bstratt
Cleared for Takeoff
Here's the story from Toronto's Globe & Mail:
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A sitting duck over Washington
Quebec pilot faced the daunting prospect of flying his crippled and blacked-out craft though the no-fly zone over the U.S. capital
By PAUL KORING
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Updated at 4:42 AM EDT
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Washington — Philippe Bonnet didn't want to alarm his three passengers.
He had more than enough to worry about without his girlfriend and another couple freaking out during what he knew was going to be an unusual encounter.
The unsuspecting passengers knew the aircraft had been struck by lightning, and the Cessna 340 was bucking and pitching as it descended deep inside the dark clouds.
What they didn't know -- and Mr. Bonnet, 50, a skilled veteran pilot with 22 years experience didn't tell them -- was that a key instrument, the airspeed indicator, had failed. So had the transponder, which identifies aircraft and their flight paths to radar. So had the radio.
Nor did Mr. Bonnet tell them that the aircraft was picking up some ice as it descended and that the collision-avoidance system was squawking multiple warnings because he was out of contact with air-traffic control in busy airspace, or that he was very worried about maintaining sufficient airspeed to avoid a possibly fatal stall.
And all this was happening close -- way too close -- to the no-fly zone over Washington.
Little more than a week earlier, a pilot in a small plane had strayed within five kilometres of the White House, forcing the removal evacuationof thousands. On Monday, Mr. Bonnet feared setting off a similar reaction.
He knew that "this is the worst spot on the planet to have a communications and transponder failure." An unidentified aircraft that didn't respond to repeated radio calls would be quickly considered a threat, a potential terrorist attack only minutes from the White House. Mr. Bonnet had his hands full flying a damaged aircraft in rough weather and it was about to get worse.
What Mr. Bonnet had expected was about to happen. A pair of F-16 warplanes, guns loaded and live missiles hanging beneath their wings, had been scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base and were screaming down on him.
So Mr. Bonnet decided to tell his passengers. He had already seen one of the fighters and the white flare it fired. He had turned left, knowing the warplane was warning him away from the no-fly zone.
He also knew that with no radio -- no way of telling the controllers on the ground what had happened, and that his flight was innocent, and that all he wanted to do was to land at Gaithersburg, 30 kilometres north of the capital -- the fighters would be back.
Knowing they were about to experience something that few passengers, let alone pilots, ever experience, he decided to break it to them gently.
"We have a little communication problem," he finally said. "But don't worry, we're close to the airport and we will be landing soon," Then, having reassured them, he added: "We might see fighters some time."
In less than a minute, the goggled, helmeted head of the F-16 pilot in the cockpit of the grey warplane was close enough to be clearly visible alongside, just left of the twin-engine Cessna and keeping close escort as it headed away from the White House.
"One was laughing, the other was opening her eyes wide like crazy," Mr. Bonnet said of his two women passengers when they saw the F-16.
"Why are they coming so close?" one asked. Mr. Bonnet recalled the incident yesterday in a telephone interview from St. Damase, home of Damafro, the specialty cheese maker that he co-owns, about 70 kilometres east of Montreal.
"I was trying to look all around and all of a sudden -- voof -- one of the F-16 fighters passed over me.
"I don't want to know what would have been the next action . . . after the flare," he said yesterday.
Unlike the last pilot who blundered into the no-fly zone, ignored radio calls and apparently was so distracted that he didn't notice the warplanes flying across his nose, Mr. Bonnet was not hauled from the cockpit, handcuffed, charged and hauled away after landing. Nor has his licence been revoked.
Rather, U.S. authorities praised his piloting skills and the calm, competent way he handled what could have been a grim sequence of events ending in tragedy.
"He's a fine pilot, he handled everything like a textbook pilot," said Greg Martin, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Mr. Bonnet, who holds multiengine, commercial and float-plane licences, was perhaps being too modest as he described Monday's extraordinary 20 minutes, from the instant the blinding flash of lightning turned a routine flight home into a brush with disaster. Flying on instruments inside clouds without an airspeed indicator requires significant airmanship skills.
Yesterday, Mr. Bonnet described how a long weekend, flying to Chicago and New Orleans with friends, ended on a Gaithersburg tarmac, surrounded by police, and news choppers hovering overhead.
"They were very, very nice," Mr. Bonnet said of the half-dozen police officers who met the Cessna. Long interviews, first with the police, then the Federal Bureau of Investigation, then other federal investigators, followed before U.S. authorities were convinced that they had intercepted a skilled pilot coping well with the circumstances.
Mr. Bonnet spent most of Tuesday getting the Cessna fixed before flying home to St. Hubert airport that evening. It should have been an uneventful homecoming after a harrowing experience.
Instead, the Canada Customs agent gave him a rough time.
