Disney and the No-fly Zone

[jlima]

Who monitors what you do . . . does someone have to report you to get a ticket from the FAA, or is some guy in the tower at Fullerton watching you?

 

[roymccoy]

I never said that Disney should stop security checks, I just pointed out that they have other motives when they're checking for guns. They pull more contraband food out of the backpacks than anything else. Who does that help?

I already said that I am against anything that puts pilots lives at risk. TFR's are distractions and most of the time, useless.

When did I say that it was hurting my business? Did I miss something?

We are a member of the AOPA and they are working very hard to remove these TFR's where they don't make sense.

Roy

(We should take this to PM)

 

[roymccoy]

jlima, there are many people who watch the skies. Fullerton Airport has radar that can detect if you have broken the TFR. IT is in their power to report you to the FAA. But that actually goes to prove my point why the TFR's are useless. There really isn't anyone monitoring them! The only way that Fullerton Airport would ever get involved is if they had a request from the FAA to verify that the incursion had happened at some point in the past. This would take days and it is only going to hurt law-abiding pilots.

Roy

 

[HauntedMansionFan]

Originally posted by roymccoy
I never said that Disney should stop security checks, I just pointed out that they have other motives when they're checking for guns. They pull more contraband food out of the backpacks than anything else. Who does that help?

I have never seen them remove "contraband" food out of backpacks, unless it has been any item in glass. i.e. bottles or containers. I myself have carried a bottle of water and a bottle of Coke in the parks in my backpack.

When did I say that it was hurting my business? Did I miss something?

My correction, perhaps flying isn't your business, but you did say this:

As I have said before, my wife is a pilot and we own a small plane and the DL flight restriction has almost shut us down.

It was my fault for assuming that flying was your business.

We are a member of the AOPA and they are working very hard to remove these TFR's where they don't make sense.

I asked what you were doing personally, not an institution that you hold a membership to. If you feel as strongly as you do, and it is quite clear that you do, then perhaps you should do more then mention it on a Disney posting board.

 

[jlima]

. . . So if I read between the lines of what you're saying, somebody at the Tragic Kingdom can call the Fullerton FAA people & say, we saw banner airplanes on these days & can you track these guys down? Is that how it works?

 

[HauntedMansionFan]

Originally posted by roymccoy
But that actually goes to prove my point why the TFR's are useless.

The government is a strange and mysterious entity and what goes on behind closed doors is anybody's guess. But with these new TFRs in place, nobody has any clue what the government has up their sleeve. Now hopefully this wouldn't happen, but lets say hypothetically that someone in the future does launch an attack against any area in the US that is guarded by a TFR, then I would agree that it was probably useless. But until that time, I won't.

 

[HauntedMansionFan]

Originally posted by jlima
. . . So if I read between the lines of what you're saying, somebody at the Tragic Kingdom can call the Fullerton FAA people & say, we saw banner airplanes on these days & can you track these guys down? Is that how it works?

As far as I'm aware the only place that can request that type of information would be the FAA or some other type of governmental agency with the power to do so.

 

[roymccoy]

jlima - no, the FAA doesn't really take calls from "civillians" about airspace violations. It is very hard to tell, by the untrained eye, how high an airplane is from the ground. Remember, an airplane can circle DL at 3001 feet all day if it wants. The complaint to the FAA would be generated by law enforcement, other pilots and sometimes control towers and approach control, but there is no one specifically looking at the DL TFR. This complaining process would be done over days and weeks....not the seconds that it would take a terrorist to bust the TFR and do whatever he was going to do.

HMF - We give to the AOPA political action commitee and we try to educate people whenever and wherever we can to the pilot's plight. I think that a Disney chat board is the PERFECT place to air my feelings as a pilot about the DL TFR.

Roy

 

[roymccoy]

You're going to wait until something happens and THEN you're going to consider them a mistake? Okay. Whatever.

I like to think that I can see that they are a mistake now. They do absolutely NOTHING for the safety of the DL guest. Tell me, how do YOU feel that they could add to your safety?

Roy

(Remember, there are no anti-aircraft guns on top of Cinderella's Castle)

 

[HauntedMansionFan]

Originally posted by roymccoy
You're going to wait until something happens and THEN you're going to consider them a mistake? Okay. Whatever.

Can you prove to me that they are a mistake? Can you show me how you know what the government has up their sleeve for these areas?

(Remember, there are no anti-aircraft guns on top of Cinderella's Castle)

Really?

HMF - We give to the AOPA political action commitee and we try to educate people whenever and wherever we can to the pilot's plight.

So your "plight" override the feeling of security that others recieve? As "false" as you might percieve it to be?

I think that a Disney chat board is the PERFECT place to air my feelings as a pilot about the DL TFR.

Of course it is, you get to attack Disney in the process.

