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My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

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Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#11

Post by Overtonwindow »

The FAA representatives terrible attitude aside, I sense there's something that is being left out. When the author states "I filed a visual flight plan and we were on our way." that would seem to indicate that he looked at a chart, saw the restricted airspace, and planned his takeoff and turn appropriately.

From the information given, I think the FAA rep was a douche but the author clearly did not plan his route properly. Also, this line was very confusing "cell phones had not not yet been invented."

If that's the case I seriously doubt missiles were pointed at anyone. Clearly this is pre-2001, maybe even back to the 80s. While jets may have been scrambled, I am calling BS on that whole part of the conversation.

The timeline, security posture, and even the flight corridors don't add up. Something is fishy...

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#12

Post by blamazon »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #10
blamazon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we still doing air control with competitive real time voice radio anyway? Can we not engineer in some queued delay of planning? (I know nothing of the vagaries of air control)

my startup is providing air traffic control solutions using an AI trained bot to talk to the pilots when a life and death situation arises!

I feel it somewhat obvious that humans talking to humans is a good thing for life and death split second stuff, same page there.

But aren't most of the comms really rote and mundane instructions that follow a standard pattern? We trust automated systems to land the plane, [1] why not to tell a plane to say, cross runway 22 and stop at threshold Z?

A human could still give that instruction, but with a button instead of their mouth parts flapping? Then the radio channel would be more open for higher urgency stuff.

[1]: https://youtu.be/LyVuGQUl2bA

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#13

Post by leeter »

blamazon wrote: post #9
knodi123 wrote: post #8

> "Airline pilots are the best at what they do and have spent years honing their craft." And apparently one of those rare and vital skills is filling in the gaps when talking to air traffic controllers who are not competent to communicate life-or-death information.

Why are we still doing air control with competitive real time voice radio anyway? Can we not engineer in some queued delay of planning? (I know nothing of the vagaries of air control)

Primary ATC is still done that way but at least for the big jets there are other ways they send digital comms to ATC[1]. The main reason is because radios fail and more complex radios fail more easily. A standard Jetliner carries three radios, any of which the pilots can use to contact ATC. The bands are internationally standardized. So it's not just a case of the FAA mandating a change. It would have to be the entire world. So even if the FAA did require digital radios it wouldn't actually change much because both ground and plane would still have to transmit analog backup anyway. That creates more chatter etc.

It's also important to recognize that controllers are human and can only deal with one thing at once. The current system generally speaking gives one human control over one section of airspace.

In this specific case the pilot should have been aware of the restricted airspace and set a flight plan that took them away from it before turning to their destination. There is zero excuses for flying into restricted airspace as there are published maps. The zone around the WH and USC is a permanent zone, so even less of an excuse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#14

Post by kube-system »

blamazon wrote: post #9
knodi123 wrote: post #8

> "Airline pilots are the best at what they do and have spent years honing their craft." And apparently one of those rare and vital skills is filling in the gaps when talking to air traffic controllers who are not competent to communicate life-or-death information.

Why are we still doing air control with competitive real time voice radio anyway? Can we not engineer in some queued delay of planning? (I know nothing of the vagaries of air control)

People may chime in at any time and the relative priority, timing, volume, etc of calls is unknown in advance. Basically it’s CSMA, implemented via human brain. If it’s good enough for Ethernet, it’s good enough for ATC.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#15

Post by dogleash »

blamazon wrote: post #9
knodi123 wrote: post #8

> "Airline pilots are the best at what they do and have spent years honing their craft." And apparently one of those rare and vital skills is filling in the gaps when talking to air traffic controllers who are not competent to communicate life-or-death information.

Why are we still doing air control with competitive real time voice radio anyway? Can we not engineer in some queued delay of planning? (I know nothing of the vagaries of air control)

Resilience.

Put on your systems theory hat when thinking about alternatives.

FWIW, As was discussed in the post, ground/departure channels at a major airport were overwhelmingly busy for a private pilot untrained in that environment. As an occasional private passenger, I'm accustomed to quite low radio traffic because of the routes and airports we use. I've heard radio so quiet that a Controller handed us off to... herself on a different frequency for a different airspace.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#16

Post by blamazon »

leeter wrote: post #13
blamazon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we still doing air control with competitive real time voice radio anyway? Can we not engineer in some queued delay of planning? (I know nothing of the vagaries of air control)

Primary ATC is still done that way but at least for the big jets there are other ways they send digital comms to ATC[1]. The main reason is because radios fail and more complex radios fail more easily. A standard Jetliner carries three radios, any of which the pilots can use to contact ATC. The bands are internationally standardized. So it's not just a case of the FAA mandating a change. It would have to be the entir…

Interesting, that explanation does make sense. It's interesting to think about how the limits of human synchronous focus are involved. That must be such a stressful job! TIL about ACARS.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#17

Post by elashri »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #11

The FAA representatives terrible attitude aside, I sense there's something that is being left out. When the author states "I filed a visual flight plan and we were on our way. " that would seem to indicate that he looked at a chart, saw the restricted airspace, and planned his takeoff and turn appropriately. From the information given, I think the FAA rep was a douche but the author clearly did not plan his route pro…

While this might be true, there were some reports (without government confirmation) that such missiles already deployed before 2001 [1]. The other thing is that it might be only a bluff the FAA officer add fot psychological purpose.

One last guess is that it might be already anti air missile system from a nearby airbase or so ( which I don't have idea about if this was even feasible)

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/12/us/report-cites-antiaircr...

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#18

Post by pivo »

I've just finished reading, "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service" by Carol Leonnig [0]. In that book the author describes an incident on September 12, 1994 [1] in which a pilot landed a small plane in front of the white house. Secret Service members she interviewed were dumfounded that they were asked there to run to the white house roof with rifles to protect the building, and that there were no such thing as anti-aircraft missiles available at the time. More recently, another person landed a small aircraft on the Whitehouse grounds [2] with (apparently) no missiles involved.

Maybe the missiles are elsewhere, or maybe they're just a cost-effective rumor. The book makes it clear that the Secret Service is constantly underfunded and sorely lacking in modern technology, with agents sometimes having to use their personal car to transport the people they're protecting because their official cars aren't working.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Fail-Rise-Secret-Service/dp/0399...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Eugene_Corder

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/15/politics/aircraft-lands-on-ca...

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