"What a day, again," he said.
****************************
A sitting duck over Washington
Quebec pilot faced the daunting prospect of flying his crippled and blacked-out craft though the no-fly zone over the U.S. capital
By PAUL KORING
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Updated at 4:42 AM EDT
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Washington — Philippe Bonnet didn't want to alarm his three passengers.
He had more than enough to worry about without his girlfriend and another couple freaking out during what he knew was going to be an unusual encounter.
The unsuspecting passengers knew the aircraft had been struck by lightning, and the Cessna 340 was bucking and pitching as it descended deep inside the dark clouds.
What they didn't know -- and Mr. Bonnet, 50, a skilled veteran pilot with 22 years experience didn't tell them -- was that a key instrument, the airspeed indicator, had failed. So had the transponder, which identifies aircraft and their flight paths to radar. So had the radio.
Nor did Mr. Bonnet tell them that the aircraft was picking up some ice as it descended and that the collision-avoidance system was squawking multiple warnings because he was out of contact with air-traffic control in busy airspace, or that he was very worried about maintaining sufficient airspeed to avoid a possibly fatal stall.
And all this was happening close -- way too close -- to the no-fly zone over Washington.
Little more than a week earlier, a pilot in a small plane had strayed within five kilometres of the White House, forcing the removal evacuationof thousands. On Monday, Mr. Bonnet feared setting off a similar reaction.
He knew that "this is the worst spot on the planet to have a communications and transponder failure." An unidentified aircraft that didn't respond to repeated radio calls would be quickly considered a threat, a potential terrorist attack only minutes from the White House. Mr. Bonnet had his hands full flying a damaged aircraft in rough weather and it was about to get worse.
What Mr. Bonnet had expected was about to happen. A pair of F-16 warplanes, guns loaded and live missiles hanging beneath their wings, had been scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base and were screaming down on him.
So Mr. Bonnet decided to tell his passengers. He had already seen one of the fighters and the white flare it fired. He had turned left, knowing the warplane was warning him away from the no-fly zone.
He also knew that with no radio -- no way of telling the controllers on the ground what had happened, and that his flight was innocent, and that all he wanted to do was to land at Gaithersburg, 30 kilometres north of the capital -- the fighters would be back.
Knowing they were about to experience something that few passengers, let alone pilots, ever experience, he decided to break it to them gently.
"We have a little communication problem," he finally said. "But don't worry, we're close to the airport and we will be landing soon," Then, having reassured them, he added: "We might see fighters some time."
In less than a minute, the goggled, helmeted head of the F-16 pilot in the cockpit of the grey warplane was close enough to be clearly visible alongside, just left of the twin-engine Cessna and keeping close escort as it headed away from the White House.
"One was laughing, the other was opening her eyes wide like crazy," Mr. Bonnet said of his two women passengers when they saw the F-16.
"Why are they coming so close?" one asked. Mr. Bonnet recalled the incident yesterday in a telephone interview from St. Damase, home of Damafro, the specialty cheese maker that he co-owns, about 70 kilometres east of Montreal.
"I was trying to look all around and all of a sudden -- voof -- one of the F-16 fighters passed over me.
"I don't want to know what would have been the next action . . . after the flare," he said yesterday.
Unlike the last pilot who blundered into the no-fly zone, ignored radio calls and apparently was so distracted that he didn't notice the warplanes flying across his nose, Mr. Bonnet was not hauled from the cockpit, handcuffed, charged and hauled away after landing. Nor has his licence been revoked.
Rather, U.S. authorities praised his piloting skills and the calm, competent way he handled what could have been a grim sequence of events ending in tragedy.
"He's a fine pilot, he handled everything like a textbook pilot," said Greg Martin, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Mr. Bonnet, who holds multiengine, commercial and float-plane licences, was perhaps being too modest as he described Monday's extraordinary 20 minutes, from the instant the blinding flash of lightning turned a routine flight home into a brush with disaster. Flying on instruments inside clouds without an airspeed indicator requires significant airmanship skills.
Yesterday, Mr. Bonnet described how a long weekend, flying to Chicago and New Orleans with friends, ended on a Gaithersburg tarmac, surrounded by police, and news choppers hovering overhead.
"They were very, very nice," Mr. Bonnet said of the half-dozen police officers who met the Cessna. Long interviews, first with the police, then the Federal Bureau of Investigation, then other federal investigators, followed before U.S. authorities were convinced that they had intercepted a skilled pilot coping well with the circumstances.
Mr. Bonnet spent most of Tuesday getting the Cessna fixed before flying home to St. Hubert airport that evening. It should have been an uneventful homecoming after a harrowing experience.
Instead, the Canada Customs agent gave him a rough time.
"What a day, again," he said.
