).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
And this causes hundreds of people to flee for their lives by making a mad dash out of their building?
No, it gives a bunch of folks the excuse to drop their work, run outside, have a cigarette, grab a hot dog, a beer, another hot dog, more beer . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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.
it was a 747 flying at under 1,000 feet with two military escorts. If I saw that, and I worked where the bulk of the 9/11 dead are still buried I'd feel some panic as well.
It's pathetic how many on here are making fun of these people. Just to give you an idea of how low that is, 1,000 feet is roughly 1/2 the total height of the WTC twin towers.
How many people here would stay somewhere if they thought they were reasonably likely to die there?
There are low flying planes all the time. It's not a reason to panic, and no reasonable person would believe they were likely to die there. Instead, we have unreasonable people panicing over an unreasonable fear. You're still more likely to be eaten by a shark than you are to die in another plane crashing into a building.
"of fuckin' wussy people."
- 3 planeloads of people let 5 men armed with hand tools take over airplanes - because that's what they've been told to do. As soon as the 4th planeload of people find out how they've been lied to, they take action and save many more lives.
- Hundreds of students cower under desks waiting be rescued from 1 man with 2 handguns, and the only person to do ANYTHING is an octogenarian who gets killed for his efforts to protect the strong, healthy, 18-22 year old "adults" hiding in fear. The most played interview is of a young man who was simply waiting to die. He is called "heroic".
- A man starts shooting in an immigrant center, and police take 45 minutes to enter the building, while people hide like scared rabbits waiting to be rescued. The police state that their response time was irrelevant - the victims would have died anyway.
Oh yes, we have reached the point where helplessness is considered noble, where former soldiers are considered security risks because the government trained them to kill, and the people whose "job" it is to protect us simply shrug their shoulders and pick up the bodies.
Wussies doesn't really cover it.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
The last time a jetliner flew very low, didn't it end up in the Hudson? Didn't ferry service stop immediately?
and oh look: a bumper crop of smug slashdot comments calling lower manhattan office workers panicky fear-addled fools
bonus comment: its better to stay inside the building. and this is actually modded up (facepalm)
let's just break it down for you world-weary heart-heavy wise men:
if you saw airplanes flying into office towers on 9/11, then the sight of a 747 a few hundred feet off the ground, nearly clipping office towers in lower manhattan, followed by an f-16, this just might persude you to leave the area as well. but naaah... clearly its low-iq hysteria, right?
you may now continue your overly judgmental certitude in your rural basements, safe in your knowledge that all reactions you disprove of are nothing more than irrational fear. you of course are immune to this. when it comes the federal government's wiretapping policies, copyright laws, and anti-pornography crusade, rather than prudent moves to dispel these unwise ideas, the proper reaction is panty-twisting pronouncements of the end of democracy and western liberal ideals. right?
truly, you are all level-headed fountains of wisdom of the ways of humankind. not in any way hypocritical asses
where oh where would we all be without your insightful words? hmmm. maybe with a little less self-serving and smug condescension? naaah
look: an anti-pornography law! whine and moan about the end of western civilization. nothing fear-addled there
blind overly judgmental hypocrites. that's all i see
xoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There are low flying planes all the time. They're just not normally flanked by a pair of F-15s over Manhatten.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Aw crap. Forgot about that one.
s/last time/second-to-last time
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Were the planes holding hands? I would hazard to guess that "two military planes escorting a third" would look fairly similar to "two military planes in close pursuit of a third", particularly to the untrained eye, Sherlock.
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
Isn't it a good thing the fighters were there?
Shouldn't people be more worried about low flying planes without them?
For posts like this, +5 just isn't high enough.
Makes me wish for a logarithmic mod scale....
+5, brother. We are raising a nation of wimps. I'm imagining this is what Rome was like in the final years, as the frontier crumbled and the barbarians road unmolested through Italy.
You are totally blocking my view of the wall. - Dogbert
It's like when you walk into a Tube station and see ten of the Met's finest standing there. In theory you ought to feel safer, but in practice you wonder what's happening that you don't know about.