 

[jlima]

DH's opinion is that a no fly zone could potentially stop a copycat incident (like that kid in Tampa). It might make some nutjob think twice. What do you think RoyMccoy?

 

[roymccoy]

jmlima - How is it going to stop it? Just think this stuff through. That kid commited suicide by flying into that building. He's not going to care about getting a letter from the FAA in 30 days!
He would have done it TFR or no TFR. TFR's are good things if you are trying to stop law abiding pilots from flying over an area. They do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING To stop a terrorist from doing anything. TFR's have their place in the flying community. TFR's are not "force shields" that keep airplanes out of an area. The pilot has to be willing to comply. The government is taking a tool that the FAA uses (TFR's) to let pilot's know that something is unsafe to fly over and using it to give the general public the "warm and fuzzies" that they're somehow safer. The only way to make DL safer from air attack would be to put in a battery of Patriot misslies and monitor the airspace 24/7 at least 50 miles out. That's it. That's the only way. A TFR around DL is as useless as a 90 year old almost blind unarmed security guard without a walkie talkie guarding a bank.

Roy

 

[Another Voice]

I think I do not have a reputation around these parts as being a Disney apologist by even the slightest measure, but this is one area that I think Disney is absolutely correct.

Disneyland has had a ceiling on its airspace since practically the day it opened – and for a practical safety aspect. The park attracts private pilots like a candle attracts moths simply because they want to go sightseeing. It was quickly realized that with so many planes gawking that eventually two were going to end up in the same airspace at the same time. Not only would the pilots and passengers be at risk, so too would all those underneath them. While the article talks about “public” airspace and the glories of towing the Rosie O’Grady banner over Epcot, it fails to mention the seven pilots who died doing so. One has to wonder if the ability to sell a few more drinks was worth the cost – or the risk that death number eight would have added to that count by victims on the ground.

And unlike the Mall of America, or the Sears Tower or Ernie’s Wresslin’ ‘Gator Farm - Disney has been and is the target of specific and direct threats. A sarin gas attack on Disneyland, launched by the same group that carried out the successful attack in a Toyko subway, was thwarted in Los Angeles (the terrorists were on their way to the park with the gas in their backpacks). Disneyland was the probable back-up target for the Millennium bombing of LAX. Disneyland Paris has been the site of several attacks since opening: everything from French farm workers blowing up power lines to gangs of Anarchists beating up costumed characters to a cell funding their operations by theft on property. And maps of WDW have been found in the caves of Afghanistan next to videotapes of the crowds.

The goal of the no fly zone – and a lot of seemingly pointless security measures – is not to provide an impenetrable bubble protected by anti-aircraft batteries. You can not stop terrorist attacks like that. The goal is to provide “friction”, a series of small individual barriers and traps that through their simple accumulation of weight with cause problems. Many analysts believe the target of the plane that hit the Pentagon was originally supposed to be the White House. But because of existing flight restrictions at the time (remember that someone did crash a private plane into the White House a few years earlier) that this medieval cockroach flying the plane was unfamiliar with the area and couldn’t locate the building. He circled around again and hit the biggest thing he could find – the Pentagon.

It’s the little things that count. The LAX bombing was stopped by a customs inspector that wondered why this guy wouldn’t open his trunk; an inspection that found a leaking pipe stopped the plot to pump nerve gas into the American embassy in Rome. Perhaps just maybe preventing someone from making a practice run at Spaceship Earth is worth it. Hopefully we’ll never know, but I’ll take the uncertainty over my “right” to read a banner touting a drink special at Hooters.

The false sense of security being touted is the fantasy that hunky Ben Affleck will single handily stop the nuclear bomb by racing through the city to the pulsating sound track or that a Navy SEAL team will burst into the bad guy’s lair and deliver a flourish of karate moves just as the timer reaches “0:00:03”. It is a fantasy because we want to be just an audience to all of this, to be able to sit back and watch the thrilling pictures, to cheer for the good guys, and to carry on life as normal. We want "other guy" to have to pay the price of security, we want to suffer no change in our routine or the slighest inconvinence.

This war is not being fought for our amusement and none of us can demand to remain unaffected. Although the images on 9/11 seemed like something out of a Bruckheimer movie – they were real. The actions necessary to prevent those images from happening again have to be real as well.

 

[roymccoy]

AV- TFR's are used by the FAA to inform law abiding pilots not to fly over an area because it could be potentially dangerous to flight. The government is using these TFR's to make the general public better about THEIR safety in the parks. How is a TFR going to stop a terrorist?

Disney does not own, control, regulate, etc the airspace above it's parks. Only the FAA does.
The FAA has not seen fit to give Disney a TFR (until now) because of banner towing or sight seeing flights. That would never happen. Disney DID receive a TFR by using the Iraq conflict as an excuse. They got what they wanted, just in a different and underhanded way. Personally,
I don't think the lives of pilots are worth Disney geting to control their skies to stop banner towing competitve advertising.

