New Car Price

In case you missed it, the statement by the pilots of the aircraft is available at http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050520/205544.html?.v=1 (although, alas, I don’t trust Yahoo to keep their links around, so read it fast!).

Perhaps they should have shot that limey sucker out of the air. It would send a powerful message to the American people that this administration is not going to tolerate any behavior which embarrasses the Government. Whatever happened to that great American saying: Shoot first, ask questions later. And how about that second great American truism: Ignorance is no excuse. Screw up and you forfeit your ordinary human rights.

I like allowing paragraphs . Makes it sound like people .

Does your typical airplane have a cigarette lighter?

Anyhow, the really amusing fact of this incident is that they didn’t inform little lord fauntleroy that Washington was being evacuated until it was all over, lest he panic and soil another pair of presidential briefs.

Philip,

I think you’re too generous in giving credit to the lost pilot/instructor of the aircraft with your comment about pilotage being a difficult form of nagivation. I’ve flown both ways… map & compass all the way up to IFR GPS devices and really do prefer the old-fashioned way. Granted most of my flying is on the west coast with plentiful landmarks, but even when I’ve ventured across the great plains in a single-engine cessna the map & compass worked just fine, provided you’re attentive, I think its easy enough to know where you are within a mile or two at all times… no navigation radios or gps! Clearly the instructor on this flight shouldn’t be an instructor any more…

As far as surrounding the aircraft at gunpoint, I agree with you whole heartedly. I am just happy that some restraint was shown and they did not fire on the aircraft unnecessarily.

Philip: you claimed that “It is possible to get handheld GPS units for $500-1000 but they rely on AA batteries and never seem to have juice left when you need them.” The reality is that any handheld GPS comes with a power adapter that can be plugged into the ship’s cigarette lighter. And if it’s inop or for some reason been disabled (there was an AD requiring this on some Cessnas because the lighter circuit did not have an appropriate circuit breaker), you can always do somthing REALLY crazy and, say, carry spare batteries.

You also said “Without a GPS or some earlier form of electronic navigation it is reasonably easy to get lost.” Maybe for a passenger. This should not be the case for a pilot, even if they’re flying a Piper Cub with nothing but airspeed and altimeter in the panel. Pilots are trained to realize that the moment they are uncertain of their position, they are now “lost” and to continue would be foolish. They are taught to circle, climb, communicate, confess they are lost, and figure out where they hell they are before proceding. I teach each of my students to use navigation equipment, landmarks, ATC, and every other resource at their disposal.

The aircraft those two morons were flying may be old and lack satellite navigation, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t navigate or should be given a pass for getting “lost”. The pilot in command is responsible for what happened, period.

–Ron

Philip:

I am amazed that you still have that
wonderful energy and interest in people
after all these years. (We spoke a few
time at AI 6th floor but I am sure you do not
remember me.)

About Lisa’s “off topic question” above, don’t
you think Marblehead should be a good destination? Historic and remarkable, I find.
She can even get there by city bus.

Tuan

No Phil, that’s just the point,
better systems will not prevent
stupid pilots from screwing
up. I know you are pissed about
the govt not getting affordable
GPS out there, and I agree.
But Eric was correct, you
need to know this stuff and be aware.

Making flying more ‘idiot proof’ just guarantees more idiots will try it. Not what I want. But as mentioned before, I am biased. I don’t want someone who shouldn’t be flying, to
do so into my house.

Round here, I live in Lancaster (actually
Lititz), the reports were that the pilot
did not check weather, notams (not that
either would have helped), was completely
befuddled, and that finally the student
had to land the plane.

Eric: I did not intend to imply that these gentlemen were to be emulated or that they represented the best of America’s hundreds of thousands of certificated pilots. On the other hand they probably would not have made this spectacular mistake if they’d had a moving-map GPS in the panel. My posting was intended to explain to the non-piloting reader how it is possible, 15 years after GPS was more or less completed, that an airplane is flying around without a GPS receiver.

From a macho pilot point of view it is kind of cool that the FAA has such antiquated systems and relies on people to squint at charts and peer through the haze at bridges that they might never have seen before, or to tune in radio beacons from the 1950s and interpret the dials and needles and reference those back to a paper chart. It gives us the opportunity to laugh at people who screw up and feel superior. But from an engineering point of view it seems better to design (literally) fool-proof systems if our goal is to avoid airspace incursions. There are hundreds of thousands of pilots who could have done that flight last week in any airplane without violating the ADIZ. But as an engineer with a $20 GPS receiver chip in your hand you want to ask yourself “What about those last couple of guys who might not get it right?”