Denver Presidential TFR Bust

denverpilot

denverpilot

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Starts around 2:25.

http://archive-server.liveatc.net/kapa/KAPA-Sep-13-2012-1830Z.mp3

F-16 scrambled out of KBKF. Two of the Colorado Aviation Photography group on Facebook broke the story when they were buzzed by the F16 and snapped photos.

Press release already out quoting a "Captain" who says no charges will be filed. Guess "Captains" get to tell the FAA what to do now? Right. Sure.

(And if that's the case, it's close to elections and some very high level folks don't want the bad PR of nailing another unsuspecting pilot, which may be a good sign, but it'll only last through election season.)
 
Yup. We have a very active and awesome aviation photography group going here. Some of the stuff posted in that group could easily be put in magazines and print. Gorgeous.

The group is strong enough that they've even fielded some automotive stickers to help with legitimacy when over zealous folk try to run them off of good airport photo locations with all the terrorism paranoia.

Nice people, too. Best airborne photo yet of my airplane, came from one of them randomly shooting at KAPA one weekend.
 
I'm about 10 minutes into the feed and can't believe there are more flights where they don't check NOTAMs. Not just the 182 being escorted but the VFR flight going to the Springs....clueless.

BTW the 182 is from Wyoming. And rather clueless.

Interesting call sign for the F16s - Peak or Peek?
 
Peak.

They're based in Colorado Springs and Pikes Peak is right there.
 
murphey said:
Interesting call sign for the F16s - Peak or Peek?
Click to expand...

I think the Colorado Air Guard have the Peak assigned to them.

You made me go look. I can't find my completely unofficial Internet-obtained, as likely to be complete BS as true, list right now.

It's on paper here in the ham shack somewhere...

What a mess. I'm going back upstairs. ;)
 
Captain said:
Peak.

They're based in Colorado Springs and Pikes Peak is right there.
Click to expand...

Actually they're based at Buckley which is on the east side of Denver.
 
murphey said:
I'm about 10 minutes into the feed and can't believe there are more flights where they don't check NOTAMs. Not just the 182 being escorted but the VFR flight going to the Springs....clueless.

BTW the 182 is from Wyoming. And rather clueless.
Click to expand...

Yup, it seems bad to those of us who pay a little 'tention and have a tendency to follow the rules a little bit...

On the other hand, the "national defense" TFR is more than just a pain in the rear...
 
Yeah, all those hundred million dollar fighters launching after twenty thousand dollar spam cans really makes me feel safer.
 
The problem with these damn things is that I'd wager almost everyone of us has at one time or another failed to check for TFRs and have just gotten lucky. Sigh.
 
jesse said:
The problem with these damn things is that I'd wager almost everyone of us has at one time or another failed to check for TFRs and have just gotten lucky. Sigh.
Click to expand...

Would really be nice if there was a display similar to skyvector.com that was all inclusive. The red rings there are pretty obvious, but I understand that not all TFRs show up.
 
MAKG1 said:
I'd be happier if it were just absolutely required that the FSS know about all TFRs. They don't.
Click to expand...

All the more reason that it makes sense to file & fly IFR whenever practical.
 
airguy said:
Or VFR Flight Following at a minimum.
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With the airspace I fly in, I attempt that for every flight. It usually works.

But there are occasions where it doesn't. Say, terrain interferes with radar coverage, or workload just sucks.

I most recently had a NorCal controller warn me about active stadium TFRs in San Francisco and Berkeley. I was in Class B at the time, so at least the controller had to talk to me. It's nice, but I'd like an alternative aside from checking websites of every team that I happen to know about. Note that many, many stadiums are not charted, including one of the two active TFRs from last weekend (Memorial Stadium is charted -- barely -- but AT&T park isn't; curiously, Geezer Stadium is, though only high schools have played there for 40 years).
 
