Flying Friday through the TFRs

I had several flights scheduled for Friday. The first one in the morning did
not go; my CFI student and I spent the whole lesson discussing how to teach
students how to preflight an airplane.

The second was our scheduled air taxi service to Roche Harbor. We left at
1:00 pm so the TFR did not affect our departure, but the return was at 3:00
pm. Tacoma Narrows is just inside the 30 mile ring so I needed a flight plan
and squawk. No problem; although I the briefer told me I would probably have
to deviate to the west in order to spend as little as possible in the TFR,
ATC just had me fly direct from Roche back to Tacoma, flying over both the
Bangor and PSNS TFRs and taking the long way through the Presidential TFR.

The next flight was supposed to be a sightseeing flight at Mt. Rainier, but
that was delayed. Another pilot had to take that while I flew a student
pilot on a stage check to Hoquiam and back. When we called Tacoma Ground for
our squawk they had no record of our flight plan, so I called FSS on the
cell phone. The briefer told me that he had left it with my student to ask
some questions about the IFR/VFR routing; my student thought he had filed.
It took half an hour to straighten that one out. We managed to depart TIW at
7:30, an hour and a half late.

After that there were no problems and we were back at TIW by 9:00 pm. After
the touch and go at HQM we just called up Seattle Center and they gave us
the squawk for our return trip. Still, it was obvious the radio traffic was
much too complicated for a student pilot and I had to help him way more than
I should have had to.

The other pilot had no problems with the sightseeing flight and none of the
other instructors reported problems the entire day. Although I monitored
121.5 the whole day, I never once heard a single transmission on it. That
sharply contrasts with the experience of other Presidential visits when
121.5 was very busy with warnings to aircraft violating the TFRs.

There was one guy, though: he kept insisting he wanted to land at Renton,
which was inside the 10 mile prohibited area. Seattle Approach told him
several times that his closest choices were Olympia, Tacoma Narrows, and
Bremerton. They argued about it for a good fifteen minutes before the guy
finally settled on Paine. I understand the guy's frustration but it seems
inappropriate to take it out on ATC.

Unfortunately, the guys at Kenmore and Boeing Field were not so lucky. They
were shut down at 2:30 pm yesterday and won't get to open until 8:35 am
today. King 5 (the local NBC affiliate) ran a news story about how the TFR
was costing Kenmore $75,000 in revenue. So I guess when NBC isn't trashing
GA for lax security, they sometimes can be persuaded to actually show some
of the effects of too much security. It isn't just aviation, either. Towne
Center (a large, upscale shopping mall) was closed because it is too close
to where Bush was staying, no doubt costing the merchants there a large
fortune. People who drove anywhere near the great man were closely tailed by
the cops.

I am not so sure Kerry deserves credit for not having TFRs around him. He
seems to stay pretty tight within the Presidential TFRs, content with
letting Bush take the heat for his own security.

--
Christopher J. Campbell
World Famous Flight Instructor
Port Orchard, WA


If you go around beating the Bush, don't complain if you rile the animals.