A Pretty Day
It starts out innocently enough. The weather today is prime for flying, you’ve got nothing in particular to do on your schedule. It’s been a while since you took to the skies, so you decide you’ll go for a leisurely ride and enjoy the freedom of flight and its sights for a little while.
Excited about going up for a little escape from the hum-drum of terrestrial existence and to have a bit of fun, you wheel your airplane out to the ramp and do your pre-flight checks. Everything good there, you make sure you’ve got enough fuel and oil on board, climb in and start your ship up. Seatbelts secured, taxi out towards the runway, and do your pre-flight runup. Everything’s A-OK, so you roll out onto the active runway, get on the radio and announce your intentions.
Throttle pushed up to the firewall, you do your takeoff roll, and you get airborne. Everything’s beautiful.
You might cruise around for a little while drinking in the sights, maybe practicing some maneuvers, exercising prudence in not stressing your airplane, and not exceeding your operational expertise. Your head’s on a swivel, watching out for other traffic. Safety is important to you, and you take it seriously amidst the glee of freedom you’re experiencing. You decide to take a ride up to a nearby airport to check up on some friends, or just do some practice landings, or to use the facilities, or just to get a refreshment. You’re doing what you love to do, relishing the joy of flight, and doing everything safely and correctly.
Then The Fun Stops
Then, as you’re approaching the remote airport, you get a call from Guard on the local airport’s frequency. You’re sickened to be informed that you’ve busted a VIP TFR, a VIP temporary flight restriction. Your heart sinks. The Guard comes back on the radio and gives you vectors to exit the area and to make sure you comply a helicopter pulls up and escorts you out. They give you a phone number to call when you are safely on the ground. Uh-oh.
In this geographical area of the world, and especially with the current governmental administration, VIP TFR notices are common occurrences. The government will close airspace or tightly restrict the traffic in an area on such-and-such a date for so many hours to allow safe travel for a VIP, typically for the President or Vice-President. Non-VIP TFRs are common around major sporting events and for certain scientific purposes, as well.
The relevant authorities take TFRs very seriously, especially VIP TFRs. We’re taught that any of three things can happen after a violation, depending upon its severity: 1) your airman certificate can be suspended or revoked; 2) you are subject to criminal prosecutions; and in extreme cases, 3) the use of deadly force is authorized. It’s a serious matter.
The FAA timely publishes upcoming TFR notifications. It is incumbent upon every pilot to check and see if any are active restrictions in the regions in which they’ll be operating, prior to taking off. The same applies to Restricted Airspace limitations, which are either active or inactive. Prohibited airspaces are always closed.
The Aftermath
Once you’re safely on the ground, you, still red-faced from the incursion, call the phone number to the Secret Service that you’ve been provided by the nice helicopter, where you have to explain yourself and your actions in the incident.
You could be the most patriotic person in the country, with a long history of military service, and without any malicious intent whatsoever, and still, come away feeling like you’re viewed as a domestic terrorist. Even if not that extreme, you’re sure you’re now on a list somewhere.
Even though you’ve satisfied the Secret Service’s curiosity that you meant no harm, you still need to deal with the FAA, to determine what the next course of action will be. You’re facing, in progressive degrees, a terse talking to (a slap on the wrist), a suspension of your airman certificate for a period of time, a revocation of your airman certificate, a fine, and/or criminal charges. At least you have dispensed with the deadly force option. You still need to convince the FAA that it was a one-off oversight. You plead your case with them in an interview; your history as an airman weighs heavily into the subsequent action they’ll take.
Proper Protocols
You kick yourself for exercising poor judgment in flying. But it is perhaps better to term it that it was a lapse in observing proper protocols. Poor judgment is more correctly applied to running out of gas, or flying VFR (Visual Flight Rules) into IMC (Instrument Meterological Conditions).
The fact is, we’re no longer living in the barnstorming age. This is especially true for those of us who live in certain highly-controlled airspace areas of the country.
Maybe some of that throwback to those halcyon days still exists in sparsely populated rural areas of the country, but authorities get nervous when near large airports or military operational areas, or other federal districts are concerned.
Accident Chains and Incident Chains
We’re taught in ADM (Aeronautical Decision Making) that most aviation accidents occur because of a sequential combination of events that result in disaster, and properly recognizing and responding to the beginning events of an accident chain increases the life expectancy of the pilot. Accident chains don’t always begin in the air, they frequently begin on the ground. It’s why we do pre-flight inspections prior to going aloft to make sure our ships are airworthy.
We make sure our airplanes are sound. We make sure the weather is suitable, within our operational capabilities that we’ve gained through experience. We make sure we’re physically and mentally fit to be the Pilot In Command. We self-brief our flights prior to going up; what our intentions are and we mentally go over emergency procedures. Once in the air, we are vigilant to scan the instruments and listen to the airplane to make sure all is well. We are also vigilant to the extent possible about where we physically are at any given moment and who else is around us to avoid. We monitor air and ground traffic on the radio and interact when appropriate. We let our superior judgment obviate our need to exercise our superior skills.
It’s easy to overlook an item or two, which is why we have checklists. And it’s especially easy to overlook some items when we are about to embark on a leisure flight without any formalized flight-planned mission. Now, the mission needn’t be a particularly important one. It might just be a flight to a nearby airport restaurant for some breakfast. It is still incumbent upon us to plan every flight, even the impromptu ones.
This busted TFR event didn’t happen because of a lack of observing operational protocols, we did everything correctly flying-wise. But there was a lack in flight planning protocols. One of the items in proper flight planning is to check the NOTAMs to make sure that everywhere we’ll be flying is legal at the time we’re in the air.
It doesn’t happen to just new pilots either. Seasoned pilots who’ve been going up for decades are still at risk, and some would argue even more so because of the complacency that occurs from knowing a route and the lay of the land so intimately. There is that strong urge to “just go up for a little bit,” without any flight planning.
This particular event did not result from an accident chain. Rather, it’s more correctly termed the beginning of an incident chain, caused by a lack of exercising proper flight-planning protocol. The airspace violation didn’t result in a potentially catastrophic series of events, but had we not heard the Guard calling us and we continued on our merry way toward the kill-zone, it could have.
Our “Don’t Do That Again” Lists
Whether a pilot will ever admit it or not, we all have a “Don’t Do That Again” list floating around in our noggins. Because we’re still here to talk about it, the outcome obviously wasn’t as dire as it could have been. Hence the importance of applying proper ADM prior to even climbing into the cockpit. We’re all human and subject to omission and error, which, again, is why we have checklists. We have to cross-check our Go/No-Go decisions to see if we’re even legal to fly where we’ll be going. And in that cross-check we need to be just as diligent as we are when measuring our fuel or oil prior to flight.
A Powerful Lesson Learned
Since we were able to walk away from the event, we can at least chalk it up to another item on our list, which, because of its severity will be indelibly burned into our mental checklists going forward. Mark Twain once said, “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” We all have lapses in protocol from time to time, but it’s guaranteed you’ll never let it happen again, if the FAA allows you to retain your airman certification.
“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” – C.S. Lewis