Vintage plane pilot escorted from restricted airspace
September 27, 2011, 04:23 pm
According to Mercury News, an aviator who mistakenly piloted his vintage 1942 Steadman biplane into temporarily restricted airspace over Santa Cruz, California, was escorted by an F-15 fighter jet to a Watsonville airfield, where the biplane landed. Air travel in the area was restricted because of President Obama's visit to the headquarters of California company LinkedIn, the source noted.
Several witnesses noted the incongruity of the encounter between a state of the art military aircraft and a vintage plane that travels at significantly slower air speeds.
Rayvon Williams, the Watsonville Municipal Airport's interim manager, told the source that the incident is somewhat common, especially for pleasure aviators who fly out of general aviation airfields without definite flight plans.
"The reality is, pilots get lazy from time to time and don't check the notices," Williams told the source.
Typically, airspace restrictions are levied for scheduled commercial airplanes. Private aviators who file a flight plan are often granted access to peripheral areas of restricted space, but in this case, the pilot, who has yet to be identified, had not filed a plan.
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