Comments by Tom Ridge 5/10 that may have spurred a diversion 5/11.
Hayden "Jim" Sheaffer is appealing the FAA's one-year suspension of his pilot's license, and emerging facts show that he and his student pilot, Troy Martin, were, at minimum, victims of a smear campaign.
Given the revelation they were directed to communicate on a radio frequency that was jammed, then later accused of not communicating, there are grounds to wonder if these two men were set up. Jim Sheaffer, appearing on The Today Show Tuesday, DC attorney at his elbow, put it more politely: "We feel we were unfairly singled out."
To document the misinformation surrounding this incident, let's start at Square
One, those pesky
no-fly zones:
The Mickey Mouse-shaped large zone is the ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone), within which planes can fly with prior permission. The red circle in the middle is the FRZ or flight-restricted zone in which general aviation is forbidden. At the top of the map is P-40, the Camp David no-fly zone.
Now, what did these guys know about these zones and when did they know it? Read on.
Immediately after the incident:
Jill Martin (the student pilot's wife) ...
said her husband was discussing the flight with her Tuesday night after he and Sheaffer made their flight plans and was talking "all about the no-fly zones and how they were going to avoid them."
She said her husband told her "they were going to fly between two different restricted areas."
Referring to the map, one would assume those two areas to be the ADIZ and the P-40, especially considering that their destination was Lumberton, NC, which is due south of Lynchburg, VA.
A plane leaving southeast Pennsylvania and flying by VFR (visual flying) would travel southwest, go between the two restricted zones, then skirt the west side of the ADIZ on a bearing for Lynchburg, turning due south for the last leg.
VFR pilots without filed flight plans are not allowed to fly into airspace around commercial airports, so this kind of recreational flying requires staying visually over open country and small towns.
Oddly, the day after the incident, an unnamed source raised an uncertainty about just what Mrs. Martin meant by "two different restricted areas":
A pilot who stopped by the Smoketown Airport remarked that there is a narrow channel of unrestricted airspace near the U.S. Capitol, and that airplanes outfitted with global-positioning units are able to navigate through it. The old single-engine Cessna 152 probably wasn't equipped with the most sophisticated steering equipment.
As a former journalist, I am always suspicious of unnamed sources characterized as this one is, "a pilot who stopped by". Especially when the person stopping by is communicating disinformation. As you can see by the map, the corridor he mentions doesn't exist. There was once a VFR corridor between Dulles Airport and downtown DC, but as you can see, that entire area is now within the ADIZ and off-limits to people like Sheaffer and Martin who had not filed flight plans.
But what if the pilots were under the same misapprehension about that VFR corridor? After all, one of the accusations against them is that they were using outdated maps. Well, "Sheaffer told investigators that he thought he had mistakenly flown over Camp David, another restricted airspace known as Prohibited Area P-40, FAA records show." So we can be confident that the two restricted areas in question are the P-40 and the ADIZ.
The Camp David P-40 airspace is tricky to navigate because it actually changes size depending on the president's whereabouts. Since documents show the plane initially entering the ADIZ, then exiting it by flying east and re-entering it by flying south (something that can't actually be done, if you look at the map), my guess is they did either enter or get near the Camp David space, fly east to "back out" of it, then fly south into the northern Baltimore suburbs rather than DC.
Did the plane actually reach downtown DC, namely the intersection of N. Capitol and K, as alleged? (See my previous diaries for much more on this.) With inconclusive video showing the Cessna so far in the background it's difficult to even make it out, and with the only on-the-record eyewitness still being Bernard Shaw, the retired CNN anchor, there is no proof either way.
Let's turn instead to the charges the FAA has lodged against Sheaffer:
In closing, I have to say the reporting of this incident, with its obvious bias against Sheaffer due to age and rural status, is a shame to the Fourth Estate. One cannot automatically assume an older person to be a doddering fool or a rural person to be a rube. Sheaffer was professional, calm, literate and well-groomed in his television appearance. And I hope he gives 'em hell.