Bedminster Presidential TFR violated THREE times today, one forced to Land.

[FlyingElvii]

Still got to check the Notams and for TFR’s, folks....
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-bedminster-new-jersey-planes-intercepted-2019-7
https://www.tapinto.net/sections/go...ter-airspace-forced-to-land-in-hillsborough-3

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

How about just eliminating these TFRs? Before we had these was there a rash of attacks on politicians from the air? I think these were enacted post 2001, weren’t they? And like the TSA, which we also got from those attacks, they likely do no good.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

The British are doing a fun thing of throwing milkshakes at the idiots in their gov't.

In the US, I imagine that would result in several years in Federal prison, at a minimum.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

How many terrorist has the TSA caught trying to board a plane.... zero.
I don't know that one. Sure it is a pain to have to go through but I am glad someone did something besides complaining.

What the TSA does is spend $8.1B per year with no evidence they have any effect on the safety of travel. The rates of that kind of attack (non crew members deliberately destroying a plane that departed from a US airport) have not changed in a statistically significant way before and after the formation of the TSA (it is a very rare event so hard to obtain much statistical power). There is some evidence that the existence of the TSA screening indirectly causes 500 more deaths per year on the highways due to people deciding to drive instead of taking a short haul flight. Additionally there is the violation of everyone's privacy and the enormous waste of time.

And if the airport security had been doing their job instead to bowing to public pressure then 9/11 never would have happened.

I'd be interested to hear more of what you mean here. Certainly it seems the FBI had messed up.

One more interesting fact about airport security screening which is not often noted. Hijackings in the US peaked in 1969. Metal detectors were introduced in Jan 1973. Yet it appears most people think that the metal detectors were responsible for reducing hijackings.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

As much as it pains me to say it, the show aspect of airline security post 9/11 probably saved the airlines. Or at least some of them.

People in general are very bad at assessing risk. Big, scary, no-control-over-it, but extremely rare risks have a lot more impact (particularly multiplied by media coverage, both social and traditional) and cause mass freak outs. This way people could see that the authorities were "doing something" and felt like they could go back to flying.

This is a good point and an argument for the idea of privatizing airline security. Let the airlines and their insurers decided what the appropriate tradeoff between security (or at least the perception of security, as in security theatre) and convenience should be. They are in the best position to judge what will be acceptable and reassuring to the customers and also perhaps actually improve security. I very much doubt that they would choose to require shoes being taken off and no liquids over 3.4 ounces.

There is really no reason to think it will be one size fits all. The FAA and TSA in some sense already acknowledge this in the division into those operations requiring TSA screening (more that 12,500 lbs gross weight and more than 61 passengers) and those which don't. There are likely additional factors which could weigh in such as nature of departure and destination airports, etc.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I also do wonder what the effect on the airlines would have been without the TSA. Not only does the public have a hard time rationally assessing very rare big risks, they also have a very short memory. So it is possible that airline traffic would have been back to normal in a few weeks after it became clearer that these attacks were a one-off sort of event.

Of course after the 2001 attacks the airlines begged for all sorts of relief from the federal government. They were dependent on rate setting by the CAB prior to deregulation and so have been in that habit since back in the 1930s. One of the more interesting aspects of that relief was that their liability in the event of terrorist attacks was limited so they didn't have to be responsible for the damage that their aircraft could cause when misused.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

However I wonder if there isn't another component to that- something that might be way down in our subconscious where we're far more concerned about the nefarious them getting us. Like somehow in our brains the bad guys killing us ranks worse than the far more likely risk that the family cat trips us on the stairs and we break our necks.

I suspect that is correct. May even be related to a fear of being the prey.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

No one's fling to die just so he cam make a speech or play a round unbothered by a banner.

All the more reason to get rid of these TFRs! Less golf being played on the taxpayer’s dime and less hot air from politicians.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Are we absolutely sure it was a one-off event? If so, would it have been if we'd made no changes to our security posture? .

I don’t think absolute certainty is ever possible in this type of thing.

But no credible evidence was found that any other planes were involved on that day. If true, grounding everyone didn’t actually prevent any attacks that day.

As noted by others, hardening cockpit doors has made it much harder to execute that particular type of attack. But hardening the doors has its own downsides, for example, pilot suicide/murder becomes a bigger factor.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Connect the dots please. There's a TFR over the president whether he's playing golf or eating fried chicken. Eliminating VIP TFRs wouldn't affect the golf or the fried chicken.

And if we eliminated the TFRs and he felt it was too risky to go out on a golf outing because there was no TFR, then he would be playing golf less.

Of course he might decide, reasonably in my opinion, that the risk is not really that great without the TFR. If so, then the taxpayers would save money by not having to monitor the TFR with expensive military jets, and GA pilots, like many of us here, would not be inconvenienced.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

It's entirely not up to him.

I realize there are protocols, etc. that are usually followed in terms of tactical decisions. But isn’t the secret service part of treasury, which is a branch of the administration? So if the President decided to eliminate these, would it not be in his power? Or is there some other statutory requirement ?

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Who cares who’s a threat to a politician? We published an order of succession for a reason.
...
Don’t want the job under those terms, don’t apply.

Hear hear! They are a bunch of people who think of themselves as being of so much more importance that the average citizen that we should all pay and be inconvenienced so they can feel safe.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

From a national security perspective, he indisputably is.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree there. I think that if we have a government of laws, and not men, it doesn't really matter much who is the President. It really shouldn't be that important to the average citizen. And I don't think the President is a "symbol of our nation" who needs extraordinary protection from all conceivable airborne attacks. He is supposed to just be the executive doing the work of the citizens, not "our Leader". In terms of national security, we have an order of succession.

I understand though that the politicians themselves and those who work to protect them and those in the military think this is all terribly important to everyone's safety and security. I just disagree on that, but debating the facts of that really does veer off into politics badly.

And I also agree entirely with @denverpilot, there are plenty of people who want the job. Eliminate the TFRS and the other expensive perks. If people don't like that, don't apply for the job.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

It occurs to me that it should in principle be possible to figure out how much it is actually worth to protect TFRs and then decide whether the expense of the protection (F-16s, inconvenience to other pilots and flights, etc.) is worth it. Not that such a rational process seems to ever be undertaken by the FAA and/or secret service -- they are more in the mode of "have to protect at any cost".

First compute how much it costs if the politician in question is successfully attacked. This could be in terms of likely property damage, expenses to bring in new people and bring them up to speed, lost opportunity costs, etc.

Then determine how likely a successful attack is and how much of that risk is actually mitigated by having the TFR. Multiple the cost by the likely risk mitigated.

Then compare to the cost of putting up and patrolling the TFR.

I seriously doubt this would work out in favor of the TFRs, even for the POTUS, given the very low likelihood of an airborne attack being successfully completed and the TFRs likely having little to no effect on that risk. But I could be persuaded by an actual set of numbers and a study.

I very much doubt such a calculation has been made. When similar calculations are done for the TSA, the cost is something like 100X greater than it should be relative to the possible benefit. Nonetheless, we have had the TSA for 18 years now.