Stolen Airplane News

I'll admit most of my news I get from the comics. Cartoonists are looking to communicate through their medium and any big topic usually gets to the newspaper funny pages or one of the online comics that enjoy. The artists usually have something to say and it's funny. Reading the paper or watching the news is more timely, but I hate the breast-beating and smarmy gimmicks*.

I was almost pleasantly surprised by their coverage of Monday's stolen Cessna 172 from a Canadian flight school which flew into the US and was tracked by F-16's from NORAD. It turned into a nationally televised police chase -- a news item formerly only a staple for Los Angelenos. But to see it as a car chase, you have to picture a guy in a golf cart that will go maybe 20mph, and the police cars can't go below 40mph unless they ride their brakes. To form up next to the guy, the F16's pretty much had to reduce their power almost to nothing and then pitch up at an extreme angle. I'll bet the military pilots involved felt gung-ho and excited when the took off from Colorado to intercept and then kinda silly by the time they got there.

They guy evidently flew right over Lake Superior -- no ground clutter and great for radar. Then meandered over the Midwest going from 3000 feet up to 14,000 where every every radar station for hundereds of miles around could see him clearly. If he was sneaking into the country, he'd fly lower and through valleys where possible. No one has said, but I wouldn't be surpised to learn he had his transponder going.

Yeah, the F-16's could have shot him down at any point, but why? "Terrorist" is such and easy conclusion to jump to, but in the end, it turned into a kind of sad and stupid story. Tradionally, it will be six moonths or more before we hear the story from the FAA, but it sounds like the guy hoped to be shot down. I found some good articles online from GlobalTV in Vancouver, Canada and one at the Huffington Post, a Chicago based Internet news site.

There has been grumbling about how the airplane he stole was unlocked with the keys in it. And how he was able to get onto the field to the plane. Although denied at first, it sounds like he was a current student so field access is no problem. I guess the flight school habitually left their training planes open with keys inside, but that's less of problem than you might think. In 2006, there were six airplanes stolen in the US compared to 1.2 million cars in the same year. Six! in the whole country!

Locking light planes, as a security measure, is on par with a lock on a screen door. The door lock on GA planes is a joke (big screw driver and you're in) and the ignition lock is only slightly more complex -- the wires are all exposed behind the panel (the big screwdriver maybe easier here too).

Last August, a man in Virginia took a plane (again a Cessna 172) and flew so low** that he was only on radar erratically. In his case, he was shadowed by a police helicopter and they evacuated a mall. Again the story was pilot wanting to commit suicide, but he was going to ditch in a lake. Another difference from the first, was that the man was later found to be a part owner of the plane.

This guy was pretty close to D.C., so why no big news story? Because he was domestic and didn't cross a state line, much less an international border? Was his flight just too short for people to get worked into a tizzy? Maybe last Monday was just a slow news day.

Seriously, guys ... like 9/11 hasn't added enough regulations and BS to flying. We don't need pilots pulling stupid stunts giving the TSA an excuse to make our lives more miserable.

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* - The situations are usually complex, intentionally choosing to interview someone in tears for a three second sound bite ensures that they won't get any fasts that might oppose the story they decide to tell and just gets an emotional display. Worse are the commercial plugs with bites like "Is there rat poison in your child's drink box? We'll tell you more at 11."

** - The second article says that private planes can legally fly below 200 feet, but not around people and pretty much only for take-offs and landings. Maybe they meant 2000 feet.