MAKG1 said:
I'd be happier if it were just absolutely required that the FSS know about all TFRs. They don't.
Click to expand...

This is true. On 7/3 I did a night flight from HWD to SAC. As a good student I did my normal check on weather on DUAT and also did a phone briefing before my flight. I make sure to ask if there are any TFR's and nope, none in route of flight. On the way back I heard another pilot mention a TFR over the Oakland Coliseum. I said to my CFI want TFR? He asked me if I got the TFR email regarding fireworks over the Coliseum and I said nope. I told him that I got a briefing and they didn't mention anything.

So say if I go over the Coliseum when the TFR was in effect (assuming I wasn't talking to ATC). Should I be busted? The phone briefer told me there were no TFR's and that's recorded correct?
 
ainokea said:
So say if I go over the Coliseum when the TFR was in effect (assuming I wasn't talking to ATC). Should I be busted? The phone briefer told me there were no TFR's and that's recorded correct?
Click to expand...

No, they'll bust you. You're supposed to know despite the fact that they themselves don't know. Crock of crap, but that's the law.
 
Listening to it, you gotta feel for the guy as he is quite confused. Then he shoots himself in the foot saying he has been trying to contact approach for a "few miles," "er um, 30 miles, " yeah that. I wish him luck in this mess.
 
steingar said:
No, they'll bust you. You're supposed to know despite the fact that they themselves don't know. Crock of crap, but that's the law.
Click to expand...

Although, it's really, really hard to go over the Coliseum without talking to ATC, as it's inside the Class C surface area for OAK (and there is Class B directly overlying it).
 
MAKG1 said:
I'd be happier if it were just absolutely required that the FSS know about all TFRs. They don't.
Click to expand...

I wish the FAA's TFR website had all the TFRs and didn't have a disclaimer about contacting FSS.



Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
 
If nobody knows where a stadium TFR is at any given time including ATC, how is someone able to bust a pilot for flying through it?
 
Sac Arrow said:
If nobody knows where a stadium TFR is at any given time including ATC, how is someone able to bust a pilot for flying through it?
Click to expand...

I almost got burned by this last night. Thankfully a nearby controller who I checked in with (but wasn't directly responsible for the airspace over the stadium) mentioned the TFR was active. I immediately made a hard right to avoid it.

It's ridiculous in this technology age that these can't be more accurately and completely depicted. The FAA's own TFR site doesn't seem to even bother with the stadium TFRs. I suspect this will eventually lead to a legal challenge when the right peron gets burned by one of these. If I recall correctly, a long-standing legal principle is while you may not have a duty to act, if you undertake to act you have to meet at least a minimum standard of care in doing so. Since the Feds have put up a site to advise of TFRs, it should be current and complete in the information given. Let IT be the source FSS looks to for advisories.
 
The FAA's TFR webpage has a list of TFRs, and below it there is this disclaimer in a big red box:

Depicted TFR data may not be a complete listing. Pilots should not use the information on this website for flight planning purposes. For the latest information, call your local Flight Service Station at 1-800-WX-BRIEF.

At the moment, the list shows 93 TFRs, including 16 for the category of air shows/sports. However, not a single football game is listed, even though it is Saturday morning and dozens of big NCAA college football games will be underway within a few hours, and some within one hour.
 
NoHeat said:
The FAA's TFR webpage has a list of TFRs, and below it there is this disclaimer in a big red box:

Depicted TFR data may not be a complete listing. Pilots should not use the information on this website for flight planning purposes. For the latest information, call your local Flight Service Station at 1-800-WX-BRIEF.

At the moment, the list shows 93 TFRs, including 16 for the category of air shows/sports. However, not a single football game is listed, even though it is Saturday morning and dozens of big NCAA college football games will be underway within a few hours, and some within one hour.
Click to expand...

It takes a govt bureaucracy to fail so badly a what shouldn't be all that difficult a task. It's a poor excuse for a website, too, although I am confident it wasn't cheap to build.
 
