Here's evidence why the gov't assholes overreacted.

In article .com, wrote:
Gimme a break man. From their perspective, all they knew is that there
appeared to be an imminent threat. What possible good would have come
from just standing around in the capitol building waiting to be
possibly obliterated. It's not like they could have fought back.

Wherever they ran (like headless chickens) they would have been possibly
obliterated.

If the offending aircraft had a Davy Crockett round in the luggage area,
it wouldn't have made any difference whether they stayed where they were
or ran around like headless chickens. It would have been better if they
had stayed where they are and saved the energy, instead of demonstrating
to potential terrorists how easily they can be terrorized.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

Dylan Smith wrote:

It would have been better if they
had stayed where they are and saved the energy, instead of
demonstrating
to potential terrorists how easily they can be terrorized.


Exactly! It has now been demonstrated that two people flying a
trainer with the destructive power of a Mini Cooper can bring the U.S.
government to a grinding halt. Not only does everything stop, but there
is the bonus of worldwide news coverage showing outright panic in the
streets. If I were a terrorist, I would be overjoyed. My job has been
done for me.

When I contrast yesterday's embarrasment with the real threats that
troops are expected to face daily in Iraq, I am convinced that we have
become a nation of cowards.

John Galban=====N4BQ (PA28-180)

Maybe [they squawked VFR] to not call attention to themselves for as long as they can.

To not call attention to themselves, terrorists would get a regular
squawk code, flight following, and all that stuff, as if they were
passing through or going to one of the airports on the other side of the
ring. Then, at the last minute, they turn the transponder off, dive
past redline towards the target, and deliver their message.

Ok, that's still five minutes in a 150, maybe long enough to decide to
tell the President that his ride is waiting.

Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

R.L. wrote:
It's come out that the C150 was squawking VFR. Why on F*g earth would a
pilot on a supposed suicide-bomb mission bother to have his damned
transponder on, much less squawk 1200 while penetrating the ADIZ? Doesn't
make sense.

Either a primary only return (remember the evacutation due to the
birds?) or a 1200 squawk is bad news. I suspect, you'd be better
off squawking 7700 than either of those codes in the ADIZ. There
have been reports of people going to 1200 on the ground at ADIZ
airports triggering investigations.

If I were a terrorist I would squawk a random number.
That way the conrollers would think it was simply an airliner that
didn't get entered in the system.