James Fallows is both a reporter and pilot and you’ll often get a cockpit’s-eye view of the world from him.
One of the first things they teach you about flying in DC, he writes, is how absolute the rules are on restricted flight space there.
Last Wednesday a plane took off from DC National Airport (now called Reagan.) It flew straight.
There is only one take-off runway and every plane on it must immediately turn left over the Potomac River.
It did not.
Its flight path was about to take it directly over the White House.
The air traffic controllers reminded the pilot to make that turn. Still no turn.
Finally, they commanded the pilot to call a number upon landing. Fallows says no pilot ever wants to hear that command. He doesn’t say outright that their license is forfeit but it’s certainly an implied possibility, along with I’d guess potential criminal charges.
To my knowledge, this is the first time that airspace has been breached by an unauthorized plane since 9/11. This happened last Wednesday. The name of the plane was the Eastern Express.
It was the chartered campaign plane of one Donald Trump, with JD Vance listed as passenger.
One can only wildly guess at what was going on: was Vance trying to say this will all be mine soon? Was the pilot a MAGA who’d fallen for the rules don’t apply to us mentality of his boss? Was the pilot out to lunch?
But you just can’t be, and certainly not there.
By the time Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11 there were fighter jets scrambled to take it down rather than let it continue its course to crash in DC now that we knew that day what those planes were doing.
And a week before that anniversary Trump’s plane threw away the rules and invited that kind of response. Why? Just, unfathomably, why? What message were they sending?