"Christopher C. Stacy" wrote in message
...
The Democratic National Convention is coming to Boston in July.

The Boston Globe today reported that the FAA is going to restrict
all air traffic within 30 nm of Boston: no private aircraft will
be allowed to operate in the airspace. The main thrust of the
story was that this restriction included all the helicopters
used by the traffic reporting services and television news.

You see, ground traffic is being restricted into Boston as well,
including all the major roads and highways being closed in all
directions for dozens of miles around, the public transit system
being shut down in many places, and the mayor and other officials
basically saying, "Boston is closed this week, all businesses
should shut down and everyone please just stay out of the city."
They even have some stupid advertising slogan about it.
It's something of a scandal. I don't want to get into the truly
amazing political and other implications of them effectively
closing down all business and normal life in the whole metro area,
but mention this here only for background because it's relevent to
the airspace story. Nothing like this has ever been done here,
and all the road closings and traffic re-routing to go around Boston
is going to be a terrible mess. In particular, the airborne traffic
reporters are upset that they won't be able to view either the city
or even the highway (Route 128, our beltway on the western side of
the suburbs) because it's inside the restricted airspace.
This highway is how people will drive in order to bypass the Boston area,
and it's way far away from the city, near the 30 nm limit.
But with these flight restrictions, there will be nobody in the
air even to do traffic reports, and this is going to maximize the
difficulty and confusion of the insane ground transportation situation.

The news stations of course are upset that they won't be allowed
to take pictures of the convention from the air, for example
protesters outside the convention hall. (Hopefully there won't
be any other important news happening anywhere in the Boston
metro area that week, either.)

(The article implied that scheduled passenger airliners would still
be operating into BOS. Good luck to the poor travelers once they
get on the ground. But like I said, that's another story.)

While the FAA has not finalized the airspace restrictions, the state
government and convention organizers have already said they don't
think they will be able to make any exemptions for the news and
traffic copters.

Obviously they fear a terrorist air attack on Boston during the
convention, delivered by a small aircraft. (I don't imagine they're
afraid of someone crashing a helicopter into a building or anything
trivial like that. The problem would be a bio or dirty weapon on a
small plane, which they would be unable to effectively intercept.)

One could wonder about a lot of elements and aspects of these flight
restrictions. I am sure a lot of the answers would boil down to a
lack of security resources that might enable more flexible solutions.
We could also speculate and fear how these kinds of restructions could
represent a harbinger of the destruction of our country and freedom.
But let's leave all that alone.

I'll just confine myself to asking: Why for heaven's sake do you
suppose they can't make an exemption and let those helicopters in?
There are only three or four such helicopters for the whole city,
and it's not like we don't know them. These particular aircraft,
which clearly serve the public interest in this situation, could
easily be secured and inspected before each takeoff.

It seems overboard, over-paranoid, and counterproductive.

It's a "forest and trees" problem. The terrorist have been successful --
they have (or will) gum up our traffic, cause untold inconvenience,
financial damage, shut down general aviation, etc. What were seeing is a
PSYOP attack that plays on our fears and worst nightmares.