Well it's not like it was moving at jet speeds.

 

Nice of them to do the evacuation and possibly yank some certificates ---Could have actually used one of those "Patriot" missiles used during Gulf War I to bring down the Iraqi Scuds. Don't think the mighty dash would have a chance. Could go back to the old way of "shoot first, ask questions later" or Teddy Roosevelt's "Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick". Don't think anyone would like to start off the New Year with a big bang.

It's not a good idea to go lost comm when flying near sensitive areas.
Flying from southern Colorado until passed Minneapolis without talking to someone is one thing, but messing around in an area that was actually attacked by "friendly" aircraft is another. Pay Attention --- It's not really that hard.

 

I'm pretty sure Piedmont doesn't have any 1500hr captains running around, and I'm also pretty sure they're at least vaguely familiar with ops in the NE including DCA, so I wouldn't go hanging the crew for this one just yet. Its likely they missed a handoff or something and were temporarily NORDO inside the ADIZ prompting the response; in the grand scheme of things, that's not really that big a deal. Anybody remember the state of Kentucky's King Air 200 causing the Capitol to be evacuated during Reagan's funeral a few years ago? They lost their transponder enroute and the FAA allowed them to continue to landing at DCA, but FAA didn't talk to NORAD about it and well, the rest was breaking news.

If this crew *did* enter P56 then yeah, that sucks...but I'm pretty sure every airline that flies in and out of DCA has at least one occurance every year, some airlines multiple occurrences.

I've seen Dashes come down the Anacostia on the east side of P56 more than once; dunno if that is what happened here but that's just different enough from normal ops to make me as a pilot nervous.

 

Agreed on the press thing. I wasn't hanging the crew. Lol on the other part.

 

Checked flight aware, if this is the flight, it appears that the prohibited areas were missed?

FlightAware > Piedmont Airlines #4352 Flight Tracker

 

We'll you're talking about a building full of politicians. Remember, T.K. was too afraid to get back into the water to get his passenger.

 

Wrong, he was too drunk, if he had gone back, he'd have drowned too.

 

Hmmmm ----- 5 miles till we get there and still at 10,000 ft --- guess we missed a handoff ---- anyone know the tower freq ?

 

Have you ever flown into National? We're often at 10,000 ft. within five miles of the airport - especially when coming up from the South on the RNAV arrival.

 

Reminds me of baseballs' Bob Uecker, "just a bit outside". Too bad, that's a bad deal to have. I know of a pilot that's going through a deal currently, BOS class B and he's looking at a year.