FAA Proposes to Permanently Restrict Air Space Over Washington DC (moved from ATSNN), page 1

Leslie Miller of the Associated Press posted an interesting scoop today identifying tomorrow's release of a proposal by the FAA which seeks to permanently restrict the air space over Washington DC. The proposal seeks to boost the penalties for pilots who knowingly invade the airspace surrounding Washington. Since the original restrictions were imposed, over 1600 violations have occurred with only a handful resulting in penalization.

www.washingtonpost.com
The government wants permanently to restrict a wide swath of airspace over the Washington area and make it a crime if a private pilot knowingly enters a zone that extends from Maryland to Virginia.

Pilots have strayed hundreds of times since the government temporarily restricted airspace over the capital just before the start of the Iraq war in 2003. In many cases, fighter jets, which are prepared to shoot down a plane, have escorted an errant plane to an airport.

The FAA, in a notice to be published on Thursday, said the restrictions are necessary because of the continuing threat of terrorism.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

I suspected this would be the case for a while. Upon reading articles describing the response times surrounding recent restricted air space violations, it seemed that the only way the government could be able to legitamately shoot down an aircraft that had violated restricted air space would be to declare it permanently illegal to do so. This permanent no-fly zone creates a more solid probable cause and a greater opportunity for military response.

In a funny aside, the penalties the FAA seeks are to be applied to pilots who "knowingly" violate the restricted air space. Maybe they should print Karl Rove's attorney's number on the back of pilot licenses. Then no one would get busted.

[edit on 3-8-2005 by chaosrain]

[edit on 3-8-2005 by chaosrain]