FLY THE FRIENDLY SKIES

The news cycle seems to have backpeddled on the story about the Cessna 2 seater flying into restricted airspace over D.C. Just a couple of lost guys (one an INSTRUCTOR!?) But the pictures of staffers running from the capitol and white house, while guards yelled for them to clear out, looks like a B movie poster.

I thought we have a new homeland security laser system in place that flashes laser bursts of light to pilots in that space. Red means turn around - do a 180! I am not making this up. I saw it on the news.

Once I - as a low hour pilot boy - flew a friend into the New York airspace - this was many years ago - I think we were under the controlled airspace they have in such areas, but it was as if someone threw a big handful of planes at us - they were everywhere, and instead of flying over his boyhood home in Redbank, we tucked tail and got the heck out of there.

My point is that that's a major population density. They had to know they were POSSIBLY approaching a nerve - the real G spot.

And that those lasers don't work. Save them for the 4th of July as a treat, D.C.

I propose really big bottle rockets. I know they don't start fires on roofs because my friend Dave always had illegal fireworks for the 4th of July, and when the stuff came down on his roof, it didn't burn. Bottle rockets are way cool, make neat trails in the air, go like a son of a gun, can be lit even after the fuse goes out, would scare the bejessus out of any pilot, and would cost a lot less than all the technology we've wasted.

Heck, you could arm the populace. Anybody in this neighborhhod see a plane, light up the sky!