Vice President Cheney dropped in on us at John Wayne Airport yesterday. Air Force Two, a Boeing C-32A, arrived shortly after 1:00 p.m., and with it came an armada of police, Secret Service, and spooks that closed down the airport for the balance of the afternoon.

It’s a shame, because in days past the arrival of the President or VP would have been an exciting thing. But all anyone could do yesterday was gird themselves for a day of lost work and wonder why Cheney didn’t land at Los Alamitos or March AFB.

We knew he was coming — the FAA issued a Temporary Flight Restriction notice a few days beforehand. But the idiocy surrounding his visit is exactly the kind of thing I would expect from the Federal government. There’s nothing like being prohibited from entering or leaving your own building to make you feel free.

And these TFRs don’t help Cheney’s security, they hurt it. It broadcasts for all to see the precise time and place of his arrival. Then there’s the TFR itself, which has a three nautical mile radius. At 3 miles per minute, anyone wishing the Veep harm would be able to cover that distance in less than a minute, even in a slow single engine aircraft.

But most idiodic is the fact that airmen like myself who have long since been vetted by the government were prohibited from being on the airport while at the same time, line personnel who’ve barely had their drivers licenses verified are allowed to drive fuel trucks filled with thousands of gallons of jet fuel around the ramp.

This sort of thing is so common that I’ve almost come to accept it as inevitable. Why fight it? I’m tired, and it’s easier to just let it go. The thought of writing about it didn’t even cross my mind until I heard a public service announcement from the Ad Council entitled “You Say Nothing” which urged people to be active citizens. It ended by reminding us that “when you don’t use your rights, you forfeit them” and “your freedom only thrives when you use it”.

Hell yeah.

So I’m here once again to say that this trend of treating law abiding Americans like criminals has got to stop. Erosion of our freedoms, whether in the air or on the ground, has got to stop. Giving terrorists what they want — a climate of fear and distrust — has got to stop. Good intentions are not an excuse, and it’s well past time for us to stand up and say ‘enough’.

It seems the more trustworthy a person is, the more they are ground into the dirt by ‘homeland security’. For example, here’s a message from a fellow pilot who flies the Boeing 767 for a major domestic airline. I’ve removed his name and that of his company because… well, because he lives in fear. Just the way a good American shouldn’t.

I thought that I would just vent a little. Today I just landed my Boeing 767 Extended Range Freighter in PDX. It was my last trip so I walked over to our airline’s counter and tried to check in at the computer terminal for a flight home. To make a long story short, I was prevented from checking in and I was told that my name matches a name on the “TSA No-Fly List.” This took over an hour to get me approved to fly on this one flight. I was also told that I can no longer check-in online or use the computer terminal to check in. Each time I check in for a commercial flight, I will be prevented from flying and I will need a supervisor’s approval. I will also be subjected to additional security checks.

I will just say that our government is a bunch of $&#(*@ idiots. I just landed a Boeing aircraft loaded with a 100,000 pounds of fuel, and now the are woried about me being a passenger, However, if I didn’t buy a ticket and I just showed my identification, I would be able to occupy the jumpseat on that same aircraft with no questions asked and no security at all.

I just thought you all should know what our government is doing.

This was a round trip ticket purchased ten days in advance by my employers travel agency. They had my frequent flyer number, I was not “flagged” on the flight out to PDX 5 days before. It was paid by a credit account, they knew that I was an FAR part 121 airline pilot that has MORE security and background check than ANY TSA employee. I am an applicant to the Federal Flight Deck Officer Program (gun carrying airline pilots).

The ONLY thing that tied me to the list is my name. It would seem to make sense for the TSA to use more identifying information than that, however the TSA is not using any kind of common sense. I would like someone from the TSA tell me why pilots are regularly subjected to increased security. I am ALWAYS subjected to extra security when going through the airport screeners. The TSA does not seem to understand that an airline pilot has access to the cockpit. I won’t even address them taking my tweezers away yet the safety equipment in the cockpit includes an crash-axe. They are worried that a pilot may carry a sharp object into the airplane and use it as a weapon, yet they are not concerned about the 100,000 pounds of jet fuel that the pilot is controlling.

