What a waste of time and money. I can see how this stuff would happen, especially in Sunday-flier-friendly Florida.

TRENDING: Fighter jet chases down small plane near Obama

 

The pilot of the Cessna apparently screwed up; however the government is expert at wasting money, cutbacks or not. In fact I have severely curtailed personal/recreational flying due to the security measures alone. That plus the higher costs of aviation in general suck too much of the enjoyment out of a weekend trip with friends or family. In many cases I now drive for shorter trips. Sure you can say it is just another of myriad preflight & inflight actions though I find it kind of like the last straw when it comes to recreational flying. If I am flying for hire I still consider it a nusinance though just another part of the job. I know an airline captain who had planned on doing much flying with his personal aircraft after retirement. He retired and flew his plane for a few years and recently sold it. His sole reason was that he had enough of the security stuff and no longer enjoyed flying due to that...

 

The last paragraph in the story mentioned the President's trip to LA. That guy should be awarded the Dumb Criminal of the year award.

Dumb luck

 

Took the words out of my mouth, what a complete moron.

 

Yeah, but I'd imagine if you are transporting drugs, you probably don't request flight following. It stands to reason that somebody who doesn't check TFRs would be a higher likelihood of also doing other things wrong.

Yoda2, what are you talking about regarding security measures? I always thought of GA the one last refuge from the hysteria regarding airplane security.

 

You can get SUA (special use airspace) updates directly to many cockpits in GA these days, and there is no excuse other than blind stupidity for not getting them. Garmin, Avidyne, Chelton, Sandel and several other makers supply panel equipment that can receive live satellite feeds with airspace updates- even some smart phone apps are reliable (ie. ForeFlight), there are lots of ways to get these notifications.