[JYO] Restricting Airspace -- And Common Sense

 
 
Restricting Airspace -- And Common Sense 
By James Fallows 
Say the letters "TSA" and a distinct picture comes into most minds. The  
Transportation Security Administration is a well-intentioned but hopelessly  
cumbersome attempt to make air travel safer. Say the letters "ADIZ" and a blank 
 
look comes across most faces. But for a small number of Americans this acronym  
represents everything wrong with the TSA, and worse. 
ADIZ stands for Air Defense Identification Zone. Its supposed purpose is to  
safeguard the Washington area from terrorist attacks from small airplanes. The 
 ADIZ separates a large part of the Baltimore-Washington region from the rest 
of  the United States. 
Before Sept. 11, 2001, ADIZ restrictions applied mainly to international  
borders. These days airplanes from anywhere else in the country must cross what 
 
amounts to a border to fly anywhere near Washington -- and "near" means as far 
 away as the Eastern Shore or the Virginia hunt country. 
The airspace restrictions have been fortified since first being applied  
temporarily after Sept. 11. Now the government proposes to make them permanent, 
 
despite objections from every group with firsthand experience: air traffic  
controllers, pilots, airport owners and even, discreetly, officials of the  
Federal Aviation Administration. (The deadline for public comments on the plan  
is 
today.) 
One part of the new airspace proposals has drawn little controversy: the  
"freeze," or Flight Restricted Zone, which is a circular area 34 miles across  
centered on Reagan National Airport in which private aviation is prohibited. On 
 
a nighttime training flight in the 1990s, I flew (while in contact with  
controllers at National) toward the city over the Potomac and out again over 
the  
Anacostia. Most pilots realize that flights like that will never happen  
again. 
The dispute concerns the much larger surrounding ADIZ area, which covers  
several thousand square miles. To operate at any point in this zone, pilots 
must  
go through unique and elaborate procedures. They must file a flight plan 
before  entering the ADIZ and must do so by telephone, often having to wait 10 
or 
20  minutes on hold rather than just spending a minute or two to file the plan 
via  computer. 
Once in the airplane, pilots must contact a controller for a code to identify 
 their airplane on radar -- and must often guess the frequency on which to 
reach  the controller, since it changes. If the flight plan has been lost in 
the 
 system, as often occurs, they may have to land at an airport outside the 
ADIZ  and start over again. If radio congestion means they can't reach a 
controller,  they must circle outside the ADIZ border, avoiding other pilots in 
the 
same  predicament. 
These might seem trivial burdens if they made sense for security, but they  
don't. The ADIZ plan displays that special combination of other early, panicky  
post-Sept. 11 moves: It doesn't hinder terrorists, but it complicates life 
for  everyone else. What mainly stops terrorists from using small aircraft is 
that  they're such inefficient delivery vehicles. My small propeller airplane, 
which I  may not legally fly as close to the Capitol as Tysons Corner, can 
carry  one-sixth as many pounds of cargo -- or bombs -- as my family car, which 
I 
drive  close to major buildings every day. 
And for the private jets that are large enough to do damage, the ADIZ offers  
no real protection. Once a jet is cleared into the ADIZ, what protects the 
White  House and Capitol is what would protect them without an ADIZ: missile 
batteries  on the rooftops and bunkers in the basement. 
While doing nothing to impede an attacker, the ADIZ gums up life for the  
law-abiding. The worst effect is on air traffic controllers. Their job is to  
keep airliners moving safely through the crowded corridors to Dulles, National  
and Baltimore-Washington airports. With the ADIZ, they must supervise hundreds  
of extra small-plane flights each day. The FAA's enforcement office, which  
should be dealing with unsafe pilots and aircraft, has been swamped by ADIZ  
cases, since the FAA is under instruction from security agencies to prosecute  
infractions on a "zero tolerance" basis. 
Of the thousands of ADIZ cases that have tied up FAA lawyers and often led to 
 sanctions against pilots, exactly one was found to involve an intentional  
violation. As for pilots: I have waited 40 minutes to get a clearance for a  
20-minute flight northward from Gaithersburg. I have circled in the air over  
West Virginia for nearly an hour waiting for a controller to locate my ADIZ  
plan. 
Some common-sense compromises have been proposed, such as applying ADIZ rules 
 only to planes big enough to be a conceivable threat; allowing ADIZ plans to 
be  filed by computer; or keeping the "freeze" and abolishing the ADIZ 
altogether.  The government's proposal for a permanent ADIZ rejects such 
changes, 
saying  flatly that they would "not meet the requirements of . . . security 
agencies."  Because so many people know firsthand about TSA excesses, they can 
put 
similar  claims in perspective. The mindless ADIZ policy shows what happens 
when the  modern security apparatus operates unopposed by public scrutiny, or 
common  sense. 
The writer is a national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. His e-mail  
address is jfallows@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
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