Until it becomes the norm for planes to be flanked by fighters, seeing them is just going to make people worried.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Most people become terrified upon entering situations where both death and helplessness are present, like being fired at by an individual with a gun when you have none. This is nothing to be ashamed of, this is just being human. You might be a superman capable of charging across the room and kung-fuing the gun out of a madman's hand, and I'm glad for you that you are, but don't heap disdain on those that have frozen in such situations.
I value politeness. If you extend it to me, I'll extend it to you.
Is it possible that people are complaining about the wrong thing here? Sure, the discussion about whether to run or not is interesting, but how about whether people should have been informed or not?
Given that there were memos sent to numerous organisations, and yet the information was not disseminated at the will of Obama, isn't there a more pressing question here?
Like, why would the president want to scare the crap out of southern manhattan? It's not a huge stretch to assume that flying a 747 low over Manhattan would scare people...
This is nothing to be ashamed of
Nor is it anything to be proud of or held as an example of heroic behaviour.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Based on other comments, my opinion will clearly be unpopular. But how is this not akin to shouting "fire!" in a movie theater? Lower Manhattan is full of people who lived through 9/11, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that a low-flying 747 being escorted by a fighter jet would send up warning flags for those people. Add to that the fact that a lot of people stuck it out in the Twin Towers expecting to be rescued (and in doing so, died), and it makes some sense that people would high-tail it out of a tall building in the vicinity. Given all of that, I think it's rather small to dismiss a bunch of people who reacted to this today as wusses.
This wasn't a criminal act, it wasn't an act of terror. It was an insensitive and stupid act. Seems to me a little extra thought could have come up with a better solution than doing this that DOESN'T run the risk of sending a lot of people into a panic?
Besides, isn't this what Photoshop is for?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
"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"
Its been almost 8 years, actually. Get over it.
747s don't fly at that altitude, in circles, around lower Manhattan. Ever.
Evidence shows, though, that it does happen.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
2 complaints...
1st: Architects don't design buildings for strength... They design buildings for art and function. Civil engineers design a building for the loads applied to it.
2nd: In no way do civil engineers design for plane impact loads. I'm not saying a building wasn't designed to handle loads that a plane might put on a building, but the lateral loads that a civil engineer takes into account are wind and seismic loads. But like I said, a plane is more likely to inflict less load than a typical earthquake. However, sustained fire damage is what brought down the twin towers, not the direct force of the planes.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
And this is where you have to decide if you're going to pull up your pants and do something or cower in fear.
The reason 9/11 happened isn't because of the bravery of skill or cleverness of the hijackers, it's because of the institutionalized cowardice we've mandated in most 'civilized' countries in response to this. "Just do what they say, keep your head down, and let the professionals take care of it." The only thing that really changed after 9/11 was that we saw that perhaps the authorities won't get there in time, and maybe, just maybe, you can't trust hostage-takers for your welfare.
This institutionalized cowardice shows itself in other ways. People who refuse to fly after 9/11, even though it's arguably safer than before. Not because of the new 'security' measures, but because people know that if the hijackers succeed there's a good chance they'll all die, and so they'll do whatever it takes to keep that from happening. And of course the terrorists know that, and plane hijackings just aren't in vogue anymore.
Another way this institutionalized cowardice shows is people who just don't have the balls to say to themselves and their neighbours, their fellow hostages, "There's only one of him, only 9 (or 15 or 30) bullets in that gun, and if we storm him he won't be able to reload. Sure, one or more of us could die, but we aren't going to sit back and let fear and the threat of violence rule our lives."
Of course, bravery and stupidity can be easily mistaken. No sense rushing a squad of guys carrying automatics, but a single guy with a semi-auto pistol? That's not an unreasonable goal for 5 or 10 determined individuals. A few guys with box cutters? Why would you even wait?
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
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)
F-16s, not F-15s. Why does this matter so much?
