I don't know the answer to that, but I do have an opinion about what
will eventually happen, and it won't be because some pilot made a
mistake.

There are, being generous, about 1,000,000 pilots in this country.
Probably less are active pilots, and even amoung the active, less are
proficient.

There are over 300,000,000 people living in this country. If you do
the math, you see that pilots are a tiny minority of the general
population.

We have no clout. I don't care how many AOPA members there are, we
have no real clout. When McVeigh blew up the Federal building, I
didn't see anyone immediately halting the rental of large trucks, nor
was the sale of fertilizer stopped. People could still buy diesel.

But when three planes hit the twin towers and the Pentagon, all
flight, including of all places Alaska, was halted. The reason was
that although I was afraid of trucks parked in front of buildings for
a while, there were just too many of them and too few light aircraft.

The reality here is this. We will be restricted as the European pilots
are now. It's just a matter of time. And since we are viewed
essentually as a bunch of Saturday and Sunday flying enthusiasts - it
will be easy to make draconian restrictions that we will fight and
lose.

The gravy days of flight are gone. When I was young, I could hop in my
dads Champ and fly about with nary a care. It's sad to see them go.


On 12 May 2005 09:20:01 -0700, "Hank Rausch"
wrote:

I would like to start a thread on what I see as the most pertinent
take-away from yesterday's incursion: How can the current responses be
modified to make the response more relevant to the threat, when the
inevitable occurs again and a pilot gets lost? Assuming pilots won't
get lost in the future doesn't seem very realistic (how many of us can
say that we were never lost?). And there seems to be general consensus
that the images on CNN of F-16's cavorting while the Cessna put-putted
its merry way, interspersed with shots of people fleeing the Capitol,
were faintly ridiculous and put the US in a bad light. So what's the
solution? CNN showed a red-green laser system they want to use to
signal pilots, but it's not clear how this would have addressed the
most recent incursion.

One of the issues is that there is no easy way to distinguish a 1200
sqawk from an L-4 (no, or minimum, threat) from the same squawk from a
G-4, which I think all of can agree could do significant damage.
Consequently, we adopt a one-resposne fits all policy to any incursion.
Are there any technological tricks which would help tailor the response
to the type of ariplane involved?

Hank Rausch
N8806T