As you can see I am being very careful of the language that I am using in this rant. I FEAR the TSA and the power that they yield against an American citizen. I NEVER thought that I would be confused with a person on the “no-fly list.” I hope others can learn from this and write their representatives. Our safety is important but we should not pay for it at the price of losing liberty.

That’s but one person’s story. There are many others. I’d wager that whoever you are, whatever your occupation, you’ve got a story of your own. Don’t you?

“When you don’t use your rights, you forfeit them.”

Yes we do.

Mike Goulian was recently featured on NBC’s Today Show. They profile non-traditional careers in a series called “Moonlighting”.

For this episode, Goulian took Today correspondent Ann Curry up for a demo in an Extra 300L and had her flying a primary level sequence after only one flight.

The media so often portrays general aviation in a poor light, sensationalizing even the most routine gear up landing as a near-death event. And that goes double for aerobatic and airshow stories. So it’s nice to watch Ms. Curry really enjoy herself and connect with the passion so many of us feel for this thing called flying. She starts off by noting that airshow pilots often seem “at the edge of their sanity”, but by the end of the segment has learned that Goulian and his ilk are a reminder that “not giving up on your true passion can lead to a life of joy.”

It’s very well produced, almost as if AOPA had put it together rather than a mainstream news program. Watch it here.

They also aired an outstanding segment on Angel Flight last year as part of a series entitled “Who We Admire”. The video is still availble online.

Today seems to be one of the few media outlets to treat general aviation decently. I wonder if someone on their staff is a pilot. Whatever the reason, I hope they keep up the good work.

‘Haute Voltige’ is a French phrase that roughly translates as ‘High Performance Aerobatics’.

I’d never heard of this organization before today, but apparently Haute Voltige was founded by a retired French military pilot who wanted to develop “a niche for sports, technique, art and culture in the world of aviation”.

They sponsor unconventional aerobatic competitions, promote flight simulation, and most interestingly, stage a unique combination of theatre and airshow called Haute Voltige Air Musicals. The HV web site describes these air musicals as “a different air show concept where aircraft are considered as tools for artists, an outdoor Air Theatre where a story is acted out by pilots flying their aircraft to originally composed music, a new Performing Art for the 21st Century”.

As someone who spends a great deal of time in the theatre and in the air, I think it’s a great combination.

You won’t want to miss this video clip (.rm format) from the 2002 World Grand Prix in the Czech Republic. If you follow the international aerobatics scene, you’ll see some familiar faces.

Even if you don’t know one end of an airplane from the other, the video is still worth watching — the cinematography is as impressive as the flying. Check it out.

Update 04/06/05 - a reader clued me in to the fact that the event took place at the Twin Ring Motegi race track in Japan, not in the Czech Republic. The Japanese people in the video might have tipped me off…

Update 05/23/05 - Lionel Charlet emailed to let me know that he’s the one who created the Motegi video for Haute Voltige. Be sure to check out the other aviation videos Lionel has on his site.

Some jet jockey owes me a beer.

I was in the pattern with a student last week working on 180 degree power off accuracy approaches in preparation for his commercial checkride. It had started to rain fairly heavily a few minutes earlier, so it didn’t seem unusual to see a Lear 25 departing on runway 19R with a trail of water spray streaming from behind the main landing gear.

But I still felt that something wasn’t right. So I kept watching. And sure enough, the spray of water from behind the jet only intensified after it lifted off. That’s odd. Then the gear came up, yet the long stream of water remained.

A-ha.

I called the tower to tell them that the Learjet was venting fuel from the right tip tank. About four seconds later the Lear made a sharp right turn, the Boeing 757 on final started to climb, and a bevy of emergency vehicles appeared from out of nowhere with their lights flashing. For you conspiracy theorists out there, it was almost as if they knew an emergency was about to occur.

