A Small Plane Highlights a Big Security Concern

Anne A. Witkowsky quoted in the New York Times
May 13, 2005

A Small Plane Highlights a Big Security Concern
By ERIC LIPTON and MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, May 12 - It weighed about half as much as a Volkswagen Beetle and was traveling toward the nation's capital slower than the police have clocked speeders on Interstate 95. But the fact that a single-engine Cessna could shut down all three branches of federal government on Wednesday shows that no matter how much air security has improved, the capital remains vulnerable to incursions by blundering pilots. Such unauthorized flights into restricted airspace occur perhaps a dozen times a week in the Washington area, government and aviation officials said Thursday, although the planes rarely venture as far as the Cessna flown by two men from rural Pennsylvania. Since September 2001, military aircraft have responded more than 2,000 times within the United States and Canada to reports of suspicious aircraft, redirecting fighter jets already in the air or scrambling them from bases nearby. Officials would not release the figures for only the Washington area. "Part of flying is knowing where restricted airspace is and knowing how to operate," said Maj. Douglas P. Martin, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, known as Norad, which helped coordinate the military response Wednesday. The incident, federal officials said, demonstrates the need to communicate better with pilots who accidentally violate the air space rules, an effort that is already under way. In Washington, Norad will begin using a system of laser beacons in 10 days that they can point at offending aircraft to get the pilots' attention and warn them away.

People inside and outside government agree there has been a significant improvement since 2001 in the federal government's ability to quickly identify and avert possible threats in the skies. "It appears the system worked as it was supposed to because the appropriate and effective secure measures went into effect," said Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. An examination of this week's scare - based on a detailed timeline compiled by Homeland Security officials - suggests that despite the evacuations of the White House, Capitol and Supreme Court, the buildings were never seriously threatened. Aviation officials had marked the errant Cessna as suspicious miles before it entered the restricted zone around Washington. And the F-16 fighter jets that were scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland had ample opportunity to shoot down the plane, if authorities decided such a step was necessary, according to military officials. Missile batteries on the ground in Washington could also have been used to take down the plane. "Certainly we don't want to cause disruption," said Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a Pentagon spokesman. "But we also want to go to great pains, and if possible avoid the very sobering thought of shooting down an aircraft." They did not take such a step, officials said Thursday, because the plane was tiny, it was not on a direct path toward the White House or the Capitol, and it remained at a relatively steady altitude, ultimately turning away before it reached downtown. Unlike on Sept. 11, 2001, when the air traffic system identified airplanes that had been hijacked but failed to share that information quickly with the military, communication on Wednesday was nearly instant, with authority passing from civilian to military and back again promptly, as circumstances required. The plane was identified about 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, 44 miles from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, heading toward the Washington area, outside the border of the Air Defense Identification Zone that was set up around the Washington region's three airports after the Sept. 11 attacks. To come inside the zone, pilots must request from the F.A.A. a code number that lets the agency identify and track the planes. But this plane had not requested the clearance and it was not communicating with an air traffic controller.

At first, federal officials were not alarmed because the plane was flying along the perimeter of the restricted area, which is a common occurrence. The situation escalated at 11:45 a.m., when the plane, traveling about 100 miles per hour, turned south and headed directly toward a more tightly controlled zone surrounding downtown Washington. This provoked the authorities to send a Homeland Security Black Hawk helicopter and three jets to intercept the Cessna. Lt. Col. Timothy Lehmann, an F-16 pilot who chased the plane, said in an interview Thursday that he flew overhead rocking his wings, an international symbol that means, as he put it, "Hey, you've been intercepted, follow me." "But that did not happen," Colonel Lehmann said. He said he and another F-16 pilot had been given permission to drop flares in "an effort to shock him," but that did not immediately work. It was not until the fighter jets made their third pass that the pilot turned west, away from the city, passing over the vice president's residence near the National Cathedral, about three miles from the White House. While the evacuation of the White House and other federal buildings was under way, the plane was escorted to an airport in Frederick, Md., where it landed at 12:39 p.m., an hour after the incident began. To avoid such problems in the future, pilots of small planes probably need to be better educated, said Anne Witkowsky, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research organization. "If we want to continue to allow individuals and recreational fliers to fly - as I think we do - then we need to take all possible steps to ensure that these kinds of mistakes are not made again," Ms. Witkowsky said. The White House defended the decision by the Secret Service not to interrupt President Bush's bike ride at a wildlife refuge on Wednesday to inform him of the problem. Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's spokesman, said the president was satisfied that the episode had been handled properly, even though he was not informed as Vice President Dick Cheney was evacuated from the White House and Laura Bush was moved to a safer location.