Thomas Heide wrote:

You should increase airport security first and then try to figure out how
an unexperienced pilot can fly all over New York and make a sightseeing
tour around the Statue of Liberty without beeing noticed at all before you
think about arming sky marshalls.

Since that's not what occurred, why should we try to figure that out?

The pilot was "noticed" very quickly. In fact, the "problem" was that he
flew into a tightly controlled airspace (class B, in case you're familiar
with this) w/o clearance from the controlling agency. By definition, he
was seen as soon as he did that.

Separate from that - actually, he was probably outside of the controlled
airspace at this point, but it depends upon his altitude - he circled the
statue. Scores of pilots, commercial and private, do this every [fair
weather] day. I did it myself a few hours after this fellow, in fact.

[In fact, I flew a route not too dissimilar to his. The difference: I did
it with approval from Laguardia Tower.]

I'm by no means excusing his incursion into the airspace w/o a clearance.
That's a "no no", and somewhat dangerous besides (there's a reason why this
airspace is more tightly controlled than other airspace). But he was
noticed, he was intercepted, and there's not a damned thing wrong with
circling the statue.

And how impertinent are you to simply postulate a "law" like the above?

Each nation is free to regulate its own airspace. This amendment isn't a
law that affects anything outside our airspace, so I'm not sure why you
think of this as "impertinent". Your country can mandate clowns on flights
through its airspace, should you wish.

I really pay my tribute to the pilots making a statement like that.

From what I've read, the pilots merely want to have established certain
protocols involving C&C. To my mind, that seems like a smart idea. I
assume that the nations already putting armed officers aboard aircraft
already have these established.

- Andrew