We've sold F-16s to just about everyone. There's no guarantee they are ours.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
What, not a single truther talking about how it was actually the controlled demolitions that brought them down? It's a slow day when I can't get my conspiracy theory fix on /.
It's like when you walk into a Tube station and see ten of the Met's finest standing there. In theory you ought to feel safer, but in practice you wonder what's happening that you don't know about.
See, I had this image of a bunch of guys dressed like the Three Tenors standing around in a subway, and couldn't figure out why that would make someone feel safe...
I guess the Met makes more sense than the Met.
A ferry is a boat, it's used to cross water.
:)
Last time I checked, I wasn't Jesus, so I don't think I could have walked home.
FYI, the tunnels were closed too, and I'd have needed to walk about 20 miles out of my way to cross using a bridge.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
A man starts shooting in an immigrant center, and police take 45 minutes to enter the building, while people hide like scared rabbits waiting to be rescued. The police state that their response time was irrelevant - the victims would have died anyway.
With all due respect, I live in this town and the media hasn't reported that story fairly or accurately. Are you familiar with the fog of war? Nobody knows what's going on. All the police knew at the time is that they've arrived on scene and no shots are being fired. They have contact with the receptionist up front (the true heroine that day) and some people hiding in the basement. None of the people they had contact with could see the shooter -- all they knew was that the shots had ceased.
The working assumption at first was that they were dealing with a hostage situation. You may recall that this is what the media reported. Now if you think you are dealing with a hostage situation are you going to go charging in and risk further loss of life or are you going to try and establish contact with the hostage-taker while getting the rest of your units in place and ready to go in? Within ten minutes they had the shooters information and were attempting to contact him. When they eventually found his cell phone (abandoned in his vehicle as I recall) it had a series of missed calls from the police on it.
When they couldn't establish contact they decided to go into the building. They deployed the SWAT team and a robot from the bomb squad. Clearing the building took another 30-45 minutes, during which time the victims were being taken out. The folks in the basement were advised to barricade the door and remain in contact. As their cell phone batteries died they switched off and called from another phone. Further complicating this was the language barrier -- the building in question was an immigrant center and many of the victims didn't speak English.
Every local police officer I've spoken with says that they are trained for active shooter scenarios. If shots were still being fired when they arrived they would have gone in. It would have been messy (the suspect had body armor and patrolmen don't have the weapons or training to deal with that) but they would have gone in nonetheless. Since they didn't hear shots they proceeded with caution rather than risk running up the body count further. Does this really seem unreasonable to you?
Oh yes, we have reached the point where helplessness is considered noble
You'll brook no argument from me on this point. "Just wait for the police, don't try to do anything yourself, you might get hurt" The arguments against gun-ownership are particularly insulting in this regard. I just wanted to correct you on the Binghamton shooting. As I said, I live in this area and I feel that our police agencies handled the matter as well as could be expected with the information that they had at the time. Will they learn a few lessons from this and refine their procedures? Probably. Do they deserve our scorn for how they responded to this incident? No, IMHO, they don't.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Well it could have... you know... been intercepted *over* Manhattan. I'm given to understand that there are more than a few airports in an 100 mile radius of NYC.
If you'd worked in or near the financial district during or after 9/11, you'd probably forgive them for being a little concerned. I'd say that their real-life experience with suspicious jetliners has been distinctly negative to-date.
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.
There are low flying planes all the time. It's not a reason to panic, and no reasonable person would believe they were likely to die there.
Easy to say when you weren't looking the plane dead in the eye coming straight at your building. While low flying planes may be "normal," this plane was in restricted airspace, was flying extremely irregularly, and was tailed by a fighter jet. That's anything but "normal." You have seconds to react to something like this. I'm rather happy I evacuated, anything else would have been foolish.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
You might mention this to your friendly local fire inspector. A company having policies in place that could discourage people from evacuating a burning building in an orderly fashion because they're worried it's not "real" sure sounds like the sort of thing they'd be interested in.
Read my blog.
Brave Sir Robin, that is...
"When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned around and fled,
Brave, brave brave, brave Sir Robin"