The rate at which fuel was streaming out of that tank was impressive. We were at least a mile away and it looked like Mother Nature’s own fuel dump valve had opened up and God Himself was sucking the kerosene out with a straw. The fuel spray trailed for a quarter of a mile behind the Learjet as though the pilot had turned on the smoke system during an airshow. Kinda cool looking.

It all ended happily, as these events almost always do. The Lear 25 made a safe landing, and the last I saw it was being refueled while the airport operations personnel searched the runway for the errant fuel cap. I wonder if they ever found it.

The pilot probably felt like an idiot, but then we all have our stories. Yours truly once took off with the cowl plugs installed on a Skylane, an act that ensured I would never be the one to cast the first stone.

Watching that Learjet dump fuel reminded me of an eventful flight to Europe in the summer of 2000. I was flying on a Boeing 777, the newest airliner in the skies. We’d had several mechanical delays due to problems with the airplane and took off from LAX a day late. Two hours into the flight we were somewhere over Idaho, as I recall, when another problem cropped up. Passengers in first class were feeling a strong vibration in the airframe. The first officer came back to check it out and determined that a small exterior door was loose. After consulting with United Airlines maintenance personnel in San Francisco, the crew opted to return to Los Angeles.

Of course, with a full load of fuel, we were way too heavy to land. So the pilot started dumping fuel to lighten the load. The fuel dumping continued all the way back to LAX — nearly two hours.

And when we landed, we were still far enough over maximum gross landing weight that the airplane was grounded until mechanics could confirm that the landing gear was not damaged. I managed to capture a few photos of the dumping in progress.

The problem with that access door was well known to United. In fact, the entire 777 fleet had been retrofitted to remove the door permanently. All except one airplane — ours — which was due to have the mod done at the next maintenance interval.

I only know all this because United Airlines allows passengers to listen in on radio communications via the headsets they provide. I think it’s channel 9. The crew probably would have disabled channel 9 if they’d remembered to do so. Luckily for me they forgot, and I got some free entertainment on the way back.

Despite the stories, photos, and video clips of aircraft crashes and high performance airshow acts I frequently post here at the House of Rapp, I’ve always maintained that aviating is a generally safe activity.

Airshow flying and military aviation — two things I often highlight — are rare exceptions. They push the envelope only after highly specialized training, and the pilots are fully aware of the risk involved.

But for Joe Average, flying presents relatively little risk. That’s not just opinion talking. It’s a statement based on detailed long term statistics from the NTSB and the Air Safety Foundation.

And those stats get better every year. Here’s the latest:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of civil aviation accidents in the United States fell by 8 percent last year, according to preliminary statistics released Tuesday.

The National Transportation Safety Board reported that civil aviation accidents declined from 1,864 in 2003 to 1,715 last year. There were also 9 percent fewer deaths in 2004 — 635, down from 695 the year before.

“There is a single strong common thread among safety that’s woven among every aspect of aviation, from the design of the aircraft through the systems on board to the training the pilots receive,” said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Greg Martin. “The payoff is the safest three years in aviation history.”

The NTSB singled out general aviation flying in 2004, noting that it was the safest year in history:

Private planes were also involved in fewer crashes last year. The accident rate fell from 6.77 per 100,000 flight hours to 6.22, the lowest recorded by the NTSB since it began keeping statistics in 1975. There were 1,715 general aviation accidents in 2004, down from 1,864 the year before.

The FAA’s Martin said the agency has learned much about improving general aviation safety from the Capstone Project, which focuses on adopting modern aviation technology in Alaska, where many people travel on small private planes.

I’m not sure why the FAA thinks Capstone is especially noteworthy. As I understand it, relatively few of Alaska’s 9,904 aircraft have the required equipment to take advantage of the Capstone technology. But I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Whatever the reason — and there are undoubtedly many from which to choose — aviation is safer than ever.