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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)

#81

Post by throwaway1777 »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #75
hotpotamus wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how big Musk or Bezos's security teams are?

I'll bet it's large but nothing close to that of the President and other top government officials. For example, the U.S. government is currently paying $2 million per month to protect former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo due to Iran threats[1]. That's the former, now think of what it'll cost to protect the current Secretary plus all the private travel costs on that giant Boeing 757. 1- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/p…

It was revealed a few years ago Zuckerberg was paying about 20M per year on security. That’s almost 2M per month…

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

#82

Post by jcrawfordor »

itslennysfault wrote: post #43
godshatter wrote: post #25

Shouldn't the dispatcher have given more precise directions than "follow the river"? If they had said "take a right and follow the river", this wouldn't have been a problem. I suppose they were used to professional pilots knowing what was meant, but they were already working to fit a small plane into a larger system presumably filled with mostly larger jets from commercial airlines that flew in and out of that airpor…

Honestly, I'm surprised by "follow the river" as a flight instruction. That sounds like the directions you'd get from someone that doesn't understand cardinal directions. "Turn right at the gas station, then turn left at the big oak tree" or something. I have no experience with flying, but I assumed it would be a heading / cardinal direction and not "turn right at [landmark]"

This is a fairly common instruction from a controller in my experience, at least when dealing with small aircraft that they know are flying VFR. Traditional VFR navigation ("pilotage") is mostly based on finding landmarks anyway. Flying in another city with a runway pointed towards a river, "turn after the river," "report crossing the river" are common instructions.

Other landmarks popular with controllers include the freeway, the big Marriot, the Amazon warehouse, etc. It's sort of surprisingly informal when controllers are dealing with local light aircraft pilots. But that's mostly how those pilots are navigating anyway, "follow the freeway until the bridge."

There probably is a certain risk of misunderstanding here, but then pilots are expected to be reasonably familiar with the local area and its procedures, and to ask for vectors when unsure. These days DC is one of those places that it's strongly recommended (required by FARs now, I think?) to take a familiarization course because the airspace issues there are so sensitive. Plus they have the laser gun to minimize the need to send fighters.

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

#83

Post by krisoft »

BWStearns wrote: post #33
krisoft wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the rare and vital skill is to get a map and look at it and figure out which way you are going to go. How come this person didn't know if they have to turn left or right? How come they didn't know from the top of their head the airspace structure around them (including restricted airspaces, especially). This is 101 level stuff.

If ATC tells you to do something you have to do that (with rare exceptions). Doesn't matter if you want to go some other direction. So even if he wanted to go up the Anacostia, if ATC said go up the Potomac then you go up the Potomac so it doesn't have to do with not knowing where you're going, it's the ambiguity of the instruction. Could he have guessed that the Anacostia would have been a better decision since the…

> Doesn't matter if you want to go some other direction.

I'm not talking about wanting to go some other direction. I'm talking about the previous departure clearance he received. Those are the "A very busy air traffic controller spit out departure instructions." followed by the "hectic voice said “we have an amendment to your departure are you ready to copy”". Those are telling him which way to go. And they don't just rattle them off and good luck. They wait for the pilot to read them back, and they check that the pilot reads them back correctly.

I bet that he was not cleared for a visual departure out of DCA. So the departure he received must have had a list of nav points. Were they left or right? What restricted airspaces were there in the vicinity he should be aware of?

You know, it is telling that those details are left out. Probably if they were spelled out it would be clearer how big a mistake the pilot did. Very conveniently they are mentioned but not described.