It's fundamentally unjust to penalize people for violating restrictions when there's no realistic way to find out what restrictions are in effect. :mad:

Maybe someday a Senator will get caught by one of these, and then we'll have a "Pilot's Bill of Rights, Part II."
 
It's fundamentally unjust to not have published penalties for such actions also. The response could vary from a slap on the wrist to revocation of your flying privileges forever. There is no agreed to standard for pilot violations.

No one would put up with such large ranges of possible violation in operation of any other ground-based motor vehicle, but it's been that way in aircraft as long as I've been a pilot.

Those who have Unions and fly professionally have some clout. The big letter agencies who supposedly represent us all, never even give it a second thought.

(One of them is too busy selling legal services as a prophylactic, which removes their motivation to simply address the problem with their clout and numbers. That, or it's a sign they've simply given up. I suspect the former since money is involved and an aviation lawyer gets lots of pages in their magazine as now does his wife, who sends out the spam e-mails asking people to join legal services.)
 
I've checked the FAA's TFR webpage
several times today, and while a few new TFRs have appeared, none of them seem to be college football games, even though there are lots of them going on this afternoon.

I'd say the webpage is right, when it says not to use it for flight planning. Pity.
 
OK, I got truly shocked today.

Just after passing through SFO Class B on the way to PAO, I asked the NorCal controller if the TFR over Stanford was active. I knew there was a game today, as Palo Alto is swarming with U$C weenies. The controller didn't know! Now, it wasn't his sector, but shouldn't that be general knowledge around the region? I was perhaps 10 miles from Stanford Stadium. It should be possible to get this information while airborne if I'm less than 5 minutes out. PAO tower knew. It was active.
 
An aircraft went right straight over the top of Folsom Field last week during the CU Buffs game.

No terrorists jumped out.

The airplane was probably more interesting than CU's playing. ;)
 
NoHeat said:
I've checked the FAA's TFR webpage
several times today, and while a few new TFRs have appeared, none of them seem to be college football games, even though there are lots of them going on this afternoon.

I'd say the webpage is right, when it says not to use it for flight planning. Pity.
Click to expand...
But the webpage says to contact FSS, and not even FSS has information about stadium TFRs. The only reliable way to be informed about all stadium TFRs is to know the locations and CURRENT schedules of all the stadiums in the areas you are flying through. Flight following is a must when VFR, and usually local ATC will be aware of stadium TFRs in their sector, but the service is workload permitting and you might be inside the circle before the controller has a chance to give you a heads up. IFR is probably the only way to be sure you're covered.

I agree with Richard. This is completely unreasonable in a free country.
 
Complete and utter nonsense. I never gave it much of a thought until yesterday. I fly out of Syracuse, but live some distance away, and trained at rural airports many miles from any stadiums. I started flying out of Syracuse last year after football season was over.

I am not a sports fan. Couldn't care less. Anyway, I figured because Syracuse plays in the Carrier Dome, it's not open-air, and thus not an issue. Who knew they open the top of the dome during football games, thus making it open-air and subject to the TFRs? Duhhh...not me.

So I'm getting ready to depart Saturday afternoon on a local flight, and the ATIS contained mention of the local TFR active from xxxx local until xxxx local. Of course, I couldn't remember how far the stupid things extend, although I did remember the 3000 feet part. So I asked the controller, who gave me the answer.

Not a big deal, I went the other way...but it's just total ridiculousness. Had I been coming from the south, which I often do, and had I not been talking to ATC (OK, I would have been, that close, but still...) I'd have violated it. And it certainly wasn't noted in the usual sources, because I checked, as I always do, prior to flight.

I can't afford to be the test case. But I sure hope someone can, because this BS is just totally out of control...
 
That's the root problem with all of this. Lack of thought.

Not saying that toward you. Just noting the reality.
 
Don't TFR's show up on ATIS?
 
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