Roy

BTW - Certain members of Congress are calling these "Mickey Mouse TFR's" and are looking to repeal them. Disney may not have pulled the wool over EVERYONE's eyes.

 

[roymccoy]

AV - Please don't spread false stories. The TFR's had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the terrorists not being able to find the White House. They couldn't find the White House because it is small and they were going very fast. The Pentagon is huge and it was an easier target. You don't have to fly over an area to become familiar with it. With modern charts and GPS navigation you can fly down to a 3 meter area with pinpoint accuracy. The terrorists blew right through every bit of airspace protection and airspace rules when flying to their destinations. TFR's provide no "buffer zone"...that's not even the governments reason for putting them there. All of the airspace in the LA basin is controlled. The TFR's don't "control" them anymore than they already are, they just keep law abiding pilots out of an area.

Roy

Also, if a terrorist wanted to check out Disney before he came back to hit it, he could do it from 3001 feet. The TFR's are a false sense of security and cause risk to pilots and their flights.

 

[Another Voice]

"They couldn't find the White House because it is small and they were going very fast. The Pentagon is huge and it was an easier target."

Which is why a "training run" would have been so important to them. They practiced everything else about the operation (including taking the exact same flights on several occasions to learn how the flight crews worked and to time events). And there reports of them taking private planes for several practice runs around New York and Washington. Being unable to make the exact approch to the White House has been sighted as important factor in what happened (the building is hiding by trees at the angle the terrorists came in from).

Punching GPS coordinates into a computer is nice - but is someone who thinks he's going to be in Paradise being serviced by seventy-two virgins really the kind of person who would trust a computer over his own eyes? These rodents were not stupid, but they weren't the most sophisticated group either.

The air space restrictions are not meant to stop an attack once it is underway. It is meant to provide another trip wire that will deter an attack on the target and further frustrate actions. The false security comes from the demand that you either have to provide absolute and complete protection - or do nothing at all because "it's not guanteed". There is no such thing as a perfect defense. It's the small measures that work - and sometimes those small measure impact a lot of people.

Sorry, but I don't like having my shoes X-rayed when I check in at the airport but I understand it has to be done. If some people can't fly their banners in the most obnoxious areas or a few people can't go joy riding at their whim - then it's a price we have to bear until the Middle Ages are stuffed back into their box.

 

[roymccoy]

Having your shoes x-rayed, although I don't think you can put too much stock in it either, at least will stop people from putting bombs in your shoes and getting on a plane. TFR's don't stop terrorists. They only stop law abiding (critical word) pilots from doing something. TFR's are used by the FAA to inform pilots of areas that are dangerous to flight or safety. They aren't for stopping terrorists. The Homeland Security department is just looking for a way to make people feel better but using our TFR's as a way to do that can make flying less safe than it was before.

The way I look at it, you get ZERO protection from TFR's around Disney but you do raise the risk to pilots who have to navigate around them. Where's the benefit? I hate to say it, but if they were serious about using TFR's as a way to stop terrorists, they would make it 300 miles wide and that way they MIGHT have enough time to react to an incursion. That's the ONLY way a TFR could even remotely make you safer at DL. Now, that will never happen because it would, in essence, shut down the airspace in the SoCal area.

Roy

BTW - I doubt the terrorists would use airplanes again anyway. They used a U-Haul truck the first time they tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1992 and planes the second time.

 

[Dznefreek]

I never said that Disney should stop security checks

Security checks are a joke. You can go to any resort and hop on any bus without showing any ID whatsoever and move freely around the resort. Sure they ask for ID at the guard house but they just glance at it and say, "Have a nice day."

like that kid in Tampa

He stole the plane and did not know how to fly. It was not a copy-cat.

 

[EUROPA]

Originally posted by roymccoy

The way I look at it, you get ZERO protection from TFR's around Disney but you do raise the risk to pilots who have to navigate around them. Where's the benefit? I hate to say it, but if they were serious about using TFR's as a way to stop terrorists, they would make it 300 miles wide and that way they MIGHT have enough time to react to an incursion. That's the ONLY way a TFR could even remotely make you safer at DL. Now, that will never happen because it would, in essence, shut down the airspace in the SoCal area.

Roy

BTW - I doubt the terrorists would use airplanes again anyway. They used a U-Haul truck the first time they tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1992 and planes the second time.

In your military opinion how much time would they need to shoot a plane out of the sky?

 

[roymccoy]

I don't really have a " military opinion" because I'm not in the military but I can say that I'm sure that it's more than a three mile circle up to 3000 feet (the current TFR around DL). Also, there are no missles set-up around DL. You can't hide those things.

This is called "symbolism over substance."

Roy