Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Flight

I guess you've all heard by now about the Cessna Citation that was taken from Florida and mysteriously found its way to Georgia.

The question over at B Relevant (and Michelle Malkin) was this:
How does a $7 million charter jet just disappear from Florida and mysteriously appear in Atlanta without anyone finding out until after the plane has landed and the pilot(s) disappeared?
Actually, it is pretty simple.

They get more precise, saying:
What is particularly troubling is that police have "narrowed down" the plane's arrival time at Briscoe Field in Gwinnett County to between 9:00 PM Saturday and 6:30 AM Sunday. That is a mighty big window of time. How is it possible that we can't say more precisely when this plane landed?
Well, hell, lets use a little common sense here.

This is still the United States. If you own a plane, you don't automatically have to file a flight plan if you intend to fly VFR. It doesn't make much sense to fly VFR with a Citation, but that doesn't mean you can't do it.

Fly low enough and slow enough, and probably you won't attract any attention at all. If you land at the airport, taxi over to where planes are tied down and tie down your stolen plane. If you act like you know what you are doing, no one will even question you. Especially if the field is a small civilian field.

I don't know about Briscoe Field in Georgia, but I can name a half dozen airports around here where that same scenario would be easy to accomplish.

Why is this possible? It is possible because we are still the United States and we don't need permission to fly around the country. This is still a free nation.

Anyone who doesn't believe we should stay free is welcome to consider the alternative. If you can't fly your plane when you want to, then maybe driving a car should be monitored closely? You want that? You want a bunch of damn bureaucrats monitoring movement in this country? Maybe checkpoints at state borders? I didn't think so.

Yeah, it is possible to take off from one airport and land at another without anyone's permission. That is what makes us great.
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:59 PM

    Please define VFR for everybody. Although I have a good idea of what you are talking about from the context.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pawpaw7:12 PM

    VFR stands for Visual Flight Rules, which governs unregulated flight. I'm not a pilot, but my brother has been flying since he was a teenager, and I'm sure that he and I spent more than a couple of hours in a rented airplane, just tooling around the sky,

    ReplyDelete

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