An electronics/software glitch in communication with a remotely piloted Navy helicopter led the federal government to violate its own restricted airspace over Washington, D.C. (story)
John and Martha King, the world’s best-known flight instructors, were held at gunpoint by four police cruisers full of cops. Their Cessna 172 had the same tail number as a Cessna 150 that was stolen nearly a decade ago. The old tail number was still in a database at the El Paso Intelligence Center, which keeps America safe from drugs and terrorists. The police got excited when they saw the tail number pop up in an IFR flight plan and had the Santa Barbara airport staked out. The cops never asked themselves “If I had stolen an airplane, would I file IFR flight plans using the stolen plane’s actual tail number? And then go into a busy Class C airport?” Nor were they able to tell the difference between a Cessna 150 (two seater) and a Cessna 172 (four seater). Full Story: AOPA.
The British Airways Boeing 747s apparently have the ability to play a recording to passengers: “This is an emergency. We may shortly need to make an emergency landing on water.” Folks on a Hong Kong to Heathrow flight did not appreciate hearing this message while over the North Sea in a perfectly functional aircraft. (more)
“Hi folks, and welcome aboard. We’re about halfway across the ocean about now, and hope you’re enjoying the flight. Those of you on the left side of the aircraft, if you look close out the windows down below, might see some people floating in an orange life raft. It’s the crew. This is a recording…”
Your tone clearly implies that if you were a cop in El Paso that you would have obviously done something much smarter, even if you weren’t blessed with the hindsight you have now. Could you let us know what it was? And while you’re at it, related it to how it would have worked out if it actually was something bad going on (because, you know, you often blast organizations for not following up on the obvious data that flows right in front of their nose, but this time you’re blasting them for not ignoring it).
Jeffrey: The cops were in bucolic Santa Barbara (see http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/inside-the-glass-pavilion for a reasonably priced place to live in Santa Barbara), not the rough border town of El Paso. With four squad cars plus the office staff, let’s assume 10 police officers were involved. Including pension and benefits, each cop costs $300,000 per year. That’s $150 per hour. Let’s assume three hours for the entire operation, which makes it a $4500 operation (more than half of the value of a ragged-out old Cessna 150). Prior to heading to the airport, I would have expected the police to type the tail number into Google, where they would have learned that it was currently assigned to a much newer and larger airplane than the 150 reported stolen. I would have expected them to Google for “Cessna 150” and print out a photo of the type so they’d know what to look for (if they weren’t familiar with the type of airplane). Once they got to the airport and saw that the subject airplane was not a two-seat 40-year-old Cessna 150, I would have expected them to put away their guns and perhaps quietly discuss with the pilots the ways of having the tail number removed from the El Paso database.
If the police got an 8-year-old report of a stolen Ford Pinto with Plate #X and stopped a brand-new Ford Taurus with Plate #X, I wouldn’t expect them to devote 10 cops and a lot of firepower questioning the Taurus owner before looking at the registry of motor vehicle records to see if in fact the plate number had been reassigned. Remember that the FAA registration records are available 24×7 to anyone with a Web browser and are far easier to locate than car registration records. Is it possible that our $300,000/year public servants lack the training of a 10-year-old British plane spotter? In that case, the El Paso Intelligence Center’s Web site could be augmented with a help page on how to find current registration information and how to use Wikipedia to find a pre-bust photo of almost any aircraft type. I don’t think it is too much to ask that highly paid people who are looking for stolen airplanes have some idea what they’re looking for.
[Note that stolen airplanes (http://www.gaservesamerica.com/about/security.html says that “fewer than half a dozen are reported stolen every year”) are typically used to fly drugs over the border from Mexico and land on dirt roads at night. One of the first things that airplane thieves do is repaint the tail number. No airplane thief has ever used the original tail number to file daytime IFR flight plans from one busy domestic towered airport to another (it would be a lot easier to transport drugs from San Diego to Santa Barbara by car or truck than in a two-seat Cessna 150). Thieves are probably a little more resourceful than the police in this instance and would know that filing IFR would give the original owner a pretty good idea of where the airplane was, e.g., through http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N707WT (our Cirrus, mostly being used by East Coast Aero Club customers).]