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

#84

Post by squallgmn »

Washington National doesn't have any runways that run perpendicular to the Potomac, so if the pilot maintained runway heading on takeoff, he should have already been more or less aligned with the river going north or south. The story says he landed on a 6000 foot runway. There are three runways on the field: 1/19 is 7169 feet, 15/33 is 5204 feet, and 4/22 is 5000 feet. It's possible the runways were configured differently back then, but it's most likely that runway 1/19 was in use because it's the only one over 6000 feet. That runway runs almost due North/South. If the tower operator instructed the pilot to follow the river after departure and intended the pilot to fly south, it's almost certain the pilot took off on runway 19 which is nearly parallel to the river and the pilot would be traveling south. If the pilot found themselves crossing the river, they were not on a runway heading and had already deviated. The pilot could have checked his compass or heading indicator, take into account the runway heading of 190 degrees, and that should have informed him to turn right to return to his original heading. Instead, the pilot turned left which put him in the opposite heading he was assigned.

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

#85

Post by AdamN »

pixl97 wrote: post #67
phpisthebest wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General rule for me is If any person has soooo much power we need a dedicated team of people to protect them continuously, that person has too much power and the solution is not ever-increasing amount of security, but ever decreasing amount of power to that individual

So how do you plan to deal with the continuation of government and nuclear weapon problem?

That's the whole premise of Designated Survivor and Battlestar Galactica even. The US has 16 levels of succession at which point it peters out.

It seems like the threat of a decapitation strike against the US has been mitigated.

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

#86

Post by hotpotamus »

safety1st wrote: post #57
hotpotamus wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how big Musk or Bezos's security teams are?

Who cares? The perennial mistake is believing that if any of these guys get capped, it's some irreparable loss to society. It's not. Let them play the odds of life like the rest of us do. A society that depends on strongmen isn't a free society.

Oh you're singing to the choir on that stuff. Don't get me started on who we can and can't feed into the woodchipper because I'm already rate-limited. I'm just always surprised when people limit their thinking (and I'm not saying the post that spawned my response was guilty of that, though it's possible) of the powerful in society to government officials.

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

#87

Post by mc32 »

hotpotamus wrote: post #55
thepasswordis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Maybe the answer is to cool it with the idea that government officials all need to have large personal protective details. Isn't that the job of the police? And a…

Bruce Schneier once said something that really stuck with me. He was talking about the culture of the DHS I believe and how their mission was "Never Again" in the wake of 9/11. But never is basically an impossible standard to meet, and the result was that we get security theater instead. I would imagine you can also soak up a near infinite amount of money and effort trying to achieve never again. Zero Fail sounds lik…

'Never' and 'Zero' programs are all aspirational. We want Zero pedestrian deaths, but we know it's not possible (even in back in the age of horses), but still something we should aim for within reason.

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

#88

Post by mc32 »

nivenkos wrote: post #50
chucksmash wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe the answer is to cool it with the idea that government officials all need to have large personal protective details. Isn't that the job of the police? So like Shinzo Abe? Edit: I picked Shinzo Abe because it was a recent example I felt people would be familiar with, but honestly it seems like any notoriety at all is dangerous. Someone assassinated MLK Jr's mother [1] while she played a church organ. Relying o…

Or Olof Palme.

On the other hand... Indira Gandhi.

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

#89

Post by theideaofcoffee »

squallgmn wrote: post #84

Washington National doesn't have any runways that run perpendicular to the Potomac, so if the pilot maintained runway heading on takeoff, he should have already been more or less aligned with the river going north or south. The story says he landed on a 6000 foot runway. There are three runways on the field: 1/19 is 7169 feet, 15/33 is 5204 feet, and 4/22 is 5000 feet. It's possible the runways were configured differ…

He mentioned in the piece that he was on 18:

"Seat belts fastened, I rolled forward made a right turn and taxied to runway 18..."

18 at the time it was written/recounted, and 19 now most likely due to pole drift.

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

#90

Post by csours »

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.

I wonder if Air Traffic Controller is a misnomer of the same type as "Autopilot". It's a true enough description, but it gives the wrong impression to inexperienced persons.

Pilots are always responsible for flying their aircraft in a safe manner. At the same time, the whole system must allow for pilots to do this. It has been many years since aircraft incidents have been investigated in a monocausal manner; the whole system is examined each time.

ATC expects a high level of professionalism from pilots, especially at a major airport.

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